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Xbox Division Down $4 Billion
Forbes, in a long article about Microsoft's monetary situation, drops the news that the Xbox division is $4 Billion in the hole over the last four years. From commentary on C|Net: "That's a lot of money, even for Microsoft, which Forbes also says has a war chest of $40 billion in cash. Just before Thanksgiving, Microsoft will launch its next-generation console, the Xbox 360. The early word is that the 360 will also start its life as a loss leader, though Redmond insists the new box will soon be a moneymaker. Either way, it's got a long way to go to get back to even, and though Microsoft is a rich company, it surely doesn't want the Xbox 360 known as an albatross around its dividend-paying neck."
Cold hard reality is finally hitting the Xbox team and fanbase.
All the years of inane bullshit about the losses meaning nothing to Microsoft or Bill Gates could just buy his way to success with pocket change if he really wanted to are finally coming to an end.
The trainwreck that the 360 has turned out to be is the end of the Xbox project. Microsoft has more important problems to deal with and the Xbox is like trying to swim against the open source tide with a boat anchor around their necks.
The 360 is not going to break Dreamcast installed base numbers. They are in a fight to salvage their current installed base of some twenty million or so Xbox owners. Any hopes of attacting current PS2 and GameCube owners is long gone.
The most likely outcome will be the 360 is able to salvage the diehard part of the current Xbox userbase with a good percentage of the people who will buy 'the most powerful' system defecting to the PS3. 10-12 million or so over the next few years - if the system doesn't get the axe before then.
We will probably see some attempt at trying to move existing x86 computer game developers to lock themselves in to a software version of the Xbox - commodity x86 hardware but you pay Microsoft a console type royalty for shipping games.
I think the important lesson to be learned from the Xbox/360 failure is that money is no substitue for actual experience. And it was costly lesson for Microsoft.
Give it a fucking rest.