I believe it says/shows that Microsoft shipped 4.3 million units this quarter (versus 4.4 in 2006's Q4), but shipped 6.1m for the past 6 months (vs 5.4 for 6months in 2006).
So Q4 was down 100,000, but Q3-4 was up 700,000.
Decreased marketing expenses, as far as I could say would probably have to do with the fact that MS didn't have to over-market a top-tier game like Gears of War this quarter unlike '06.
This quarter, Halo3 wise, represents all of the post-launch shipping. Although no numbers exist, I'd assume that Microsoft shipped atleast half of the current 8 million H3 copies in the previous quarter, so this quarter remained about the same.
The big news is that the profit increased $150m primarily on console sales + 3rd party hardware sales (versus last quarter) - which shows what is exactly profitable now.
That'd also assume the increase of $150m was the result (possibly) of the extra 2.7 million hardware units shipped, or a profit of $55.55 per console. Atleast that'd be my assuption.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
