Microsoft made their financial results public recently and revealed that they had the best holiday period in the company’s history in terms of revenue and net income.
The holiday season is crucial to a number of industries, especially those trading in entertainment products and that could not be more true than for the video game industry.
Hardware and software sales are usually at their highest during this time as each platform developer and video game publisher looks to get as many sales at it can during this narrow window of opportunity.
The 2011 holiday season saw sales figures rise beyond previous years with games such as Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim all doing rather well for themselves.
In fact, Modern Warfare 3 set a new world record for highest sales figure reported for any entertainment product in history for the first five days following release, beating out Hollywood blockbuster, Avatar, in the process.
Now, one can also confidently say that for one console at least the wheeling and dealing went rather well also. Microsoft’s current generation console, the Xbox 360, shipped a staggering 8.2-million units in the second quarter, which includes the holiday
season.
From a broader perspective, Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division saw its revenue increase by 15 percent during that time as well. The Xbox 360 and Windows Phone products fall under this division which racked in an impressive $4.24-billion in revenue.
Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO (Chief Operation Officer), who apart from being one ‘E’ short of the big time, praised the performance of the 360 and the Kinect in the company’s success.
He stated, “In addition to the continued strength of our commercial business, this holiday season was the strongest in Microsoft history, thanks to good sales execution and compelling products like (the) Xbox 360 and Kinect.”
Looking ahead to the coming months gamers will be anxious to hear about any news relating the as yet unannounced, yet strongly rumoured, Xbox 720, which some sources claim could be unveiled as early as E3 in Los Angeles.
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