I was just wandering if anyone had any figures on this or not.  Has the big M gotten out of the red yet on the the entire X-Box campaign.  They lose money on their consoles, and they spend a ton of marketing dollars.  Has it become profitable, or are they still loosing money on the whole thing.  Like the Halo 3 release, yeah, they will sell a Ton of Halo 3 games, but how many will they have to sell to break even on the game after dev and marketing costs.  Just thought I would get some ideas.

Are you an existing VGChartz owner that just made a profile just to make a thread about this and to start something?

Or are you a member that just signed up?

I already told you in the other thread... Breaking even on Halo 3 is a no brainer, no matter how much is spent on marketing. It's a multi-million seller.

http://www.planetxbox360.com/index.php/articledetails/show/2713

"The total cost to Microsoft for Halo 3: a little more than $60 million. Development costs will probably be just above $30 million, given an elite team of 300 full-time artists and programmers working for three years on the game at Bungie, the internal Microsoft studio that created the games, said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. Bonuses to key developers and artists will probably add $25 million to the tab, Pachter said. Though about $15 million to $20 million in television marketing will be spent promoting the game, the majority will be footed by marketing partners such as Pepsi, Burger King and Pontiac that want to ride the Halo 3 hype."

Regarding the 360 as a whole, it's looking like it will achieve profitability much earlier than its PS3 rival. Xbox live subscriptions, much better software sales, near profitability of hardware sales... Yes, the 1 billion lost in warranty extension will delay profitability, but it won't avoid it.

MSH&E  Annual net incomes / losses ( in US$ million ) :
FY 2002 ( end 30 june 2002 ) : -750 | Xbox launch
FY 2003 ( end 30 june 2003 ) : -1,191
FY 2004 ( end 30 june 2004 ) : -1,215
FY 2005 ( end 30 june 2005 ) : -391; revision : -485 | MSH&E best year ever thanks to Halo2 release
FY 2006 ( end 30 june 2006 ) : -1,262 | Xbox 360 launch
FY 2007 ( end 30 june 2007 ) : -1,892 | Extended RRoD Warranty and Zune launch 

The Xbox division is about 7 billion in debt -- the latest 1 billion was due to the additional costs incurred by the RROD issues. This does include some fairly costly acquisitions, most notably Rare.

Microsoft has not yet had a profitable quarter with the Xbox division, but because they front-loaded all of their repair costs into last year, they may be able to have an 'on-paper' profitable quarter this quarter with Halo 3 launching. Some analysts are indicating Microsoft could have a 'slightly profitable' quarter.

This, of course, does not indicate they'll have a real profitable year, but it is the first step. Nor does it indicate that they'll generate a profit from the Xbox 360 generation. However, Microsoft has some investors that want to see them get at least one year of profitability of any kind.

Microsoft is unique among the big console companies as they're the only one consistently operating at a loss. Nintendo hasn't had a year without big profits for a long time and Sony hasn't had two consecutive years of loss with its playstation brand.

financial year 2008 (ending 30 June next year) is expected to be the first year in which the xbox division of microsoft could make a profit. This will likely depend greatly on the number of consoles shifted this christmas and when the next price drop comes.

And really does Microsoft care. NO STFU!

If they were in danger, we would know. Currently their aren't any announcements saying "we are canceling production on the Xbox division". I don't hear nothing like that and I don't care. Just move on and watch how they are profitable this coming fiscal year of 2008.

"And really does Microsoft care. NO STFU!"

W29, could you quit telling people that?

I thought they had 1 profitable quarter when Halo 2 was released?

Regardless, with the business model that Microsoft uses it would take 2 or 3 generations where the XBox was as successful as the PS2 in order to put the division in a net-profit position; it would take at least 3 generations for it to have made more sense to 'invest' in the XBox than to put their money in the bank.

Everytime someone brings up Microsoft's profitability with the XBox 360 I end up wondering what the underlying motivation is for Microsoft to continue with this line of products; it could be a way to defend their operating system monopoly, dominate the TVPC market, or possibly set up a monopoly where people are (dramatically) overcharged for products that are marginally better than what you can get for free.