

  (Source: AFP)
Consoles were a second option for Microsoft


I. Sony Console Worried Gates



Describes Mr. Kempin:




II. Crafting a Console


Joachim Kempin
[Image Source: Twitter]



Xbox 360
[Image Source: Gamasutra]



Source: IGN

Comments     Threshold


RE: Xbox division earnings
By TakinYourPoints on 2/7/2013 6:45:26 PM , Rating: 4
It is pretty small. Take the last decade and it is break-even at best. It is slightly in the red or slightly in the black depending on the quarter.

The important thing at this point isn't the entertainment division's income, Windows and Office pays for the whole party. What's important is consumer mindshare. As badly as Microsoft has flubbed numerous consumer products, they hit a home run with the XBox. They should be leveraging the brand even farther, tying it in more with WP and Surface and such.

As for income, that's pretty standard for the "Sony" loss-leader style of selling consoles. All the profit is in the latter part of a console's lifecycle. Microsoft took a bigger hit than was expected because the XBox was such a monumentally defective piece of hardware.

RE: Xbox division earnings
By augiem on 2/8/2013 12:27:11 AM , Rating: 4

Just for the sake of killing boredom, I found figures from the last 10 years of Microsoft's annual reports. It's a little complicated because for some years MSN, Windows Mobile, Zune, embedded systems, and some other services were lumped in with the Xbox. Anyway...

Home and Entertainment
Operating Income
2002: -1,135m
2003: -1,191m
2004: -1,220m
2005: -391m
2006: -1339m
2007: -1969m
2008: 426m
2009: 351m
2010: 517m
2011: 1,257m
2012: 364m

Total: -4,328m

The total is probably dragged down significantly by the other things included in the "Home and Entertainment", but, yeah, guess it's not really a money maker.

RE: Xbox division earnings
By Strunf on 2/8/2013 7:30:02 AM , Rating: 2
It's normal for companies that jump into a new market (for them) to not really make money the first years, the xbox by itself wasn't so bad the problem was that SONY already had established a HUGE fanbase with the Playstation and they also had many Playstation only titles, MS eventually realized they had to fight fire with fire and started having exclusive titles too.

The Playstation 2 also had many hardware problems, between the Xbox and the PS2 the PS2 only had a slightly higher reliability.

