Slashdot Mirror
Rare Spike in Microsoft Console Profits
PLMIV writes "Microsoft said the company's home and entertainment division, which includes games and the Xbox video game console system, posted its first profitable quarter on sales of its hit game Halo 2. But the company said the division probably would be back in the red for the rest of the fiscal year and would not achieve sustained profitability until sometime in fiscal 2007."
Are people still telling themselves that they are sticking it to Microsoft by buying an Xbox? Microsoft is making money on every unit sold now. Not that I am against Microsoft making money on a console, it just seems these people are lying to themselves. It doesn't bother me if you want a Xbox but stop lying to yourself that you aren't supporting Microsoft.
No for-profit corporate entity exists just to lose money to the benefit of its customers.
MS sees the console games industry as a means of getting a Windows-operated box into your living room, that will serve as a media hub and entertainment command center. MS wants to sell content and also be the means by which you lease, rent, license, view or play that content.
Xbox is a stepping stone, just like PS2 is a stepping stone. The living room infrastructure is currently not suitable for either to have been designed around doing more than just play games and watch DVDs, although MS has started gotten people to pay for online gaming subscriptions. The next generation will see an even stronger push in the pay-for-content-and-access direction from AT LEAST MS, but Sony is likely to go for it as well.
Nintendo just wants to make inexpensive games machines that play ever-improving games. They don't want to be the middleman salesperson to sell you downloadables and access to content, they just want games makers to be able to make and sell their games for their systems. Since that's the least intrusive and least expensive route (backed by some of the best games designers in the industry), it's the approach that I support with my money. I don't want to subsidize companies that seek to introduce and establish technologies and products that I do not find valuable.