Any predictions on Microsoft's quarterly results being released tomorrow?

[rocketpig]

TheBigFatJ said:

rocketpig said:

TheBigFatJ said:
Whatever their profit is, it will be a paper-only profit. That is, their expenses will exceed their revenue, but they will hide that fact with money set aside and charged to their previous fiscal year.

True, but at least it's starting to prove that their business model is viable over the longterm.

Just cut the RRoD crap next gen.

If your strategy requires you to release a system with no hitches in order to generate a profit, you are setting yourself up for failure. MS isn't exactly known for reliability, quality or consistency, so they should probably pay special attention to those areas rather than undermanning those areas and shipping in a hurry despite known problems.

MS may feel justified sweeping the repair cost under the rug this time around. Perhaps next time there will be something similar to sweep under the rug. It's not exactly a surprise that MS has had 6 or 7 consecutive years with ~$1 billion in losses average per year. Why should they sweep it under the run and come out bragging about a profit they made just for this fiscal year?

Well, there's a difference between "hitches" and "30% failure rate". One can be handled while maintaining profitability. The other cannot.

Also remember that MS is very new to the hardware side of things. It's not shocking that they have screwed up a fair amount over the past 7 years. Expect that to slow as their Zune/Xbox divisions get a lot more experience designing hardware that doesn't crap out in a year.

And can we stop talking about the original Xbox's losses now? Back in 2001, MS fully admitted that they never expected to turn a profit on that machine. That money was forfeit before MS even spent it. They fully expected what they got (well, they probably didn't expect the Nvidia lawsuit).