XBOX : how much profit did XBOX division make in last finacial year???

[Dodece]

I find it somewhat obscene that nobody is even bothered to use a similar product in an effort to gauge what the 360s production to price parity should be. You could use the PS3 for this. Sony before the financial crisis was expecting to reach production price parity in the first quarter of next year at the latest.

Sony was going to do this with a loss leading model, after stripping the price back by thirty three percent within the first year. Even being overly generous and saying the removal of the emotion chip saved them a hundred dollars. They thought they could reach this goal in a stable financial situation in roughly two years.

Microsoft beats Sony on all of the curves. Their low end model has seen a hundred dollar retail price reduction. Note I was generous with the hundred dollar savings on the removal of the emotion engine from the PS3. So basically Microsoft has to be at the least matching Sony's own estimations, and doing so with a year longer extension into the life cycle after bringing to market seven million more consoles.

So I leave you with a conundrum either Sony were lying through their teeth about reaching price production parity in which case they are guilty of defrauding their investors, or Microsoft has managed to match the guidance that Sony provided in a more protracted period of time. Even if you argue a leveling off of savings, and here is the real nut buster. Microsoft uses the more standardized hardware in their console. They should actually reduce costs at a greater rate. They do have greater bargaining power, because more manufacturing facilities can accommodate the requirements. Basically more companies can assemble a 360 mother board then can build a PS3 board. Microsoft has actually migrated production from one supplier to another with little disruption.

Basically the argument that in some way the 360 is bleeding money due to production costs is a fabrication. Created by those that are intimidated, and they should be intimidated. Microsoft learned a lot of valuable lessons from their first console. This time they brought hardware to the market that could seriously leverage production costs downward, and was basically the premise of interchangeability. This time if they lost a manufacturer they could easily replace them with one that could meet their demands. Sony on the other hand really screwed up. They were behind on production for the first year of their production run. Dwell on that its, because Sony was too dependent on newer technologies with fewer suppliers.

Anyway its all bullshit plain and simple. I challenge any other poster to actually run a compelling analysis of the situation, and reach a vastly different conclusion. I am not interested in what you want, or what your gut tells you. If that is the height of your reasoning your not much better then lambs to the slaughter. Give me a rational assessment not any more of this paper thin propaganda. Microsoft's greatest losses come from investments that offer no return. Such as advertising, research and development, and strategic partnerships. Not from the console end of the division.