How much does Microsoft spend for third party exclusives?

[Reasonable]

OoSnap said:

It is said that Microsoft is now making a profit with the 360, but does their financial reports take into account their massive spending for third party game exclusives and timed exclusives? How much does Microsoft spend for third party exclusives?

Who knows?  Presumerably a fair bit.  It does of course have to be in their financial reports - but probably the better question is where?

MS don't necessarily have to surface this spending visibly against entertainment if they want to make the profits from that area look as good as possible - they could probably stick it under promotional activity or vendor funded activity.  Alternatively it might be reported as a cost for the entertainment division and even with that cost they are profitable.

But unless MS wants to have a nasty audit (which they don't of course) it will be reported somewhere.