Xbox Was the Biggest Publisher in December With $465M in Revenue - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 February 2025 / 2,103 Views
Xbox was the biggest publisher in December 2024 with $465 million spent on first-party Xbox games, according to data firm Ampere (via VideoGamesChronicle).
64 percent of consumer spending on Xbox games was on PlayStation consoles, which was driven by the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
Call of Duty HQ, which includes Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, saw 38 million monthly users in November, which helped set up a strong December for the franchise.
Xbox was easily the biggest publisher as second place Electronic Arts generated $366 million in December. This was mainly driven by EA Sports FC 25.
Ampere data also revealed there were 30 million hours played of Fortnite on Christmas Day alone. This compares to 20 million hours spent playing Call of Duty games.
Marvel Rivals had 29 million monthly active users in December and Path of Exile 2 generated $148 million in revenue, according to Ampere estimates.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.
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Sony to Microsoft: "You're welcome." lol
Sony should be thanking MS for filling in their gaps in lineup lmao
Because if MS didn't buy Activision that would've totally stop Call of Duty from being released on PS5.....
This is what I dislike about having discussions with a very distinctive part of the Xbox community.
Everyone agrees on that Microsoft made a smart move acquiring Zenimax and ABK. Noone denies that.
But once you look at ... just different things, objectivity is gone on their behalf.
Then CoD suddenly becomes a filler for PS, although nothing has been different in over 20 years of CoD coming to Playstation.
Nothing has changed.
While Redfall, Starfield, Hellblade, Indiana Jones, Diablo and CoD are now being artistically morphed into "Xbox didn't need any fillers in their (business) line-up."
It's so tiresome.
LOL owned and destroyed by V-rock
God damn, Marvel Rivals has become an immediate juggernaut!
But pretty good though. It's worth noting that this is revenue exclusively from game sales. Doesn't include Game Pass revenue. Just taking the last known figure, 34 million subscribers, multiply that by let's say $15 for the month on average, that's over $500 million every month. So even here, Microsoft made more money from Game Pass subs than actual game sales. So not exactly the "Sony keeping Xbox alive" moment I'm sure some here will view this as lol. Plus, you have to imagine that the majority are subscribed to the $20/month Ultimate tier. So the Microsoft Gaming division (bleh, hate that name) made at least a billion dollars just in software for the month of December.
I have no idea what the future holds for Xbox hardware, but they're sure setting themselves up for long term profitability.
Also, is anyone actually surprised that 64% of purchases were on PlayStation when there's 180+ million PS5/PS4s vs an estimated 90+ million XOne/Series X/S in the wild? If that wasn't the case, then PlayStation got problems lol. Hell, I feel like the percentage split should be higher than 64%.
Wow, 64% from PlayStation!
COD can help do that.
Yeah, outselling the competition more than 2 to 1 will result in percentages like that.
Don't forget PC though... PlayStation being 64% and the rest being split between both PC and Xbox... If someone asked you before this figure if MS would make almost double the software revenue on PS than Xbox+PC combined I don't think many would have said yes. Especially as one of their big titles, Indiana Jones didn't even release on PS yet.
m$ brought the biggest publisher and now is the biggest publisher, you don't say!
Not much of a flex when they spent $70 billion to buy the biggest holiday franchise.
75$ bn for ABK...
"64 percent of consumer spending on Xbox games was on PlayStation consoles"
This feels so weird, even now.
Marvel rivals. Now that's a game i've never heard of.
Isn't Cod published by Activision?
Activision is owned by Xbox.
Yeah, I know but they didn't publish CoD, Activision did. I'm being overly pedantic. ;-)
Microsoft earnings call is today. Should be interesting to see what they say about Xbox.
Once again, I find it more interesting to take a closer look:
In the penultimate October-to-December quarter of 2023 (Q2 at Microsoft, the annual report for Q2 of 2024, which has just ended, will be published: today), ABK contributed a total of
• 2 billion USD
to sales at that time. That's the first figure to keep in mind for the upcoming Q2 report.
That's an average of USD 660 million per month, October to December.
The interesting thing:
The USD 465 million revenue now generated in December '24 would thus be ~30% below the December revenue from 2023.
Which roughly correlates with the estimated 38% less revenue from "CoD in Gamepass", which was also the subject of some recent news.
29 million active users for Marvel Rivals? wtf.... wow thats big. Overwatch is dead lol.
This is why MS are buying publishers. They may be hated among fanboys but they are undoubtedly one of the smarted brands in the world.
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