Hot on the heels of Sony, Microsoft have also released some statistics today in the form of their Q3 earnings report. The report appears to suggest that sales of it's current generation of consoles are slowing down, paving the way for a refresh sometime in the future. (XBOX Two anyone?) XBOX sales have fallen by 33% year-on-year which the company has attributed to people simply buying less and less consoles.
Despite that little bit of bad news, it isn't all doom and gloom for Microsoft with overall game revenues increasing 5% year-on-year thanks to strong sales from third-party software and subscriptions. In addition, the amount of monthly active users of XBOX Live was up 7% from last year at 63 million. In all, the games division raised $2.36 billion in revenue for the quarter, an increase of $112 million year-on-year. Impressive stuff.
The falling sales in XBOX consoles comes as the XBOX One turns six years old, suggesting that the console is simply hitting it's saturation point in the market. It could lead to Microsoft potentially expanding on it's thoughts regarding a new next-gen console at the upcoming E3 event. It seems though that Sony has started the console race after PlayStation 4 architect Mark Cerny spoke about the console, explaining Sony's plans for the next generation of gaming systems.
