On January 31st, Microsoft (MSFT. NASDAQ) released its financial report for the second quarter of the 2024 fiscal year (October 1st, 2023 to December 31st, 2023).
Data shows that Microsoft's revenue for the quarter was $62 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%. The net profit was $21.9 billion, an increase of 33%, exceeding Wall Street's expectations. As of the close of January 30th Eastern Time, Microsoft closed at $408.59 per share, with a market value of $3.04 trillion, higher than Apple's (AAPL. NASDAQ) $2.9 trillion, ranking first in the world in terms of market value.
This is Microsoft's best quarterly revenue year-on-year growth since 2022. This is partly due to Microsoft's leadership in the field of generative artificial intelligence, which has effectively driven the growth of Microsoft's cloud services. During the quarter, Microsoft's intelligent cloud division's revenue was $25.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20%.
On the other hand, Microsoft's gaming department also plays a crucial role. Among them, Xbox's content and service business revenue increased significantly by 61%, becoming a new engine of Microsoft's growth in the quarter, with a net impact of 55 percentage points from Activision Blizzard.
The financial report specifically pointed out that after Activision Blizzard merged, it brought in over $2 billion in net revenue for the company. Benefiting from this, Microsoft's gaming division also saw a significant increase in revenue, reaching $7.11 billion, surpassing the Windows operating system business's $5.26 billion for the first time and becoming Microsoft's third largest business for the quarter.
Ranked among the top three global gaming giants through acquisitions
This is the first time Microsoft has announced additional revenue from its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
In January 2022, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. After a year and a half long tug of war between major competitors and global antitrust regulatory agencies, this highest amount commercial acquisition in game history ultimately came to an end with Microsoft's complete victory.
The financial report revealed that the total purchase price for this acquisition reached 75.4 billion US dollars. Through this acquisition, Microsoft successfully acquired multiple well-known IPs such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Vanguard, accelerating the company's growth in the gaming industry in mobile games, PCs, and consoles.
In fact, mergers and acquisitions have always been the most important way for Microsoft to expand its gaming business.
At the beginning, Microsoft's gaming department only had 20 people, responsible for small games such as Minesweeper and Solitaire built into Windows, and had no knowledge of the traditional console game market. Until the launch of Xbox in 2001, Microsoft, relying on its strong financial strength, began to search for excellent game studios on the market to make up for its shortcomings in content production.
From Aces Studio, which developed the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, FASA Studio, which developed the Mech Warrior series, to Bungie Studios, the producer of Halo, and Bethesda, the developer of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Over the past 20 years, Microsoft has continuously improved Xbox's gaming lineup through acquisitions and exclusive contracts, gradually establishing a foothold in the global gaming market.
This acquisition has taken Microsoft's market share in the gaming industry to the next level. According to Newzoo, a global gaming market research firm, Microsoft's share in the global gaming market is expected to increase to 10.7%, becoming the third largest gaming giant in the world after Tencent (00700. HK) and Sony.
Mobile games are seen as one of Microsoft's next key areas of focus.
At the performance conference, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella expressed unprecedented excitement about the company's gaming business prospects. It revealed that during the quarter, Microsoft Games had a record high monthly active user count on Xbox, PC, and mobile platforms, with over 200 million monthly active users on mobile platforms alone.
Industry insiders have told Time Finance analysts that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is largely due to its desire to enter the mobile gaming market. King, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, is already one of the world's top mobile game manufacturers. Since its launch in 2012, its Candy Crush Sage has accumulated revenue exceeding $20 billion.
Chinese Games Go Global "Battle"
Microsoft is not the only European and American gaming giant to focus on mobile games. In August 2022, Sony announced the acquisition of German mobile game developer Savege Game Studios. Earlier, Jim Ryan, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, stated that it is expected that by 2025, half of the games released by the company each year will be available on PCs and mobile devices.
According to the December 2023 Global Mobile Game Revenue Ranking released by third-party data monitoring agency Sensor Tower, Monopoly GO!, a billionaire game developed by US developer Scopely, grossed $219 million worldwide and became the top mobile game revenue chart for the first time.
Previously, Honor of Kings, which had topped the list for 22 consecutive months, retreated to second place on the aforementioned list. From a data perspective, the revenue fluctuation of "King of Glory" is not significant. In December 2023, its revenue was 203 million US dollars, which is the same as the same period last year and an increase of 5% compared to November. But I still haven't been able to compete with Monopoly GO!, which has a strong ability to attract money.
The attacking European and American game giants have put more pressure on the overseas expansion of Chinese games, and are competing with giants in a global context.
The "2023 China Game Going Global Research Report" jointly written by the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association and Gamma Data shows that in 2023, the global game market size was 1177.379 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6%. During the same period, the actual sales revenue of Chinese self-developed games in overseas markets was 16.366 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 5.65%. After another decline after 2022, the export of Chinese games is facing greater pressure.
But going out is not only the driving force for Chinese game manufacturers, but also the mission of the Chinese game industry.
On January 29th, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng emphasized at the company's annual meeting that gaming is going global, calling it the company's greatest hope for internationalization. "In the past few years, we have played a certain advantage and established a good reputation in the research and development of mobile games, network operation, and other aspects of large overseas IP game companies. We hope to do a thorough and solid job in software and game development horizontally, rather than competing with other game companies or hardware manufacturers from a deep perspective. More importantly, we need to identify our main business and focus on it, so that we have a better chance of winning." Ma Huateng said.