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Xbox Losses Double, Xbox Shrinks
seldo writes "According to ITWorld, losses in the last quarter at Microsoft's Home and Entertainment segment have doubled. From the article: 'The segment, which also includes Microsoft's TV platform and PC games, posted a quarterly operating loss of US$348 million, compared with $180 million in the same period a year ago.'" An anonymous reader
points to similar coverage at news.com, pointing out that the company also reports "profits for Office, and one small note about an undisclosed presumably Japanese company that Microsoft if propping up. So, the big question on my mind is, who is Microsoft secretly holding above water, and why? The fact that they are presumably Japanese, seems to point towards an XBox partner. Could this explain the sudden flood of Sega exclusive games?" Another anonymous reader writes "Microsoft will be showing a smaller sized Xbox at E3 this May. In addition to the smaller size of the hardware, the Xbox Lite will also be integrated with Media2Go allowing Xbox users to download digital content such as music and movies. Wonder what this means for all the current Xbox Mod Chips?"
Dude. Completely untrue. You may very well hate Bill Gates and Microsoft, but do it for the right reason.
Bill and his wife have donated tons of money to shelters/cancer treatment centers/fine arts, etc.
You may hate his company, but he's donated a helluva lot of his loot.
Sent from your iPad.
Xbox is the #3 system.
Sony Playstation: 50 million units
Nintendo GameCube: 16 million (or 10-12 million depending on who you believe)
Microsoft Xbox: 8-9 million
Microsoft is not doing so well. Microsoft says sales of Xbox are on track. Yet what did Microsoft project they would sell? 9 million to 11 million. How many did they sell? 8 million, and they hope to sell 1 million more by June 30. Therefore Microsoft might possibly meet the low end of their projections.
Sources...
CNet: PlayStation 2 shipments top 50 million
CNet: Microsoft says Xbox sales on track ("We expect to finish our fiscal year with just over 9 million units sold worldwide," Koch said.)
And finally, for the Microsoft shills that think Xbox will take the world by storm...
Suppliers dim Xbox sales picture
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
The PS2 is a remarkably inferior platform, but it does have a very large number of very high quality games. I will immediately be one of the first to point out that the PS2 lacks a great RATIO of good games vs. bad games, but that's a universal complaint anymore.
I have several pretty good games for the PS2, and several really good PS1 games. I havea lot of crap for the system, too... but at least I can say I have that many great games for the PS2.
For the XBox, I only have a few that I can honestly say I like. I've rented several, and the better ones weren't exclusives. I've even given away XBox games that I thought were total trash.
Halo is fab, and Buffy is neat. DOAX is neat. But overall the system IS lacking in great games. I mean to pick up Panzer Dragoon sOrta, since it'll be worth it. But c'mon, the systme has been out this long and the good games are only now starting to really trickle in, and the best ones are cross-platform.
That hardly says good things about the XBox.
The Gamecube is doing marginally better, since I can honestly say I only have one Gamecube game that I would honestly say I think sucks. Not that there aren't shitty games for the Gamecube, too, but most of those are obvious trash. The Nintnedo first party titles have all been top notch, and even ANIMAL CROSSING (as strange and childish as it is) has been a greater source of amusement to me than anything on the XBox.
Oh, and yes, I do have all three systems.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Completely false. The GameCube doesn't even have a digital audio out. The best it can do is ProLogic II. The PS/2 can do pre-encoded Dolby Digital 5.1, good for cutscenes and DVDs, but nothing in-game. A (very) few games do in-game encoding to DTS, but this requires dedicating one of the two vector processors to sound encoding.
With the Xbox, the Dolby 5.1 encoding is done by two dedicated DSPs on the sound chip, and is automatic for all games. It's the only one with the grunt (and the licence from Dolby) to do it.
The network adapter and built-in hard drive don't mean swat because nobody will be taking full advantage of them until the other two consoles get them.
There are ports of PS/2 games that have had custom soundtrack playback added, from the hard drive. There are a number of games that require the hard drive on the Xbox, Morrowind and Project Ego being a couple - PC ports may well require it. And of course, there are still Xbox exclusives that use it to good and occasionally innovative effect, such as Blinx.
XBox Live is making very good use of the ethernet port. So are tunneling apps like XBConnect that let you play peer-to-peer online multiplayer Halo/Mech Assault/Tony Hawk/Unreal/whatever. Can't do that with just an iLink connector.
Hell, most developers still make XBox games that look like ass and by the time they figure out how to take advantage of that hardware, the PS3 will be out.
And I suppose developers will instantly know how to use the (considerably more complex) PS3 hardware to best effect? Quite the opposite - look at how long it took before the PS2 hardware got used properly. Xbox has a big advantage here, with its far easier/more familiar dev environment.
Most PS2 games look like ass too. It depends on the quality of the game, of course. Halo is very nice looking, Rallisport Challenge looks superb, Splinter Cell is amazing and Halo2 is looking awesome. PS3 is still a while away, and Xbox2 is also scheduled for that timeframe.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It would seem to me that they lose even more on an unsold unit.
/. logic quite a few times. So here goes my karma to offtopic.
OK. I've seen this kind of
Basic economics people. This kind of logic assumes that they have already built and purchased all of their units. Don't you guys think that Microsoft has some sort of inventory control? They don't build millions at a time and leave them sit around waiting for a sale. They build enough at a run to cover their projected inventory needs for Time Period X. If they had built all of them already, there would have been no shortage around the Christmas when they came out.