Tag Archives: msft
Xbox One, ‘Watch Dogs’ drive June video game sales growth
Microsoft’s (MSFT) lower-priced Xbox One video game console and Ubisoft’s conspiracy-themed action-adventure game “Watch Dogs” helped push U.S. retail video game sales to their fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in June. Domestic retail sales of new game hardware, software and accessories rose 24% to $736.4 million last month, research firm NPD Group reported late Thursday. Game hardware sales alone jumped 106% from the same month last year to $292.7 million. Strong sales of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox One and Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 4 living-room consoles helped to offset declines in portable game hardware in June, NPD analyst Liam Callahan said in a statement. “Combined sales of Xbox One and PS4 are over 80% higher than the combined totals for Xbox 360 and PS3 — an indication of the strength of the start of this new console generation,” Callahan said. Microsoft said Wednesday that U.S. sales of its Xbox One console more than…
Microsoft investors cheer bigger-than-forecast job cuts
A flurry of pink slips put Microsoft (MSFT) in the green on Wall Street Thursday as investors signaled their approval of the software giant’s record number of job cuts. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company will cut as many as 18,000 jobs this year as it looks to digest its acquisition of Nokia’s (NOK) mobile phone unit and make the company leaner overall. It was Microsoft’s biggest employee reduction ever, topping the 5,800 jobs Microsoft cut in 2009. The 2009 cuts represented about 5% of the workforce at the time. This year’s cuts amount to 14% of the company’s 127,000 workers as of June 5. Microsoft rose as much as 3.6% to 45.70, its highest level since the dot-com collapse of March 2000, in the stock market today. But in early afternoon trading Thursday, Microsoft had retreated to just below 45, a gain of 1.9%. Of the total job…