Xbox One Console Shipments And First Party Game Sales Are Up This Year

Microsoft has announced its earnings for the last quarter ended June 30, 2015 and Xbox One shipments and first party games sales are up this year.

From the last quarter, Microsoft managed to ship collectively 1.4 million Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles. This is an increase of 30 percent compared to the same quarter from 2014. They only shipped 1.1 million consoles in the prior year.

In the report, most of the success is thanks to Microsoft dropping the Kinect from the Xbox One. Prior to E3 2014, the Kinect was still bundled with every console and cost $500. Now things are cheaper without Kinect as it’s now $350.

Microsoft should be happy with the performance for its Xbox division as a whole. The division’s revenue grew by 27 percent and this is all thanks to the sale of consoles, Xbox Live transactions and first-party games.

Xbox Live transactions increased to a huge $205 million. This is up a whopping 58 percent increasefrom 2014. First party games earned $63 million and this is up a huge 62 percent compared to the previous year. Microsoft notes Minecraft as the main factor to the big increase.

Things are looking pretty good for Microsoft so far in 2015 judging by these results. The company is sure to do more big business later this year when Halo 5: Guardians comes out.