The global semiconductor shortage has throttled sales for electronic hardware over the last couple of year, and while that has included the Xbox Series X/S as well, the duo of Microsoft’s new-gen consoles still seems to be doing well for itself.
In its latest quarterly fiscal briefing, the company reported a 6% year-on-year growth in its gaming revenue for the January-March quarter, which, incidentally, also made for the best ever quarter in Xbox history outside of a Holiday period, as pointed out by Niko Partners’ senior analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter.
Xbox content and services revenue grew 4% year-on-year, with Xbox Game Pass’s growth and sales of first party titles primarily contributing to the same. Content and revenue services crossed $3 billion, a first ever for Xbox in the Q1 period of any calendar year in its history. Xbox hardware revenue, meanwhile, grew 14%, while Microsoft also says supply for the console has increased over last year.
During the subsequent earnings call with investors, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella provided further details on Xbox Series X/S’ commercial performance, revealing that the duo of consoles has captured the global console market share for two quarters in a row, with the two consoles also being the market leader for new-gen consoles in the US, Canada, UK, and western Europe.
“With our Xbox Series S and X consoles, we have taken share globally for two quarters in a row and we are the market leader this quarter among next gen consoles in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Western Europe,” Nadella said.
While the PS5’s consistently constrained supplies and persistent stock shortages have surely contributed to the disparity between the two consoles, there’s no denying that the Xbox Series X and Series S have enjoyed impressive sales momentum since they launched in November 2020, and continue to gather pace as they move forward. Supply is, of course, one of the biggest factor affecting hardware sales right now, and clearly, Xbox is benefitting from Microsoft’s handling of the situation.
Microsoft stopped providing hardware sales figures long ago, so we don’t know what Xbox Series X/S’ global sales are as things stand right now. Earlier this year, however, reports estimated that the two consoles had, at the time, shipped over 12 million units worldwide, which should give us a rough idea of where that number might stand right now.
