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On this day 21 Years Ago

Author

Troy Fields
November 15, 2022

Welcome to Lootbox - a weekly newsletter covering the business side of video games.  

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What's in this Lootbox?

  • 🥂 Xbox Anniversary

  • 💰 Earnings Season

  • âš” God of War

  • 📷 Meme

🥂 Xbox Anniversary

The original Xbox launched on this day in 2001. 21 years ago 🤯.

(also yes that's Dwayne The Rock Johnson during the unveiling)

The Xbox released with 3 launch titles which included Halo: Combat Evolved (here's the launch trailer). 

The original retail price of the Xbox was $299 and the console sold roughly 24 MILLION units over 5 years (prior to the Xbox 360 launch). Roughly $7.2 BILLION.

Important to keep in mind that Microsoft lost roughly $125 per console. They invested in establishing a large installed based and generating additional revenue via Xbox Live, licensing, publishing, etc. 

Speaking of Xbox Live, Microsoft launched their monthly subscription for access to online multiplayer service exactly 1 year after the Xbox launch on Nov 15 2002.

I still vividly remember playing Halo for the first time. I stayed up till 2 am (way past my bedtime) fighting the terrifying "flood" on a projector we borrowed from church to host a superbowl party lol.

💰 Earnings Season

Q3 earnings season has mostly wrapped up and here's some key numbers from some of the largest publicly traded gaming companies.

Q3 Net Bookings:

  • Activision Blizzard: $1.83 billion (-2.6% YoY)

  • EA: $1.9 billion (+4.4% YoY)

  • Take-Two Interactive: $1.5 billion (+53% YoY)

  • Unity: $0.322 billion (+13% YoY

Unity & ironSource also finalized their merger this past week. 

(The image for this section was generated by Midjourney with the prompt "Stock Trader

âš” God of War

God of War Ragnarok launched last week on Nov 9th and has already been nominated for Game of the Year alongside, you guessed it, Elden Ring.

Congrats to all the PS5 owners. RIP to all us Xbox Series X owners.

Oh and here's a funny Rick & Morty promo clip for the launch: click me.

📷 Meme

Thanks for Reading :)

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