By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Microsoft Discussion - XBOX 360 profitability - an analysis

aderoche said:
Squilliam said:
Cost of revenue = $3.5B
Revenue from gaming = $5.8B
Difference = $2.3B

Hmmm

There were 111,830,182 units of retail software sold @ $7.50 each = $840M per year in revenue from royalties at this point.

One could probably attribute an extra $200M est from Fable 2 + Halo 3 + Halo Wars selling a combined 5M in this time. So lets say $1B from 1st/2nd party and royalties.

Live revenues? Well lets see -> Its probably enough to take into account the other side, we have advertising revenue, DLC, Arcade games and subscriptions.

So could they be making $1B per year profit or more?

That revenue figure was for financial year 2008 (full year) wheras the cost of revenue was for the 9months so far this year. It probably still on the low side, but includes the cost of all revenue. I was just grabbing more info and looking to see if I could find something that contradicted my original estimates.

I can't find a 10Q report that breaks down cost of revenue and marketing expenses are practically nerver mentioned.

Of the $6.5 Billion in revenue we have something like

3.5+ billion cost of profit

1 Billion sales and marketing (how much of that is windows retail sales and marketing - those Sienfeld edds where not cheap)

1.3 billion R&D

300 million profit

400? Administrative expenses

We can tell that a large amount of the R&D belongs Mobile but the breakdown of the other expenses is impossible. Given near $5 Billion in revenue, you would have to assign all of the cost of revenue, all of the marketing and the remaining 500 million in R&D purly at the XBOXs feet in order for it to be unprofiable.

In order for the gaming to generate $1 Billion in profit you would need to move at least $500 million cost of revenue to non gaming revenue and assign no more then 500million sales and marketing and $300million R&D. This would allow for $200 Million administrative overhead. It's impossible to say if this is the case, but I can say that if it's less then $1 Billion then it's due to very large R&D and Marketing expenses which are discretionary and not due to manufacturing or waranty expenses.

In any case it makes an entire monkey of the profit/loss lists which have Microsoft losing in the order of 6Billion and having it all attributed to the Xbox and Xbox 360. Because if thats true then the Xbox 1/Xbox 360 would have had to have lost over $200 each per console and thats not taking into account positive revenue sources.

 



Tease.

Around the Network

if microsoft is truly in the plus, the only reason is because they charge for xbox live, take that away it would be a different story, sony dosent have that income, and 360 been out longer, they also make money on a lot of add ons that should have been included in the unit like wifi another 100.00 bucks, recharge units that run 20 .00 bucks per controller, all stuff sony gives out of box, everybody bitches about the price of the ps3 its worth every penny, how much is just a blu ray player, 2-3 hundred, then to have a superb game console, w/ blu ray, 80 gig hd, a dvd player that up samples dvd, they look good, wifi ready, free online play, hdmi, self charging controllers, internet browser, and it goes on for 399.00 is a great price, buy a 360 with all these features and a blu ray player and you will spend around 800 .00 bucks plus



EaglesEye379, I can solve the mystery of what "Medioroom" is as this is used in my BT Vision box. The BT Vision box is a PVR running IPTV, pretty neat actually.

Looking forward to Silverlight 3 and all the potential that has for making more money assuming it sits in the EDD with the advances in IPTV and PVR technology on a per person content. This is very exciting, heck it may even make its way into the Xbox.

 



W.L.B.B. Member, Portsmouth Branch.

(Welsh(Folk) Living Beyond Borders)

Winner of the 2010 VGC Holiday sales prediction thread with an Average 1.6% accuracy rating. I am indeed awesome.

Kinect as seen by PS3 owners ...if you can pick at it   ...post it ... Did I mention the 360 was black and Shinny? Keeping Sigs obscure since 2007, Passed by the Sig police 5July10.
lhill81 said:
if microsoft is truly in the plus, the only reason is because they charge for xbox live, take that away it would be a different story, sony dosent have that income, and 360 been out longer, they also make money on a lot of add ons that should have been included in the unit like wifi another 100.00 bucks, recharge units that run 20 .00 bucks per controller, all stuff sony gives out of box, everybody bitches about the price of the ps3 its worth every penny, how much is just a blu ray player, 2-3 hundred, then to have a superb game console, w/ blu ray, 80 gig hd, a dvd player that up samples dvd, they look good, wifi ready, free online play, hdmi, self charging controllers, internet browser, and it goes on for 399.00 is a great price, buy a 360 with all these features and a blu ray player and you will spend around 800 .00 bucks plus

 

Sony does have however income from two profitable platforms, the psp and the ps2. Amazingly enough, that's not enough to cover the losses generated by the ps3..





Current-gen game collection uploaded on the profile, full of win and good games; also most of my PC games. Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts 1982-2008 (Requiescat In Pace).

Bitmap Frogs said:
lhill81 said:
if microsoft is truly in the plus, the only reason is because they charge for xbox live, take that away it would be a different story, sony dosent have that income, and 360 been out longer, they also make money on a lot of add ons that should have been included in the unit like wifi another 100.00 bucks, recharge units that run 20 .00 bucks per controller, all stuff sony gives out of box, everybody bitches about the price of the ps3 its worth every penny, how much is just a blu ray player, 2-3 hundred, then to have a superb game console, w/ blu ray, 80 gig hd, a dvd player that up samples dvd, they look good, wifi ready, free online play, hdmi, self charging controllers, internet browser, and it goes on for 399.00 is a great price, buy a 360 with all these features and a blu ray player and you will spend around 800 .00 bucks plus

 

Sony does have however income from two profitable platforms, the psp and the ps2. Amazingly enough, that's not enough to cover the losses generated by the ps3..

 

The PS3 destroyed all the profits they made with the PS2 and now getting into some of those PS1 profits... it could end up sending SCE back to square one.



