Like a rollercoaster of highs and lows, the Xbox franchise saw its own wild descent and upswing with the fresh L-Excel reports for FY 2025 Q4. Content and service revenue witnessed an equally handsome 13% spike compared to the prior year, so there is some good news there. But wait a moment: the subscribe count of Game Pass, after all, remains a deep secret. This secret remained as tightly guarded by Microsoft as a rarest Halo Infinite loot box. The overall revenue for Xbox had a growth rate of 10%: the shocker was in the hardware sector, which was down by a whopping 22%.
Now, for the big switch, although Xbox consoles gather dust somewhere (or perhaps have always been available in large quantities at Best Buy, as one bitter gamer said), Microsoft games on PlayStation have never been more alive. Six titles out of the best top 10 best-selling games on PS5 for the last quarter were published by Microsoft. Yes, six. Doom, Forza Horizon 5, Minecraft, and Call of Duty do a bit of cross-platform work for Xbox on Sony territory.
The reactions are total madness; some gamers mock Xbox for counting too much on the PlayStation for sales, with one user saying, “Only content increased thanks to PS 😂.” Conversely, another user named BRay4ever went doomposting with, “Forza is NOW a PlayStation game. Gears will officially be PlayStation next month, and pretty soon, Master Chief will call his home… PlayStation.”
“Now, while the ‘should Xbox just go third-party?’ query remains: Fredex91 put it bluntly, ‘Who tf wouldn’t conclude it’s better for them to go 3rd party then?’ Starving KH4801082364401 snapped back, claiming that it was in fact, ‘brilliant’ to bring your first-party titles to other platforms because you grow Game Pass subscriptions whilst still making sales on the side.”
Let’s not sidetrack the biggie; Microsoft is still hiding the net profit for Xbox. As solutionxero stated, “They could be spending 20.5 billion and netting 0.5B for all u know.” And with thousands of jobs on the chopping block lately (major props to AlienShopkeeper for that grim reminder), one can’t help but wonder if the Xbox strategy is one for survival, rather than domination.
La bataille opposant Golagfla à AntileDimitri au sujet de la concurrence de Phil Spencer avec PlayStation fut assez vive dans les réponses francophones. Spoiler: Selon Golagfla, ce serait “non”.
The punch linchpin in this situation: Xbox is making money in software, especially on competitor platforms, while hardware is having troubles. Game Pass is still a mystery; ex-clusives aren’t so much. If this is a step toward a planned strategy or a last-ditch effort, it warrants mention: Xbox isn’t playing by the old rules anymore.
And hey, if you are one of the PlayStation players out there who are already enjoying Forza and waiting impatiently for the arrival of Halo, congratulations: you are a part of this experiment too. Don’t rub it in too much, though-it’s been a tough quarter for Xbox fans.
