Either way its costing them big, TF Madden all the first party free games.  Any way you add it up its a cost they are forced to eat out of necessity.   As its proven they cant compete with PS4 on a even footing, they need that advantage.  Last big promo of theirs was 2 free games, that had to cost a nice chunk of change.  

Its costing them big, no doubt about that.  

Austrilia is worse. My friend has seen the X1 price been slashed 6 times now. Not in a row. And includes upto 4 games in a bundle a lot of times. Titanfall was in the bundle free, when it came out barley 2 weeks from that bundle.

I'm not denying its costing them, but you just pulled a number out of nowhere and its likely wrong.

Last gen MS and Sony spent billions getting their consoles off the ground or losing money from repairs. So as long as MS isn't losing that kind of money early on with the X1, they're in a good position to be profitable in the long run.

I know. As many know, I'm far from a Microsoft fan, but at the same time I can see things that help them and harm them (or harm due to mismanagement).

The Madden bundle sold quickly, and I think it's really hard to deny that they could have sold more of them had they simply been able to get them out there.

Probably the biggest obstacle to that was more the channel being overloaded rather than Microsoft not wanting to spend the money to get it done. It's hard to order more X1s when the ones stores already had were selling slowly. Hence, the idea of reskinning in the store.

In fact, it would be wise going forward to basically have a blank box and interchangable outer skins (with the window for the S/N info of course for linking to receipts and store warranty plans, etc). Supply some Microsoft Xbox One tape to apply new SKUs as they come.

Why are you taking this so personally, why are you brining up sony and last gen ? Is it so hard to stay on topic.  Does it hurt oyu they are losing $ ?

Free Fifa14 Fifa15 Titanfall Madden Forza5 Free two games deal, what ever the deal they make with Ea or whom ever.  They got to cover the 30 the publisher would expect to get on x amount of games.  Also they them selves are losing by forgoing their cut to sweaten up the value of the X1.

Its easily past 100 million by now given the amount of giveaways they been doing, why you are so antsy about it i dont get.  

1m free games at 60 a pop, easy 60,000,000 lost.

Maybe some one can actually give a estimate how many x1 sold were bundles with free games.  TF look like it easily pushed 200/300k x1 its forst month on market.

I could swear they were already doing that, some of their bundles were regular xbox ones with a paper sleave over it and a free game or dl pass for it.

Let me see if I understood you correctly:

You say, that for each game MS bundle for free with the console they lost $30?

Well, well... sorry to inform you but publishers don´t get 50% of each new game sold EVER!

It´s a lot complicated, but look at some Michael Pachter videos. I would be surprise if Microsoft "lost" more than $10 for each third party game bundled, specialy if they are download codes.

Uhmmm... what? I'm just putting potential losses in perspective. You seem to be the one taking this conversation personally.

Again, you presume MS is paying $60 each digital game they distirbute. That isn't how it works, they pay a discounted price to distribute those digital games. Like I said before, MS and Sony pay discounted prices to distribute games on PS+ and GwG. The bundling MS is doing with X1 is no exception.

For about a week MS was letting people get whatever game they wanted free with a X1 console purchase. The X1 sold 150K that week. So even if MS paid $60 a pop for that promo, it was only about $9 million. Not hundreds of millions!

MS has probably bundled a few million digital download games with the X1. I'm just clarifying it doesn't cost hundreds of millions to do that. They are giving away EA games because they made a deal with EA to distribute their games at a heavy discount.

Patcher, lol really.

What dont you get ? paying for marketing and giving away a game = a loss.  Paying to develop a game like Forza5 and giving it away = a loss.  Funding TF dev and giving it away = Loss.  They are not recuping their investments, good thing a few hunreths million is pocket change for them.  Till investers start whining about xbox being a black hole.  

Spin things all you want, they are burnign through $ at a high rate with all these giveaways.  

I want to know why do some of you take ms losing $ so personally ?