Does XB360 make money yet? *spawn

[bgassassin]

Again as people keep repeating, that division has a number of other product lines within it. You're not getting numbers for xbox alone. Zune or windows phones (and a bunch of other products) could have made or lost billions making those numbers not all that meaningful in terms of the profitability of the xbox product line on its own.

I didn't say it was specifically for Xbox 360 and it wasn't my intention to imply that.

 

[Acert93]

I do find it starnge how Zune (2nd biggest selling mp3 player) could of lost all this money yet, ipod made billions and billions for Apple, based on the fact both cost a similar amount to buy and would cost a similar amount to produce (both million sellers), i.e. I dont believe MS are as incompetent as some ppl think.

I guess you don't follow that market then??

e.g. When I bought my Sansa E250 it cost slightly less than an iPod model with less memory, far fewer features, and lacked a large color display that could play video back (!!) Based on the iPod brand/features/iTunes integration, etc Apple was, and has been, able to sell Apple products at a premium price the competitors cannot match. The Zune was basically in the same boat: lower prices, more hardware, in the hopes of making a move into the market.

Of course even with this strategy MS wasn't able to make it a viable business to continue.

So you are right, MS isn't as dumb as some people think.

 

[function]

RRoD wasn't just a huge one off loss. I read that engineering resources were diverted to alleviating and ultimately fixing the problem and that pushed back the timetable for cost reductions and revisions to the hardware that may have helped it sell better. It also did the brand an awful lot of damage. Who knows how much profit MS lost in each following year as a result of such a huge and avoidable problem.

The effort that MS has put into Windows Phone has been huge. It's a fantastic phone OS but its market penetration is lousy and I wouldn't be surprised if that's still a long way in the red. Does anyone know where the billions MS will be pumping into Nokia are coming from? As mentioned, Kin was a huge loss ($240 million writedown + whatever else was thrown at it previously). That just seems to get lumped in with "Xbox = infinite loss".

It seems to be that more successful Xbox becomes, the longer that retail prices say amazingly high, and the more people funnel money into various Live! channels that the greater the number of billions MS are supposed to have lost on Xbox become. And that doesn't seem right.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Does anyone know where the billions MS will be pumping into Nokia are coming from?

Who said they are pumping billions into Nokia? If they are, perhaps they've paid for it with their massive Zune profits. It should be coming out of that division (e&d) if there's money for Nokia.

 

[function]

There was this malarky:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...to-pay-nokia-more-than-1-billion-in-deal.html

Followed by comments from the head Nokia dude that MS would be adding billions of dollars of value to Nokia (whatever that might mean). Probably not all cash in a brown envelope, but MS is going to be investing heavily in their joint initiative with Nokia and I've wondered if the scale of that investment is going to be masked somewhat by Xbox.

I've got a feeling that whatever it costs will be marked down on gaming forums as being Xbox's fault.

 

[Rangers]

There is just no way to math it out. There's way to much crap (like zune and kin) in E&D to get a real number. I'm sure you'll get lots of speculative responses from both directions, but the reality is you're going to get nothing more than wild guesses.

I believe it's probably at least break even or near.

I dont have links for any of this, but from GAF I recall if you just add up the Xbox divisions P&L since the 360 release, it came to something like -$600 million. But this was a couple Q's ago IIRC, so that could be down to near zero.

Then the question is is the 360 more or less profitable than the rest of the division? My thinking is more, and I believe there was a tidbit dropped in a conference call or something that the vast majority of that division's profits are Xbox. I'm sure I learned that on this board so maybe somebody remembers?

It would be nice for some exec in an interview to explicitly state so to confirm, though.

edit: aha, I missed that you meant Xbox+360. Well in that case going by the "analysis" above, the lions share of original Xbox losses would remain in the negative column. as Alstrong would say, *shrug*

It seems to be that more successful Xbox becomes, the longer that retail prices say amazingly high, and the more people funnel money into various Live! channels that the greater the number of billions MS are supposed to have lost on Xbox become

I dont see many (if any) media/forumers on the net implying *increasing* losses for the Xbox, though the fact 360 is doing pretty well on the balance sheet may not get much play either.

 

[zed]

The Zune was basically in the same boat: lower prices,

you might wanna recheck your history, I just checked my statement 'based on the fact both cost a similar amount to buy ' (which was going from my recollection) and my recollection was correct, when the zune came out it was the same price as an ipod
eg when the zune launched, the 30gb zune cost the same as a 30gb ipod US$250
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/zune/index.html

Probably not all cash in a brown envelope

MS stumped up at least 1 billion dollars, though this didnt come out of e&d (would of been easily recognizable).
PS I predicted this before it happened on these forums , FWIW in NZ politics yesterday I predicted key/banks discussed banks role as leader of the ACT party, today I wake up and its looking likely that is what happen
Man I should have a job putting my prediction skills to work, oh wait I do

 

[AlphaWolf]

you might wanna recheck your history, I just checked my statement 'based on the fact both cost a similar amount to buy ' (which was going from my recollection) and my recollection was correct, when the zune came out it was the same price as an ipod
eg when the zune launched, the 30gb zune cost the same as a 30gb ipod US$250
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/zune/index.html

Zune was making so much money that they never expanded it beyond the US market and then they canned it because they ran out of places to store all the money it was making them.

/sarcasm

MS stumped up at least 1 billion dollars, though this didnt come out of e&d (would of been easily recognizable).

So then where did it come from? They slipped it in with the electricity bill?

Note: I don't doubt there's money going to Nokia, I just doubt there was ever a big up front cash payment.