This last week brought into view Microsoft’s Q2 FY 2021 earnings report, the impressive growth of Game Pass, new Insider builds, and an updated Edge roadmap. Be sure to catch up via our overview.
The Redmond giant opened its week with the very impressive earnings report for Q2 of its FY 2021, followed by great Game Pass news, and the usual Insider builds. You can find info about that, as well as much more below, in your Microsoft digest for the week of January 24 –30. As we’ll discuss in the next section, dedicated specifically to Microsoft’s earnings for Q2 of FY 2021, gaming had a great quarter at the company. For one, Xbox Live’s monthly active user number has topped 100 million, with the firm’s “Netflix for games” Xbox Game Pass subscription growing to an impressive 18 million subscribers from the 15 million announced back in September, and 10 million in April of 2020. All this growth marked a few firsts for the division, including an excess of $2B in revenue from third-party titles and $5B in gaming revenue for the first time ever. In additional good news, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, as well as Gears 5 are among this month’s Games with Gold offers, while Deals with Gold cover everything from Need for Speed Payback to The Surge and Kerbal Space Program, to name but three. Switching gears to seasonal content, Halo: MCC’s Season 5 now has new Halo 3 and Halo: Reach unlocks, while Season One of Sea of Thieves is now live with a battle pass, additional voyage, as well as more details about the battle pass and freebies for players. There is however some bad news for players of Bleeding Edge, as Ninja Theory has decided to abandon the project, instead focusing on Hellblade 2 and other endeavors. Lastly, the box art for the first PlayStation Studios-published game to also land on Xbox has been revealed. This is somewhat of a strange situation, as will be the release of timed-exclusives Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop from now Microsoft-owned Bethesda Softworks / ZeniMax Media. On Tuesday, Microsoft revealed its quarterly earnings report for Q2 of its fiscal year 2021 – or Q4 of calendar year 2020. The company brought in $43.1B in revenue, an increase of 17% year-over-year, which translates into an operating income of $17.9B (up 29%) and a net income of $15.5B (up 33%). Of the $43.1B, the most was brought in by More Personal Computing at $15.1B (up 17%), followed by Intelligent Cloud at $14.
