Slashdot Mirror
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?"
In Japan, they probably use the XBOX as a room divider.
Nice Engrish
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Now what will I use to crack open coconuts?
It would have been much cheaper for Microsoft to bundle some of their own games, like Halo, with the Xbox. Instead they chose to bundle two games which Sega made exclusive to Xbox, and which didn't sell very well in their own right: Sega GT and Jet Set Radio Future.
My guess is that Microsoft did this to appease Sega and boost sales of their titles, in order to keep Sega making Xbox exclusives.
Increase the size of your XBOX in 10 days with our Herbal XBOX Viagra!
Trolling is a art,
MS bought Rare in late Sept. for $375 million. I wonder how much of the $348 million reported as losses can be attributed to that acquisition.
Like them or not, MS is in the console business for the long haul whether they turn a profit within the next 3 years or not.
MS has a history of going long-term with high-profile products, and it's paid off for them. This venture was no different, and losses were expected. Maybe if this story was posted say, 3-4 years down the road, it'd be newsworthy, since that's when MS is expected to BREAK-EVEN with the Xbox.
This sounds like editor & zealot bait - fanning the flames of hate. Woo-hoo, MS is losing money?
Woo-diddley-hoo, they knew it before we did. Get a grip.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Not necessarily-- could be spending more on R&D.
You mean giving more money to Apple?
Trolling is a art,
I hope not.
While I am not one to engage in schadenfreude for its own sake and I certainly support people's efforts in the area of embedded technology in certain parts of the home, I think these losses are good news on the whole. It's not that Mr. Gates's presence in the video game console market is itself really that important in real life - it's that Microsoft has repeatedly exhibited expansionist tendencies, and it's been pointed out that the very name "Xbox" is intended to mean "Anything Box" (ie. the "X" is a cheeky metasyntactic variable).
Not to be a conspiracist, but to me this implies that they have much more on their minds than video games. Imagine if their intention is to further expand beyond the digital media space they've so far occupied and on into real-world objects? Imagine if they make something that could be used to (mis)create toast? I find these prospects very alarming, and thus the news of the Xbox's impending failure can't help but be a little bit of a relief.
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
Help, tell me what to think!!!
It's Monday, so we like video games, so this is bad news. But it's February, so this is good news. But the day of the week is odd, so we're supposed to only bash Sony and Blizzard. But the day matches the 2-digit year, so we only especially make fun of Macintosh users. But it was posted AFTER lunch, so this is good news.
Got it?
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 version 1.1 XBOX that started shipping in September of 2002 was hacked in about 1-2 weeks. This means that unless MSFT has really upped the ante with security, it will be more of a fun challenge to the MOD community, rather than a deterrent.
It's been 6 months since they've changed anything significant on the XBOX, so I'm sure the MOD community is waiting for a new challenge.
"You mean giving more money to Apple? ;)"
Man, I had this vision of a white XBOX controller with only one action button. *shudders*
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.
This could actually be a good thing for two reasons:
1) Game makers would make games that are actually worth playing. Nothing's worse than shelling out $50 for a stinker and being stuck with selling it back as a used game for $15 if you;re lucky.
2) Making games with longer playing times and/or high replayability. As you said, a 20 hour game can be beaten easily within a rental period. This is not so with longer, more involved games that have a lot of hidden content in addition to the main story, such as Grand Theft Auto. (Companies like Gamefly.com that offer unlimited game rentals for $20 a month change that argument though, it's still cheaper to rent two games and keep them for 2 months than it is to buy both and then resell them)
I dont see Blockbuster putting anyone out of business until they can a) offer a monthly unlimited rental plan and b) keep games that are actually worth playing in stock. (And don't forget that there are like 2000+ blockbuster stores un the US, with each of them buying 50-90% of the games for every available console...that's a pretty good subsidy, many of those games are awful and wouldn't have sold near that many copies)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.