Carl2291 said:
He asks about success in his OP. Sales success, Im assuming, which is why my post was full of sales-related stuff. Right, now thats out of the way I can break apart the rest of your post. 1. Aligned launches dont really matter. Its the "here and now" that matters. Right now, there's probably less than a Million between them in the real world. We dont have that long to go until we find out... But right now, all data we have is showing the 360 has sold more units than the PS3 worldwide, lifetime to date. Until data is shown that proves otherwise (Not a thought from Tretton or a boast from Ballmer), then we can assume the 360 is still ahead. 2. You have a point there. There is no proof, just common sense. Its pretty obvious that the 360 has made more money than the PS3. Its been profiting since '08-09, it hasnt had an official sustained worldwide pricecut since then and its had Slim boosts/profits since '10 and over 24 Million Kinect's have been sold at pure, gigantic profit since 2010 also. Then you add on the 10's of Millions of Xbox Live Gold subscribers and it gets funny. Its quite clear to anyone really. You also need to keep in mind, that the PS3 was still losing money after the Slim was released in late '09. Approximately ~$35 per console, down from the huge ~$250 loss per PS3 at launch. The PS3 started to make money during 2010, barely. Btw, I found a good thread regarding 360 profits here on VGChartz. Its from back in 2010, so things will look a whole lot better for Xbox profit-wise now as both the 360 and Kinect will be cheaper per unit for MS to ppush out. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=119878 |
People love to point out how unprofitable PS3 was and how it lost Sony billions, but the same can be said of Xbox 360.(but to a lesser extent)
No one can deny that the XBox 360 made more money than the PS3....it still doesn't change the fact that the console lost Microsoft billions of dollars just like the PS3 did for Sony. People seem to forget that the XBox 360 was also sold at a big loss then there was that RROD thing....
Kinect might have been profitable but those 24million weren't sold as stand-alone devices. Many of these were bundled and made little to no profit. Sure Xbox LIve Gold subscriptions have made Microsoft tons of money, there's no denying that....but they also have servers to maintain and with all the video services they've been adding lately, these costs have probably have increased exponentially since launch. The point is that despite all the profitable parts of the Xbox 360 business, overall they still lost money.
Then there's all this "little stuff" that adds up such as the timed-exclusive deals. They paid $75million to make GTA IV a Day 1 multiplatform title + timed exlcusive DLC. Who knows how much they're paying Activsion for that timed-exclusive COD DLC. How much did they spend on those exclusive JRPGs?
Also there's also those billions of dollars Microsoft went through to introduce the first XBox. Microsoft bought their way into this business and they continued to do it with the Xbox 360. Has the Xbox business even broken even yet? No wonder they are chasing after entertainment apps and services over gaming. This business costs more than its worth.
