Why dallas?

Well can you apply for the Microsoft job and fix it then? O_O

By the way to the original poster. Xbox is not spelled like "X-box" Its spelled simply as Xbox. Thats it. But the two together..k?

If you keep tellin people to STFU, you will probably upset somebody.  I'm just trying to do you a favor.

 I agree for all your post Big except for this part. MS H&E had one profitable quarter in its history. When Halo 2 came out they made a tiny profit but not enough to have a profitable year.

And for the record Microsoft does care. It is a publicly traded compnay who true boss is the owners of the stock. These investors like to see stock go up and to make it go up you need profit.

It is not as if they don' t care, it is that they understood that the way to get their foot in the door was to take losses up front. Hence XBox. Now the 360 is doing well but may break even at best so Microsoft may have to wait for the 3rd generation of XBox for real profit. Things are slower going than they would like but they have the cash to wait it out. There is a limit though until they move on to anoither project. I think the media center bonus of the 360 will keep them in even through another losing generation(Not that I think the next one will lose, I actually think it will be wildly profitable).

Last I heard they were still losing money on every console they sold. The die shrinkage was going to help that but they have added extra features(hdmi port) and dropped the price so any profit on hardware is probably very small at this point and will be for most of the generation. I think any saving they find in production will be used to lower the price and drive sales.

Microsoft also continues to dump huge money into aquiring software developers and bribing 3rd parties for exclusives. Good for Xbox gamers but bad for the bottom line.

As for Halo's impact, assume is does sell 6 million copies in the this fiscal year. Even if the average price is $70 a game and costs are only 60 million as said above that makes profit somewhere near 360 million. Losses were higher than that even in the Halo 2 release year.

So maybe a small profit this year but it will be another decade until the Xbox division will have been a profitable enterprise. 7 billion is a lot to recover.

People accuse Sony of blowing money on a game console to gamble for Blu-Ray. I would argue the Microsoft made a bigger longer term gamble to get their operating system under your TV.

dschumm, aren't you mixing up the Xbox product with the entire entertainment division? That includes other things as far as I know (at least the Zune).

 he is, but it is pretty synonymous with the Xbox and Zune. Arent those products essentially the reason the division exists for MSFT?

Any you do realize that Microsoft had record profits for the company in their last FY right?  And that's even with the 1+ billion they set aside for the extended warranty/rrod issue.

Anyone who is coming out and saying that Microsoft is going to dump the Xbox 360 or get out of the videogame console business is talking out of their ass considering both Steve Balmer and Bill Gates have put their full support behind the Xbox line.

Ok I might be streching a little but the Xbox came long before and is a much more massive outlay than other projects including the Zune. I also thought that Microsoft reported a smaller loss for the division than for the Xbox. Meaning all those other things with the Zune are profitable. Xbox is the anchor/gamble.

As for the Zune, it is an effort to get their operating system in your pockect. The Xbox is how they get in your family room(IPTV). Obviously it is their overall plan to be well placed as the consumption of electronic devices moves from traditional computers to internet enabled entertainment devices. The evoluton of power is computers is moving much faster than the avaerage persons need. Thus simple devices will be able to do everythign the average person used to go to the computer for. The Zune is much more of a toe in the water kind of effort. Yes I am sure it is a huge outlay of capital and a massive effort but no where near the gamble the Xbox was/is. They had already postioned themselves as a big player in the digital music game and I doubt they lose any money on the hardware given the similar capabilities of competitors.