Tech company Microsoft officially announces the active user base size for its online service Xbox Live, reporting there are more than 46 million current users.

Today, Microsoft released the financial results for its third quarter ending March 31, 2016, revealing the number of Xbox Live's monthly active users (MAU) have grown 26% year-over-year to upwards of 46 million. Microsoft, however, didn't publicly reveal any hard data regarding the statistic, but implied that the figure will remain steady, if not climb upward, listing the announcement as a "business highlight" in the report.

Back in January of this year for its Q2 2015 report, Microsoft said MAU for Xbox Live were up 30% percent year-on-year to 48 million. At the time, the amount of users for its online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service had set a brand new record for the multinational tech firm in terms of growth.

For Microsoft as a complete entity, the biggest feature for Q3 FY16 was its commercial cloud annualized revenue run rate going above $10 billion—with revenue coming in at $20.5 billion and net income hitting $3.8 billion—and its earnings from Surface increasing by 61% due to the popularity of the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. The company's most recent financial report also highlighted Windows 10 as being installed on more than 270 million different devices to date.

Of course, absent from Microsoft's Q3 FY16 report is unit sales figures for the Xbox One. Back in October of last year, the company stopped releasing concrete numbers for the total amount of consoles sold, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer explaining in his keynote at the Xbox Spring Showcase  earlier this month that the data is not a “good metric to source” when it comes down to establishing a system's popularity. Instead, the company now relies on monthly active users as being a better indicator of performance.

Not long before Microsoft's newest earnings report arrived today, the firm announced that Xbox 360 production will stop, but the servers will stay online. Although the organization assured fans that Xbox Live services will continue for the last-gen console, it will be interesting to see if the number of monthly active users are affected in the long run.

At any rate, no matter how folks play video games or whatever the platform it is on which they experience them, we can certainly all agree that it's good to see growth in the gaming industry, with Microsoft's recent financial developments being no exception. Perhaps one of these days, tech companies will be able to make enough of a regular profit that concepts such as Xbox One and PS4 cross-platform play will simply be seen as a beneficial feature for everyone, rather than a commercial risk.

Microsoft's next big release for the Xbox One is Gears of War 4, which is set to release on October 11, 2016.

Source: Microsoft