Isn't every year a Halo year at his point? 2009 had two Halo games.
Microsoft Q2 2010 Earnings
- Thread starter RobertR1
- Start date
Isn't every year a Halo year at his point? 2009 had two Halo games.
Only if you are a game touted as a Halo-Killer.
Really, I don't think we need to think this through for you, but Halo 2 and Halo 3 were major industry events. Halo 3 caused a large spike in console sales and has sold over 10M copies in addition to significant industry buzz.
Halo Wars as LY noted isn't even a Bungie project nor a Halo game in the traditional sense. ODST was "Halo 3: ODST" -- and was marketed as an expansion/value added product. If you needed to know anything about how MS, Bungie, and the market saw ODST: Reach was being marketed BEFORE its release.
Anyhow, Reach has significant mindshare, is showing up regularly on most wanted lists by web activity and user feedback, and is already slotted by MS as their big core-demographic title for 2010.
An intelligent, objective analysis easily puts it all together:
- One of the top 3 most active games played on the market (PC, PS3, 360)
- Huge fan base (over 10M Halo 3 copies sold, ODST is about 5M iirc)
- Halo 3 had a huge marketing push and media following; Reach appears to be following the pattern
Halo Reach will be a major "mindshare" grabbing product for 2010. This will be complimented with other exclusives throughout the year (Mass Effect 2, Alan Wake, Splinter Cell, Fable 3, Crackdown 2, etc).
Finally, but definitely not least of all, is in MS's own words the, "Xbox 360 relaunch" and marketing effort toward expanding the market with Natal. Any objective observer can see that Natal has garnered a bit of interest and if marketed correctly (regardless of how gimmicky it is) if MS does what they set out to do (create a "fun" product that attracts attention) their "360 relaunch" with their BIGGEST title (Halo) pretty simply equates to a big year for MS.
I am not sure why anyone would disagree with deepbrown--there is every indication that financially 2010-2011 will be even better for MS than 2009-2010.
Or have we forgotten what Halo 3 sales did for MS's bottom line? Put those type of sales next to the improved cost control over the platform (see: EDD profits) and there is no sensible, logical, or thoughtful reason to deposit anything less than an improved outlook for MS's EDD division next year (outside of catastrophic events).
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Wow, you have no clue about the operating costs of even a modest server room. Or the cost of bandwidth costs of a service center. No use even trying to argue the point then.
We're not talking P2P here unless you're assuming that all movies, all game demos, all DLC are hosted on user machines. And that's just the bare minimum of things that would need to be served up.
Then factor in power costs, maintainence costs, air conditioning costs (probably the largest single cost), bandwidth costs...
Then factor in royalty payments to Twitter, Facebook, etc...
Those costs are also why Sony requires payment from devs for free demos, movies, etc. And the one of the reasons Sony has to consider implementing some form of cost structure for online services. Right now it's costing them a not insignificant amount of money.
Regards,
SB
The line-up is very strong. Mass Effect 2 (already sold 2 million), Alan Wake, Splinter Cell Conviction, Halo Reach (much bigger than ODST), and Natal (I believe it'll sell lots of 360's)
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Already 2 million? Is that WW or just NA? I'm actually somewhat surprised it's selling that well, although I have to admit the ME2 TV spots are far more effective than the ME1 TV spots were.
Regards,
SB
WW. EA announced 2 million sold (though I presume they mean shipped for launch)
Speaking for exclusives there are also Crackdown 2 this summer and Fable3 in November.
Silent_Buddha said:
2 million are shipped- WW. According to VGChartz it sold 500k units on 1st day in US.
source
Vgchartz data is faked or highly suspect.
EA data is probably somewhat shipped, still highly impressive, especially for only one console platform.
Yeah, I knew somebody was going to say this. I guess I worded it poorly. I meant not on both PS3+ 360 like most games.
PC sales, given what NPD numbers we get and Euro charts, are probably pretty darn low though.
Yeah, if you really want to know how big REACH is going to be, when the game informer magazine scan hit the web, it was the 90th most searched item on google out of millions of other items.
The matter of fact is once the marketing blitz for the game starts, its going to take over your life.
So do you guys think they will bother with 45nm or go strait to 32nm/28 nm for holiday 2010 ?
At 32nm/28nm a single chip cpu/gpu/edram should be more than possible and would most likely drop costs on the current system ( 2 chips on 65nm with edram daughter die on one of them) greatly. Cooling , pcb cost , power costs and everything else . They could most likely also create an xbox slim to launch with natal also .
At 32nm/28nm a single chip cpu/gpu/edram should be more than possible and would most likely drop costs on the current system ( 2 chips on 65nm with edram daughter die on one of them) greatly. Cooling , pcb cost , power costs and everything else . They could most likely also create an xbox slim to launch with natal also .
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I'm not sure where they would hide it as they have many products still operating as a loss in that division. Especially YoY. Zune, WinMo, etc...
Also Rare hasn't released anything major in the way of games. So their operating costs are going to be a sunk cost in the division. While the UI work they have done has been important it doesn't bring in any revenue.
I think MS computer peripherals might operate at a slight profit, not sure on that one.
But overall MS is relying on X360 efforts to mask the losses generated by the rest of the division.
Regards,
SB
Impossible to tell
there are profit making segments included in the division
Mac Office - very profitable *
peripherals,mice keyboards - profitable *
zune - most likely profitable
winmo - loss though not as great as some think
xbox hardware - loss or break even
xbox peripherals - like pc peripherals profitable *
xboxlive - very profitable *
gamesoftware - profit (though depends on whats released that quarter)
Ild say the ones with the asterisks are the ones helping profits the most
1:2 in the U.S.A according to the NPD $261 ASP.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Are you sure Mac Office is in Entertainment and Devices Division? I thought it was included in the Microsoft Business Division. Wouldn't make any sense to put it in there as it is neither Entertainment nor a Device.
The X360 hardware is far more likely to be profitable than Zune. Zune hardware might be profitable per piece, but overall I don't think it's selling enough to make the Zune effort profitable. Although I might see it as somewhat viable if you broke down Zune Hardware and Zune - Other (loss). Where Zune - Other represents all other Zune related expenditures.
Regards,
SB
