According to Microsoft’s first quarter 2022 earnings report, Xbox hardware sales increased significantly, with Game Pass stable growth.

Since the debut of the new-generation Xbox Series X/S, the Xbox appears to have maintained its upward trend, with significant sales increases.

The demand for Xbox’s game library subscription service Xbox Game Pass also remained strong. Microsoft recorded a two percent revenue increase in Xbox content and services “with the growth in Xbox Game Pass subscriptions and first-party titles offset by declines from third-part titles”.

Microsoft’s first-quarter financial report for 2022 was revealed Tuesday. Microsoft’s gaming revenue climbed by 16 percent overall. Xbox hardware revenue increased by 166 percent this quarter, mainly to “strong demand” for the Xbox Series X and S consoles, according to the report.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, spoke on an earnings call, stating that monetization and engagement for Xbox set records during this period. The release of key titles like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 and Xbox Cloud Gaming should help to bolster this growth.

We’ll likely see more substantial growth to Game Pass in the near future when two highly anticipated sequels, Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5, make their way onto the service on the same day as their official releases.

Xbox Game Pass grew exponentially with the release of the Xbox Series X and S, giving users easy access to a library of previous Xbox titles. Over the past 12 months, Microsoft has been busy acquiring studios for Xbox, including Bethesda and Arkane Studios. With these acquisitions, we’ve seen more popular games make their way to the Game Pass service, and it doesn’t seem like it will be slowing down anytime soon.

Halo fans have had a pretty exciting day with 343 Industries showcasing the first look at campaign gameplay for Halo: Infinite since the original gameplay reveal back in July 2020. It was all good news, as the studio also confirmed that servers for all Xbox 360 Halo titles would be shutting down in the coming months.

This isn’t entirely new information, as 343 originally announced this online service shutdown on Halo Waypoint last December, but there has been a slight change in dates as we approach the launch of Infinite.

In that initial post, 343 noted that month-over-month usage of legacy Xbox 360 games were continuously decreasing, leading to a “greater imbalance between the time and work required to maintain vs. the net impact to the overall Halo community.” As a result, the team announced its plan to sunset legacy online services for 360 titles in December 2021, although that date has now been pushed to Jan. 13, 2022. Phase one and two of this multi-phase approach to sunsetting older servers have already been completed, as 343 moved a lot of data from the 360 games over to supporting The Master Chief Collection in Fall 2019 and a notification of this plan, along with halting digital sales for Halo 360 titles took place last December.

News Summary:

• According to Microsoft’s first quarter 2022 earnings report, Xbox hardware sales increased significantly, with Game Pass stable growth.
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