I know. MSFT gets no love nor posts in this forum.
Kinda sucks.

Man, my head hurts. Do you have a Cliff Notes version for folks with ADD? Thanks for the research - maybe it's just too late to figure all of this out. Thanks, though.

@madskillz

Unfortunately, I like to explain how I arrive at the numbers.
Otherwise, people will just disagree and the whole post turns into a bashfest between fanboys.

Just read it more carefully when you have time. Haha.

@kn

In this model, I used a slightly different model, just using a "NET profit/loss" figure similar to the one that I did for Sony.

So I did not even do the revenue and COG and gross margin side of it.

But I think going forward, the more thorough analysis is the one I will use.

@kn
so you see I total suck at making projections so far

2.1 million consoles vs 1.3 consoles is a pretty big difference.

haha

I suspect that Microsoft "stuffed" expenses into this quarter to have better quarters going forward OR they deferred some expenses to make previous quarters look better. There are just too many hits that are significant in nature for them to be just "in the course of business". It will be very interesting to see where their R&D and such are NEXT quarter. I'd be willing to bet that they fall much more in line with previous quarters and not the last "inflated one". We'll certainly know with next quarter's numbers if they were recognizing expenses that will be "used" next fiscal or they deferred and recognized them so as not to carry them into the next year.

Regardless, I think your model works well assuming your inputs are fairly solid. You can't account for one-times that are of the magnitude MS delivered in 4Q.

@kn
Yeah, it seemed strange that all of a sudden big R&D and marketing expenses were recorded - unless they normally budget all that stuff in their last fiscal quarter of their fiscal year

I'm not sure about predicting for next quarter, but i think the source has some projections i can use to calculate.

Another big question for you here:

Your biggest "error" was 2.1 vs. 1.3M consoles... Is there anything from VGC data that would have helped narrow that window? In hindsight is there any other available data that would have helped?

yes and no

if i looked at quarter by quarter shipments, it may have helped

no, because i may still have predicted the same.

actually, im fairly new to console video gaming since ive only started with the 360 last year and played my 1st online game ever about 8 months ago

the last console i had was SNES - probably 15 years ago

so prediction - not so good.
though i did just do 10-12 million and kinda divided it by 4, without taking into account christmas sales

like ive been mentioning, i can do numbers, other people can supply predictions.
if they work well and are fairly accurate, i think we may have a system or model that we can use going forward in vgchartz growth.

actually that's not true, i had an xbox that i got for free, but really only played nhl 2004 on it , once every few months.

and bought a ps2 for singstar/karaoke revolution - not for me but for family.. hahah - the same time i got my 360