Microsoft’s latest financial report was mostly uneventful for games, but it did yield a startling stat shared by CEO Satya Nadella: Nearly half of people who bought a xbox s series console were never Xbox gamers before.
“As we look ahead to the holidays, we offer the best value in gaming with Game Pass and Xbox Series S,” Nadella says of the company’s latest financials. webcast (opens in a new tab). “Nearly half of S Series buyers are new to our ecosystem.”
Interestingly, Nadella’s holistic closing comment also aligned quite well with the company’s approach to the Series S: “In a world facing ever-increasing headwinds, digital is the last tailwind.”
Nadella didn’t quantify how many Series S owners “almost half” means, but the number is still significant, even if it’s a bit vague.
Attracting new Xbox users was always central to the Series S. For starters, committed Nintendo or PlayStation gamers won’t have to shell out $500 to play the few exclusive games they may have been eyeing from afar. The console retails for $299 and goes on sale regularly (get the best Xbox Series S Deals here), and you can even get it with two years of Game Pass Ultimate for $24.99 per month.
Similarly, people who don’t have a decent gaming PC can play hundreds of games on Game Pass, many of them cross-platform, not to mention first-party Xbox games that hit the service on day one, for cheap. Finally, completely new gamers can dive into the hobby without too much of an investment while gaining instant access to a huge and varied library.
The digital-only Xbox Series S was always pitched as a cheap, albeit stripped-down way to get into the new generation of consoles, the easiest way for anyone to access the Game Pass library (outside of the cloud). or specific televisions), and the cheapest way to play some Xbox-specific games. With nearly half of Series S owners apparently using the console to get into Xbox for the first time, this argument is clearly working for a lot of people.
the The Series S even outsold the PS5 in Japan for the first time in May, which is especially noteworthy given how severely the Xbox brand has struggled in Nintendo and Sony territory.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently said he doesn’t think Microsoft can avoid raising the price of consoles or Game Pass forever.
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