Microsoft has revealed that they have 20 video game franchises that are worth $ 1 billion and above.
As reported by Tweaktown, they made this announcement in their latest financial report. This is what that report said:
“We are bringing great games to more people on more devices. With our acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, which closed October 2023, we’ve added hundreds of millions of players to our ecosystem.
We now have 20 franchises that have generated over $1 billion in lifetime revenue–from Candy Crush, Diablo, and Halo, to Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, and Gears of War.”
Tweaktown also pointed out that Microsoft President Satya Nadella announced in October 2023 that they had 13 such franchises, and that was after they just finished acquiring Activision Blizzard King. Nadella named the same games in 2023 that were named in this 2024 financial report.
Tweaktown came up with their own list, and only got up to 17 game franchises. Aside from those mentioned above, they identified these games:
- Minecraft
- Forza
- Age of Empires
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Call of Duty
- Overwatch
- Guitar Hero
- Tony Hawk
- Crash Bandicoot
- Fallout
- Doom
The three unidentified games may be more mundane than we think. After all, King actually has more franchises than Candy Crush Saga, including Bubble Witch Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, and Pet Rescue Saga.
But it is absolutely possible that some of those other $ 1 billion games are newer Microsoft games that were recently released. We can probably safely rule out Redfall and Hi-Fi Rush from this list, but that still opens up speculation on the rest.
And we’ll go ahead and say it; one of these games is most likely Starfield. Microsoft has not publicly shared a figure, not even an estimate, of how much they believe the game made in terms of revenue or profit. That’s left it to fans to speculate, and console warriors to squabble over its impact and possible success.
But Microsoft and other sources did corroborate that it was a clear financial success. It had over 230,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, and Phil Spencer revealed it was Xbox’s most played game of this generation at one million concurrent players. As of December 20, 2023, Bethesda revealed that they had earned 13 million players.
Let’s get serious about this. Even if Starfield received mixed critical reception between fans and video game press, it’s clear that a lot of people bought and played this game. It’s rather indicting of critics who say that they think Bethesda has dropped off, that they revealed they played over 50 hours of Starfield to get to that conclusion.
Some fans may say that this might be the beginning of the end for Bethesda, but that premise is faulty too. Bethesda is notorious for releasing buggy, in many ways half realized games. And some fans will argue that dates back to Fallout 4, and some even earlier.
But it wasn’t that long ago that Fallout 76 launched into a total disaster. And even with so many loud gamers proclaiming they would never buy a Bethesda game again; we know that many gamers came for Starfield.
There are few other games that could fit this description too, especially since Microsoft was compelled to delay a lot of titles they already revealed in the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase. We certainly wonder if Microsoft will ever officially reveal these games. Surely, Phil, Matt, and Sarah see that these are the things Xbox gamers want to know and celebrate.
