Minecraft makes more money on Switch than on Xbox

Nintendo's family friendly image is clearly a great seller for Minecraft

Many fascinating details have come out of the FTC’s lawsuit against Microsoft in its acquisition attempt of Activision Blizzard. We’ve seen PlayStation boss Jim Ryan saying Xbox Game Pass was “value destructive”, Sony’s financial secrets revealed in court after a mistake with a sharpie, and evidence that Xbox wants to put PlayStation out of business.

Yet more interesting news has come out of the case though, with testimony revealing that Minecraft makes significantly more money on Nintendo Switch than it does on any other platform. As reported by Tweaktown, Xbox gaming CFO Tim Stuart said that in fiscal year 2021, Minecraft earned twice as much revenue on PlayStation as it did on Xbox, and four times as much revenue on Switch compared to Microsoft’s own platform.

Stuart also talked up Microsoft’s efforts in making Minecraft multiplatform, no doubt in efforts to illustrate its plans with Call of Duty. The CFO said that cross-platform play is one of the strengths of Minecraft, and that making it exclusive to Xbox would cause Microsoft to lose “a significant revenue stream”.

Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in January 2022, and in the 18 months since has faced heavy scrutiny from competition regulators across the world. It’s had mixed success so far, although many regulators have either unconditionally or conditionally passed the deal.

The UK’s CMA opted to block the deal, citing concerns about the growing cloud gaming market. The competition watchdog said that games like Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft – all of which would become the property of Microsoft should the acquisition go ahead – would give Microsoft an unfair advantage in the streaming space, especially if other game streaming services weren’t able to host them. Microsoft is appealing the decision.

The European Commission went in the opposite direction, approving the acquisition after Microsoft made deals to bring Call of Duty to multiple streaming services and Nintendo consoles. The regulator also said that Microsoft making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox in the future wouldn’t harm competition, since PlayStation is already the market leader and is unlikely to lose its player base if Call of Duty was pulled from Sony’s console.

The FTC’s lawsuit against Microsoft is one of the last remaining challenges to the deal, and after the FTC filed for an injunction to temporarily block the deal from finalizing, a trial was held last week. The judge’s decision is expected to be handed down shortly, and is expected to have massive ramifications for whether or not the deal goes through globally.