awww!!  should have seen that one...

Nice catch...360 is here to stay for the haters, and it has really placed M$ in a strong position.  This console cycle has been decided…Wii is going to be the clear winner, and 360 is most likely going to come in second.  At this point, I’m sure all three are working on the next consoles, and the strategy to separate them from the field.  M$ is a software company, and so it’s going to try to leverage the OS for 360 to produce something that developers will readily see and understand.  Time is money, especially when you have 50-60 well paid people working on a project for 2-5 years.  By the end of this year, 360 will be sitting at 35-37 million sold, and easily to 40 by next spring.  50 million consoles sold is almost assured by the launch of the next console, and if full B/C is incorporated…the nexbox will be well position to compete.

You say this as an avid PS3 supporter.

actually m$ is making a profit off of the 360

Now... yes probably. But the figure in the OP is revenue backdated to the launch.... the X360 has not been making a profit since then.

Wow, I'm so surprise with success of the 360. You are right, M$ is here to stay in the gaming industry.

Hm $8 to $10 billion in software revenue then?

Retailers get 10% of that...7-9 billion for game publishers. I would think Microsoft games are 1/4 to 1/3 of that software revenue...which leaves 4.8 billion to 6.0 billion for software publishers.

If its 5.4 billion in software revenue, over 3.5 years that amounts to about $1.54b in third party software revenue per year.

Not a tremendously big market frankly given the increased cost of development.

a lot of thanks to XBL

So? The auto industry sees revenue much higher than that. They're currently going bankrupt. Revenue clearly isn't a good indicator of success.