Microsoft’s latest financial results reveal that Xbox console sales are down a calamitous 29% over Christmas, with Call Of Duty boosting Game Pass by only a fraction. Just yesterday, Microsoft was revealed to be the biggest video game publisher in the world, primarily – indeed, almost solely – thanks to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6, which was the most successful entry in the series so far. You would’ve thought, and certainly it was Microsoft’s fervent hope, that the fact that Black Ops 6 was available on Game Pass from day one, for no additional cost, would’ve given a major boost to the service.

But just as Starfield had little to no affect on Game Pass numbers neither did Black Ops 6, with Microsoft’s results showing an increase of just 2%. At the same time hardware sales fell by 29% and overall gaming revenue was down 7%, over the vital October to December quarter of last year. Microsoft’s gaming division – which now includes Activision Blizzard and Bethesda – made $6.6 billion (£5.3bn) in revenue during the last three months, which was down $530 million (£426m) on the same time last year.

That’s pretty shocking considering 2023’s Call Of Duty was the considerably less popular Modern Warfare 3 but the underlying problem is that console sales continue to freefall and without that Microsoft’s games business is little more than just Activision with a new hat on. Microsoft boss Satya Nadella tried to make the best of the results in the company’s earnings call, with some very carefully cherry-picked stats, such as PC Game Pass subscriptions being up 30%.

Clearly that had little affect on the overall Game Pass results, with the recent subscription price rises likely meaning that console numbers decreased compared to 2023 – although it’s impossible to know for sure as Microsoft still refuses to provide figures for subscriber numbers or console sales, which tells its own story. However, according to analyst group Ampere, PC subscriptions account for no more than 16% of the total.

Nadella also revealed that four million people have played Indiana Jones And The Great Circle since its release in December. That figure includes Game Pass players and doesn’t indicate how many bought it separately – although the game’s sales will no doubt spike later in the year, when it’s released on PlayStation 5. He also stated that Xbox Cloud Gaming saw a record 140 million hours streamed during the quarter, insisting that, ’We are focused on improving the profitability of the business, in order to position it for long-term growth, driven by higher-margin content and platform services.’.

Nadella didn’t address any of the negative sales results or give any indication of what was going to be done about falling console sales and their impact on Game Pass subscriptions. Although it’s worth noting that the weak console sales results from 2023 are what precipitated the current attempts to embrace multiformat publishing. Given how little affect the PC increase had on the overall Game Pass results it suggests that the release of Black Ops 6 had even less influence on Game Pass subscribers than it first seems, which is disastrous news for Microsoft.

Call Of Duty was their last card to play, in terms of individual titles that would drastically increase interest in Game Pass, and while they are hoping that its influence will become more obvious in subsequent months there’s certainly no sign of it at the moment. The problem, as we outlined in a recent article, is that the majority of Game Pass subscribers are Xbox console owners and with hardware sales bottoming out there is very little capacity for future growth.

Indeed, subscriber numbers are likely to fall if current Xbox owners abandon the console or switch to the PlayStation 6 in the next generation. Microsoft will no doubt focus more on PC in the future but their emphasis on streaming depends on Wi-Fi infrastructure over which they have no control, making it very difficult to guess when it might become a more mainstream concern. Although the Xbox console business has declined two generations in a row, with the Xbox Series X/S plateauing even more quickly than the Xbox One, Microsoft has no option but to continue to support its hardware business or it will lose the majority of its current Game Pass subscribers.

Xbox has already announced a next gen console, amidst constant hints at a portable device, but there’s still no clear idea when they’ll be released or, more importantly, why Microsoft thinks they will succeed where its last two consoles have failed. Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.