So you mean after the launch of the next Xbox, but before Microsoft pulls support for the 360 entirely? If so, I suppose it's possible... but only because there's no telling how far in the future that will be. Personally, I expect the 360 to roughly break even by the launch of the next Xbox, and bring in a small profit over its entire lifespan. However, I don't expect it to make much of a dent in the losses incurred by the original Xbox. In addition, there will be substantial costs associated with launching the next Xbox, so even if the launch is highly successful it will still be some time before the entire brand has a chance of break even.

But are you sure it won't start out as a loss leader?  That would be another factor against the 360 making the "Xbox brand" positive before it gets retired. 

Im not sure exactly what they will do with the Xbox next... The technologies/architecture is a big unknown so really we don't know how much profit/loss they will make or how much they will charge for it.

However with the Xbox 360 console sitting at between 2.4 Billion in losses, between the financial results in this quarter and the next we could see the console sitting somewhere under 2B in losses with 4 years left on the clock as the main console. So the question of whether or not the 360 will make a profit has almost been answered and the real question now: 'is how much profit will it make?' 

HAHA, good one, I almost though this was a serious thread for a second

I seriously doubt it, I think it's just too much for them to make up by the end of the generation, next generation they probably will have recouped it all.

The answer is only clear because you've apparently changed the question:  the figures in that post ask "Will the 360 turn a cumulative profit?" instead of the OP question "Will the 360 make the Xbox family turn a cumulative profit in its lifetime?"  

Actually, come to think of it, how did you even arrive at that $2.4 billion figure? 

($3B) + $600M profit! To arrive at that ($2.4B figure). That doesn't include the profit/loss of the coming financial update.

I consider the question of whether or not the Xbox 360 will turn a profit to have been answered already really... With 4 good strong years plus what looks to be a very good tail, the question for me turns to whether or not the Xbox 360 will bring the entire system to profitability if one considers the sheer quantity of revenue Xbox Live brings along with the increased royalties over the previous generation.

No, because as someone else said - R&D costs for the 720.

:)

I guess nintendo lost some money on these babies.. but not a net loss on a whole :)

its almost impossible to find out how much xbox is going to make, because its all included in thier E+D dept.

i think last FY it was 320mil+ profit in E+D if i was being generous i would say 1/3rd was xbox @ roughly 100million profit.

so imo microsoft wont make thier money back, and frankly it wont affect them at all, thier xbox business will carry on.

to be honest with you, the 1 billion for rrod, they wont even make that back mabey end of gen they may do, but like i said its not going to affect the xbox business in any way. if there was no such thing as compotition conmissions in various countries, microsoft would easily knock out any competitor with ease.

ps. im getting sick of reading about finances, 1 or 2 a week is fine but 1 or 2 every day is to much lol.