It is the final quarter report for Fiscal Year 2023 for Microsoft and while IT DOES NOT INCLUDE the closure of the Activision Blizzard acquisition, business must go on and this is how the Redmond tech giant dealt business in the last part month and fiscal year in general.

Microsoft reported $56.2 billion in revenue and a net income of $20.1 billion during Q4 which respectively are an increase of 8% and 20% compared to last year. 

For the whole fiscal year 2023, Revenue was $211.9 billion and increased 7% with   Operating income was $88.5 billion and increased 6%.

Windows closed the quarter struggling and pretty much the entire fiscal 2023 hasn’t been great for its Windows including OEM segment (PC builds preinstalled with Windows)  dropped significantly for the entire fiscal year, or four quarters in a row. In Q4, that means Windows OEM revenue fell by 12 percent, which Microsoft says was “primarily driven by the PC market.”

Microsoft’s cloud businesses are the other positive of the report and leading the numbers with Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers have grown to 67 million, up from the 65.4 million reported in the previous quarter and this is the trimestre that count the new $1.99/month Microsoft 365 Basic subscription earlier this year, which is clearly having some impact on numbers.

Office commercial products and cloud services revenue also grew by 12% year over year thanks to Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 15%.

Also, Microsoft’s intelligent cloud business saw revenue of $24 billion this quarter, up 15% with Azure and other cloud services revenue growing by 26% this quarter, driven by what Microsoft describes as strong demand for its consumption-based services.

Xbox on the other hand, while it has struggled during the whole fiscal year, could actually maintain positive with Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Xbox Game Pass, is up 5% and gaming revenue up to 1%.

Xbox hardware revenue has dropped 13% in the very Q4 quarter and with this, some observers believe this is an effect of Microsoft's long-term strategy and balancing the costs of hardware against content and cloud potential.

This is yet another report that does not include a formal update on Xbox Game Pass subscribers, being last reported on January and by that time, it reached 25 million subscribers.

It is safe to say that number will improve along with the closure of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

I would like to notice that the earning reports did not include anything about the hardware and Surface without limiting saying that it was includet to some write-off of $800 million and was include along with employee severance expenses and costs related to lease consolidation activities which, doesn't sound good.