Microsoft may spinoff Xbox brand?

[Alby_da_Wolf]

kowenicki said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

[...]

Ooops, right, I had misread.     I actually wanted to answer Mike's question about how and where the costs are accounted for, and how it's difficult to tell for sure profits or losses of each division, but your short answer was right anyway.

BTW, in the past, iirc, that Corporate-Level Activity was explained, in MS balance sheets, with a clearer wording, what I understood back then about R&D costs was that if the R&D is exclusiive for that division, than it's accounted for in that division's balance, while if its scope is wider than a single division, then it's accounted for in Corporate-Level Activity.

that would sound corect accounting procedure to me.

I agree, nevertheless those costs, added to the other costs that are accounted for in Corporate-Level, makes it a lot more difficult to tell profits and losses of each division, the only things that can be affirmed for sure are total profit of the company, that divisions registering a loss are surely losing and that divisions registering a profit greater than the whole Corporate-Level costs are actually profiting: for example, for 2012 we can tell for sure that Windows and Windows Live, Server and Tools and Business divisions were hugely profiting, and that Online Services was hugely losing, but we can't tell anything for sure about Entertainment and Devices, its operating income was less than 1/10 of Corporate-Level costs, so even if just 1/10 of those costs were for EDD, it would erase any profit for that year (quite normal, though, considering that in 2012 happened most of the final R&D efforts on XBOne to arrive to its definitive version).