The following is my own personal opinion. I do not claim that 100% of the things I write are facts.
In the food bussiness, many restaurants cut costs by using cheap or low quality ingredients to prepare their meals. That way, they can charge lower prices and still make a profit.
When you have a console with an unusually high failure rate such as the Xbox 360 (I've personally witnessed four of them fried to a well-done crisp) you can only attribute such a faulty performance to either A) Cheap, crappy components or B) Sloppy manufacturing methods.
If MS did cut corners in producing the first few millions of 360s, that must mean they should have made some profit. That, of course, backfired in a big way when they were forced to renew their warranty services to cover all the ''RRODed'' consoles being sent back to them.
I commend Microsoft for fixing the problems (in other words, improving the quality of their console) while at the same time continuing to lower the system's price. They also have a very strong library. (I personally do not enjoy FPS games at all, but other games, such as Mass Effect, completely captivated me).
The RROD fiasco must have put the gaming division deeply into the red. But if the console stops losing its momentum by capitalizing on AAA games such as GTA IV, they will see modest-to-decent profits sometime in the near future.
Make sure the shadow you chase is not the one you cast.
