| Lord N said:
All you're doing here is proving my original point, which is that you can't tie profits or losses to any specific product in the E&D division. Look, for all of the oversimplifying you've done, what you've got here is a whole lot of nothing. Not only is there the above, but there's the fact that you keep using scant and circumstantial evidence such as revenue to try to make your case. You stated yourself that the E&D division's profits were $299 million, which means that that in order for the 360 to have been profitable, those other products and services would have had to lose greater than 1.5 times as much money as the Xbox 360 did, but in less than 1/4 the time. Suffice to say that this is a little far-fetched, and that's being nice. Like it or not, you can't prove which products lost or made money(revenue doesn't count) with any degree of certainty, so you don't have any conclusive evidence to make your point, so you fail on that alone.
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I dont know what maths you are pulling out - the other products and services costed about half of 360 / PC and lost about $700m. I already said my educated guess is $4bn costs on gaming and $2.2bn on non-gaming from the PUBLISHED figure of $6.2bn in costs. The 360 and PC gaming is profitable by more than $300m (I say $1bn profit) but unfortunately other activity and products have caused it to go down to $300m.
There is a difference between 'scant and circumstantial evidence' and published revenue figures and commentary. There is also a difference between 'Oh there is no exact breakdown of exact figures so anything anyone says is wrong' and actually looking at the figures / commentary in the reports and making educated deductions based on mathematics and business knowledge. I have done all my thinking based on actual numbers and commentary and if that is not good enough for you, then sorry I cant make you happy because it looks like only bad news for MS will. If you want to challenge my 'educated guess', then Id be happy to hear your breakdown of $6.5bn revenue and $6.2bn costs.
On a further note I looked at Zune sales and they are horrid. It only barely reached 2m last year so Im even wondering whether it could help make up the $1.5bn in non-gaming revenue. Windows mobile is getting kicked by iPhone, Surface isnt even on the market and Mac / PC apps and hardware are down (its in the reports). Hmm.. the $5bn is starting to look conservative now.
