AfterDawn: News

Xbox Live revenue tops $1 billion

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Microsoft's Xbox Live service brought in $1.2 billion revenue for the fiscal 2009 year.

For the year ended June 30th, about 12.5 million Xbox Live users paid an annual fee to play games online which Bloomberg says would account for about $600 million in revenue. Xbox Live COO Dennis Durkin says on top of that, sales of DLC, movies and TV topped subscription revenue for the first time ever, and by a significant margin, leading us to the final $1.2 billion figure.



Success with Xbox Live is key to Microsoft's Entertainment division, which has seen slow sales of Zune media players, slow smartphone sales, and a barely profitable Xbox 360 console, which sees most of its profit from software and accessory sales.

Adds Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft: "Xbox Live has helped sell a lot of consoles and created a lot of loyalty. Everyone has been talking about Microsoft’s inability to innovate, but this is a pretty good example where they have innovated. They timed it just right with this one."

If accurate, revenue would have jumped from $800 million in 2008, a pretty hefty increase.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 8 Jul 2010 0:39

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• 6 comments

• Hopium

  even with a paid service microsoft has brought online gaming to the consoles single handedly, before live you could play socom on the ps2 and that was about it then h2 launch and they had a community twice the size and they were paying for it! microsoft had some good planning with the xbox live service and so far has executed it well. i think maybe if the ps3 was much easier to port to the sony service would have surpassed live in folds but the lack of games for the first year didnt give sony that push to put them in the frontlines of online gaming. i kinda wished it didnt happen that way so microsoft would put out more free content and add new features to push it more. but with sony now entering the pay 2 play maybe it will promote competition and push both companies to innovate. which is good for us xbox fanboys and ps3 fanboys alike.

  9.7.2010 01:59 #1

• xblade132

  online play on ps3 is still free...

  9.7.2010 07:55 #2

• Gnawnivek

  Wow, that's a lot of dough... I haven't pay them a penny though, I like my silver membership :)

  9.7.2010 11:14 #3

• xtago

  So MS have 24 million users on XBox Live then.
  
  I can't see this working as some MMO's which use this same method of making cash have swapped to a free to play model because you only get some many people playing the game.

  9.7.2010 13:03 #4

• Jemborg

  Originally posted by Hopium: even with a paid service microsoft has brought online gaming to the consoles single handedly, before live you could play socom on the ps2 and that was about it then h2 launch and they had a community twice the size and they were paying for it! microsoft had some good planning with the xbox live service and so far has executed it well. i think maybe if the ps3 was much easier to port to the sony service would have surpassed live in folds but the lack of games for the first year didnt give sony that push to put them in the frontlines of online gaming. i kinda wished it didnt happen that way so microsoft would put out more free content and add new features to push it more. but with sony now entering the pay 2 play maybe it will promote competition and push both companies to innovate. which is good for us xbox fanboys and ps3 fanboys alike. Good comment.
  

  Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
  
  
  

  9.7.2010 15:21 #5

• toddq (unverified)

  It is amazing that Xbox Live has more subscribers and revenue than Netflix does. Microsoft could spin off Xbox Live as a separate company and it would do just fine. Also as a fyi, Xbox Live has more subscribers than Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NY Post, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Denver Post COMBINED.

  25.7.2010 01:22 #6