Xbox Division Slips Back into Loss

Despite general news that Microsoft's revenues were up last quarter, the Xbox division slipped back into the red with a $164 million operating loss. From the article: "The operating loss in the division also dropped year on year, falling to $164 million from $204 million, which could be seen as very positive - but can equally be interpreted in light of the fact that the previous quarter, ended on December 31st, saw the division post its first quarterly profit since the launch of Xbox."

Comments

Re:The console wars continue

[StocDred]

If you're impressed by paying only $150 for all of that, imagine what $50 can get you in Sega Genesis equipment!

Xbox has been a financial struggle for Microsoft since Day One. The $150 bundles are SOP for all the consoles once we get a few years into every generation.

Re:Here's what I think

[Rayonic]

"Recent sales are low because everyone is anticipating XBOX2. Why not?"

Because people play games and not machines?

Tell that to the Sega Dreamcast.

Re:Here's what I think

[Bigthecat]

There is a third major reason: Piracy. It is well-known that the Dreamcast employed their GDROM system with a gigabyte of storage that at the time couldn't be burned by the home user market. Unfortunately, most games developers didn't actually fill their GDROMS, so one could be duplicated easily and burned to a CDROM. Add that to the fact that to pirate games all you needed was a bootdisk, no other modification, and the Dreamcast had a thriving market for pirated games. Having looked for a second hand Dreamcast not too long ago, I found that the majority of consoles selling either openly came with so-called 'backed-up' games, or a 'free gift' of hundreds of games. On top of the other reasons, the Dreamcast really didn't need this to kick it in the guts.