Microsoft Is ‘Encouraged’ by Gaming Progress with 500M MAUs; Fallout Playtime Jumped 5x on Game Pass After the Show

During Microsoft's Q4 2024 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella talked quite a bit about gaming. He shared (quotes via Fool.com) a new milestone for monthly active users (MAUs) for games owned by Microsoft.

We now have over 500 million monthly active users across platforms and devices, and our content pipeline has never been stronger. We previewed a record 30 new titles at our showcase this quarter. 18 of them, such as Call of Duty, Black Ops 6 will be available on Game Pass. Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now stream games directly on devices they already have, including as of last month, Amazon Fire TV.

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Of course, a sizable portion of that userbase comes from Activision Blizzard's prized IPs, like Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, et cetera. However, another franchise that earned a nod from the Microsoft CEO is Fallout, which received a massive boost after the release of the first season of the Amazon Prime Video show.

Finally, we are bringing our IP to new audiences. Fallout, for example, made its debut as a TV show on Amazon Prime this quarter. It was the second most watched title on the platform ever and hours played on Game Pass for the Fallout franchise increased nearly 5x quarter over quarter.

That's not to say everything is peachy. While the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition continues to pay dividends (Xbox content and services are up 61% year-over-year, but 58% of that increase is due to ABK), hardware sales continue to decline, with console hardware revenue down 42%.

In the Q&A portion of the earnings call, investors asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood about the outlook for gaming. Here's what they had to say:

Satya Nadella: Our investment in gaming fundamentally was to have the right portfolio of both what we love about gaming and always have loved about gaming, which is Xbox, and the content for the console and expand from there so that we have