If MS continues and sells another 20 Million consoles this generation, then they will re-coup their investment.


2009-2012 = 4 years. 20M/4 = 5 million units/year required to hit this target.


Remembering most consoles sales occur when the price is lower i would say MS should make a profit this generation.

Actually a fair few retailers are dropping Zune due to lackluster sales. I wouldn't be surprised if it is LOSING money.

But I agree Microsoft probably makes a little money off game PC games, but overwhelmingly only due to games that are made due to the surity of sales on the 360.

You're not very good at looking - learn how to use wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems

In May 2008, according to Net Applications, it was on 7.8% (7.8 > 7 btw) and Vista was on 15.15%

and now certainly isn't Mac's peak - I think it was over 50% ages ago

Oh, and I use my Mac for internet browsing, word processing, programming and other nerdy things - not to create art

I work for a company that has 400,000 employees worldwide(not nearly all of them are IT people,a lot are drivers, hint,hint, but we do have about 2,000 people in IT) and we use pretty much all Microsoft tools.  I am not reffering just to the Office Suite(although the Office stuff is completely integrated with one another and provides for a very nice way to get information around, ie. Outlook, Office Messenger, etc.) but other stuff as well.  Sharepoint has gotten incredibly huge for Microsoft and is a great tool for getting your whole group collaborated.  Visio is amazing, some have similar features but none compete with it.  Visual Studios is my favorite IDE, although Eclipse comes in a close second.  Microsoft is not just about giving you Word and Excel but also creating custom solutions to fit your infrastructuring needs.  And I read an article about people in business wanting to go Apple but find it is really a headache.  Apple provided little to no support for the businesses and the compatibility issues were a big hurdle.  Apple is not interested in them and in fact have stated so.

Yeah, it'd be nicer if the bundled controller had no rumble so you were pretty much forced to pay 50$ for the rumble-enabled controller. But hey, Sony doesn't need money at all... they only lost 3 billion on ps3 cost-price difference, nevermind the R+D costs on top of that.

Jeebus guys, stop trying to play it like there's one of the three that likes our money the most, they all love it and will be happy to take it from us in any way possible.

To the mac - PC -stuff:

the marketshares are soooo different. Every source tells you something different. But my personal impression is, MAC has like 2-3% maximum. Nobody uses a mac here in Germany. All good old windows.

the loss for the 360 is like 1.5 billion - 8 billion just in this thread. Noone knows exactly. But the xbox brand was quite okay, the brand is known and they will be established in the videogame industry at the end of this generation. And right now, they are actually making a profit. So MS has no reason to worry.

Actually Apple marketshare in the laptop/pc market has been steadily climbing as of late. It's sitting around 10% worldwide now but (just like the xbox lol) its strongest base is in the USA. Granted it's mostly driven by consumer demand tho. The only companies I know that are 100% on apple computers are farms with final cut server installed.

I think we can safely say MS will be short a few bob if they continue with their xboxes

There is no doubt they will recoup their 360 losses from RRod. But they will have a really hard time recouping R&D + Xbox's losses before they need a new console.

Not with the $1.1 billion loss last year MS has to write down to repair XBOX 360s...