Nintendo Switch's Minecraft rakes in more revenue than its Xbox and Playstation versions

Question: What about Nintendo?

Stuart: Roughly twice as big as PlayStation. 4x as big as Xbox.

Question: If you compare the net revenue to the gross margin, how profitable is Minecraft?

Stuart: Minecraft is one of the most profitable, if not the most profitable first-party game. Minecraft's success is hardly a shocker, but what's truly astounding is the astounding revenue difference it enjoys on the Nintendo Switch compared to the Xbox. Created by Mojang Studios, Minecraft has cemented its place as the all-time best-selling video game, boasting an incredible 238 million copies sold and a whopping 140 million monthly active players.

Microsoft acquired the valuable franchise for $2.5 billion back in 2014, though it has still maintained its cross-platform play, a fact Stuart emphasized. We were one of the first to allow cross-platform play in Minecraft. We allowed entitlements to roam, logins to roam, which allows gamers to roam across multiple platforms.

We operate in the gaming market. Gaming market has many platforms, many devices, many users, if the gaming market is growing it's good for us. Some of the decisions we made we believe it is good for us but it is also good for the industry. So a rising tide raises all boats.

The strength of a game like Minecraft comes from its cross-platform play. You'd lose a significant revenue stream if you didn't keep supporting that. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online.

With over 125 million units shipped worldwide, the Nintendo Switch stands as the third-best-selling game console ever. It's no wonder that Minecraft generates four times the revenue of Xbox's own game. This fact supports the notion the multi-trillion-dollar company would greatly benefit from maintaining cross-platform compatibility for Call of Duty if the acquisition of Activision Blizzard gets the green light from the court.

Earlier this year, Microsoft and Nintendo inked a deal to bring the iconic Call of Duty franchise to the Nintendo platform for a solid ten years. While the Switch is currently without a Call of Duty title, Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, admits it was "bad judgment" on his part.

However, Kotick has stated that even if the Activision deal doesn't work out, he remains open to bringing the first-person shooter game to Nintendo's next console.

Speaking of Call of Duty, the FTC hearings finally wrapped up this week, and boy, did they end with a bang! Amidst all the courtroom drama, the judge accidentally let slip the highly anticipated release date of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, slated for November.