Microsoft's earnings from the Xbox are in a big decline

The second quarter of Microsoft's fiscal year 2020 was not completely successful in terms of gaming and the Xbox brand.

While Sony and Nintendo have seen successes in console and hardware sales, the Microsoft team has no figures to boast. The financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2020, ending December 31, 2019, said gaming and Xbox brand earnings were down 21% year-over-year. Translated, they earned $ 905 million less than 2018.

As part of that percentage, Xbox hardware posted 43% lower earnings than in the same period in 2018, with gaming earnings down 11%. At Microsoft, they interpret this as an expected occurrence in the run-up to the transition to the next generation of Xboxes, and the only positive in the whole story is their Xbox subscription services.

Specifically, the number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers has doubled in the past three months, which is logical since Game Pass has become available on the PC platform since 2019. Xbox Live, on the other hand, recorded a record number of monthly active users. The exact number, however, was not disclosed.