MaxwellGT2000 - "Does the amount of times you beat it count towards how hardcore you are?"

Wii Friend Code - 5882 9717 7391 0918 (PM me if you add me), PSN - MaxwellGT2000, XBL - BlkKniteCecil, MaxwellGT2000

Around the Network
MaxwellGT2000 said:
Bitmap Frogs said:
lhill81 said:
if microsoft is truly in the plus, the only reason is because they charge for xbox live, take that away it would be a different story, sony dosent have that income, and 360 been out longer, they also make money on a lot of add ons that should have been included in the unit like wifi another 100.00 bucks, recharge units that run 20 .00 bucks per controller, all stuff sony gives out of box, everybody bitches about the price of the ps3 its worth every penny, how much is just a blu ray player, 2-3 hundred, then to have a superb game console, w/ blu ray, 80 gig hd, a dvd player that up samples dvd, they look good, wifi ready, free online play, hdmi, self charging controllers, internet browser, and it goes on for 399.00 is a great price, buy a 360 with all these features and a blu ray player and you will spend around 800 .00 bucks plus

 

Sony does have however income from two profitable platforms, the psp and the ps2. Amazingly enough, that's not enough to cover the losses generated by the ps3..

 

The PS3 destroyed all the profits they made with the PS2 and now getting into some of those PS1 profits... it could end up sending SCE back to square one.

you mean negotiating with square for the release of an exclusive title which will help shape the future of the console marketplace?

 



Tease.

EaglesEye379 said:
Im really not sure what Lord N and Slimebeast want me to say.

How about:

360 / PC made $3.5bn in revenue. This is out of $6.5bn. That means Zune + others made $3bn.

360 / PC cost $6bn. This is out of $6.2bn. That means it only costs $0.2bn to make Zune + others.

So 360 / PC suxors. They lost MS a total of $2.5bn.

Does that sound more reasonable then?


I would like to hear what you two think to make up that $6.5bn revenue and $6.2bn costs.


@Slimebeast, how could you believe Zune + others made $3bn in revenue?

That's a good point. Zune revenue must be very lil, a few hundred million $. But maybe those other things that aren't gaming make revenue of a couple $billions? I have no idea.

This all is making me confused. $5 billion in 9 months from gaming just sounded unrealisticly high, that's all I know (especially as Sony never had higher revenue than that, and also one must ask how come the profits of EDD division is always so damn low?). But I don't know what to think.

 



Slimebeast said:
EaglesEye379 said:
Im really not sure what Lord N and Slimebeast want me to say.

How about:

360 / PC made $3.5bn in revenue. This is out of $6.5bn. That means Zune + others made $3bn.

360 / PC cost $6bn. This is out of $6.2bn. That means it only costs $0.2bn to make Zune + others.

So 360 / PC suxors. They lost MS a total of $2.5bn.

Does that sound more reasonable then?


I would like to hear what you two think to make up that $6.5bn revenue and $6.2bn costs.


@Slimebeast, how could you believe Zune + others made $3bn in revenue?

That's a good point. Zune revenue must be very lil, a few hundred million $. But maybe those other things that aren't gaming make revenue of a couple $billions? I have no idea.

This all is making me confused. $5 billion in 9 months from gaming just sounded unrealisticly high, that's all I know (especially as Sony never had higher revenue than that, and also one must ask how come the profits of EDD division is always so damn low?). But I don't know what to think.

 

 

 Wasnt Sony's peak years with the PS2 at an average price below $200.  The 9 months being talked about consists of about 1/2 the time before 360's were reduced in price and from what we have heard from analyst the average price of 360 consoles has been $290 in the US.  Also need to add in the revenue from Xbox Live which the PS2 never had anything like.   Xbox Live is like a 10 million selling game every year and increasing. Then throw in marketplace sales.



Its libraries that sell systems not a single game.

Wow...it's amazing that people are going to argue with financial reports, with their opinions. This shows the deep level of how some fanboys can make amazingly ignorant statements...the data speaks for itself, with numbers and percentages for anybody with a basic HS education to do the math. We can't know all the details, but base on a reasonable extrapolation of what we DO know and what is reported in the latest 10-Q...it would seem that the 360 is making money...how much...we can't really say, but based on what we have seen, this fiscal year will be another profitable one for EDD, since I don't see anything to suggest a $299 million loss in this current qtr.



"...You can't kill ideas with a sword, and you can't sink belief structures with a broadside. You defeat them by making them change..."

- From By Schism Rent Asunder

MaxwellGT2000 said:
Bitmap Frogs said:
lhill81 said:
if microsoft is truly in the plus, the only reason is because they charge for xbox live, take that away it would be a different story, sony dosent have that income, and 360 been out longer, they also make money on a lot of add ons that should have been included in the unit like wifi another 100.00 bucks, recharge units that run 20 .00 bucks per controller, all stuff sony gives out of box, everybody bitches about the price of the ps3 its worth every penny, how much is just a blu ray player, 2-3 hundred, then to have a superb game console, w/ blu ray, 80 gig hd, a dvd player that up samples dvd, they look good, wifi ready, free online play, hdmi, self charging controllers, internet browser, and it goes on for 399.00 is a great price, buy a 360 with all these features and a blu ray player and you will spend around 800 .00 bucks plus

 

Sony does have however income from two profitable platforms, the psp and the ps2. Amazingly enough, that's not enough to cover the losses generated by the ps3..

 

The PS3 destroyed all the profits they made with the PS2 and now getting into some of those PS1 profits... it could end up sending SCE back to square one.

Why is it so difficult, after so many examples in a lot of industries and a lot of history lessons, for companies not to fall into the trap that is overestimating the power of a brand, no matter how successful it is?..This should be basic requirement for a successful business in the medium and long terms.