As farther in future as possible..

Maybe 2012...hopefully

NEVER.

All I have to say is, is the 360 really turning a profit, or did it just look that way because 7 million copies of Halo 3 sold and 5 million copies of CoD4. Also take into account that the Zune is in that division as well to try to put it in the black. But if they look at just the 360 and see that it, along with the xbox, lost them 6 billion dollars, they may just drop it. If the 360 itself actually starts to turn a profit and they have kept pace with Sony and not dropped to far behind Nintendo, they may decide to follow Nintendo's strategy (and business strategy in general) and actually sell the new xbox at a profit, instead of a loss or at least a very small loss.

The profit that MS posted was from it's E&D division which would include mobile software, PC peripherals(joysticks, gamepads, etc), mobile software, PC games, and the Zune. There was also Halo 3, a first-party game which sold several million copies.

Third-party software sales mostly just make money for the third-parties themselves unless the console has the market share of the PS1 or PS2. When a console is selling like the 360, then it's going to need a better performance from its first-party software to turn huge profits ala the N64 and Gamecube. With the 360, this isn't happening. The software sales of the 360 aren't even helping its hardware sales considering that it's selling worse than the system with the poorest software sales(PSP).

Third party sales don't make much money for the consoles maker, but 5 million copies sold of CoD4 and $10 royalty, I believe, is $50 million just from someone else making a good game.

Too many people accuse microsoft of bad business practices. This is not true. they just try to break up other peoples dominance on inovative ideas i.e. apple os and ipod and sony ps2. They are more about serving the masses of the world and america than niche markets. They try to blend as many features from as many things to inovate. They just need to get ahead of the curve. There is no reason why they should give up whith a strategy that is finaly paying off. Stoping sony's ps dominance would never be easy. They also don't consider nintendo a direct competitor they target different demographics. And the key to the future is of gaming is online service i.e. Xbox live or WoW. The only thing that is bigger than Wow and battle net or even has a chance against them is live. The whole reason why ms switched to consoles is to find a better out let for video games. also with live they can still make money with a so called dead console.

Never, 360 is their last console

But will will team up with Sega and release DreamBox

Hm... You guys tend to forget that MS dug a hole the size of my country (Belgium, pretty small, but still,fill it with money and...) with the 1st Xbox. That console NEVER turned a profit. And that hole got even bigger with the first two years of Xbox 360. Just now, they start earning more than they're spending. So for them to "turn a profit", they have to fill that gigantic hole first. Believe me, at this point, shareholders are NOT happy with the state of affairs. If Xbox 360 gets surpassed by PS3 now, they're in serious problems.

Not only do they have to pay their dues again with a new console (which is a mayor investment and takes a few years before it actually makes more money than it costs), but they probably will have to go for Blu-ray as a disk too. Which means: Sony will make a profit on MS new console from day one. And will use that money against them (pumping it into the PS4, making more exclusive PS3 software, lowering the PS3 hardware price even more)

So yes, like some of you are saying here, Sony is doing better than Xbox in Europe and Japan for some time now, and sold more in the US the last few months. If MS's pricedrop, the release of GTA4, or some other initiative doesn't turn that around in a big way fast, they're super screwed.

 

So if MS can't stay in the lead just a little bit this generation, shareholders may just vote to stop the investment, cut their  losses and invest their $$$ in something more secure.

Giving up now would not bring them any profit giving up never does. why cut and run when things are finally looking up for a company that can export. the low dollar means cheap xbox games. The only way to fill the hole is to continue to expand in emerging markets and the us. giving up will not fix that. Why give up from what i remember they were comitted to at least three generations. Oh and by the way sega helped them with xbox 1. Befor 360 they allied against ps with nintendo by buying rare. They are the only hope for 3rd party to make a desent profit this gen oh and a nother thing sony might not even release ps 4 any time soon or ever they won movies and seem not to care about games enough anymore. what people forget is that by far us is the main market for video games. So any one who doubts the power of the xbox and live is just a non believer in the facts. Nintendo may be making loads but more people need ms' xbox 3 or 720. Nintendo has little iterest other than kids and family good clean fun. Xbox is more about friends and music, ps movies.

 

cwbys21 said: Third party sales don't make much money for the consoles maker, but 5 million copies sold of CoD4 and $10 royalty, I believe, is $50 million just from someone else making a good game.

 When you consider that MS payed for a lot of their third-party titles, it's even less money, especially when factoring in that some of them had less-than-stellar sales. It was probably a pretty big egg on MS's face when games like Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Lost Odyssey sold pretty poorly and failed to improve their position in Japan.

I wouldn't be surprised if the same were to happen with the 50 million dollars that MS paid for the exclusive content in GTAIV considering that most gamers really don't care about it.