Are you an Xbox Live gamer? Do you pop online on your Xbox One or Xbox 360 and tear up the leader boards and in-match rankings? Do you watch streams and download game demos? Do you purchase aesthetic garments for your avatar?
Doing any or all of that means you're part of the 49 million people who are Xbox Live gamers. That's a lot of paying customers, but it wasn't enough to see Microsoft's quarterly financials for its gaming division grow. In-fact it shrank almost 10 percent, with sources reporting a drop of more than $152 million. Although Xbox Live revenue is on the up and helped bolster the company's console finances, lower than expected hardware revenue saw the platform under perform over the past few months.
Still the future is bright for Xbox, especially where Live is concerned. Throughout the last 12 months, the number of subscribers has increased by 33 percent. While Microsoft hasn't sold that many new consoles, it suggests that more and more people are becoming dedicated online players.
Of course all of this is just a drop in the bucket for the company's main finances. Microsoft's overall revenue throughout the 12 month period was over $85.3 billion, equating out to a net-income of just over $3 billion.
Not too shabby, but it goes to show that as big as the Xbox brand is, its contributions to the company aren't enormous.
[Thanks VG247]
