Lord N said:
Okay, if we're talking about the number they shipped to retail, then that's true, but still..... I think the one thing that everyone is forgetting is that the 360 is not in a division by itself. It's in a division with a bunch of other products and services. That being said, no matter how you try to analyze it, there simply is no way to tell for sure whether the 360 or the other products are losing or making money. There is actually more evidence to support that the 360 is not a "cash cow" considering that MS posted a 31 million dollar loss last quarter. The fact that there is no conclusive evidence to support the 360 being consistently profitable renders this whole thread moot.
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On the contrary. Of course no one will know for sure as none of us work for MS (at least I dont) but the whole point of the OP was to show that based on mathematical evidence, a large majority of the revenue is made by gaming and a large portion of the costs seem to be non-gaming related.
The evidence is that gaming revenue (360 and PC) alone is $5bn which is 77% of the total revenue. We know that the costs of $6.2bn are made up of cost of revenue (48%), R&D (21%) and Others (31%). Therefore based on the reports, we can see a large part of revenue being generated by gaming and alot of the costs are tied to non-gaming. That is why there is a lot of evidence to support that the 360 is profitable. Thats all, no one can pinpoint the exact numbers, but there is alot of implied evidence here.
The costs this quarter are split like this - cost of revenue (60%), R&D (27%) and Others (13%). SO yes, there there is a loss because of increased cost of revenue and R&D, and there is no numbers given for the gaming revenue alone. Admittedly, this 3-month period proves the point less so than the last 9-months but the general evidence is still there.
