Microsoft Games Losses Down, Still Substantial

Even though sales are up on the operating system side of things, Microsoft's games division is still struggling. The Entertainment and Devices division lost $315 million, with sales slipping some 21 percent. That's 22 percent down from last year. The quarter overall saw $929 million, down 21 percent over last year during the same quarter. "Microsoft says the drop in sales came primarily because of decreases in the sale of Xbox 360s. During the quarter, the company shipped a half million consoles, as compared to 1.7 in the third quarter of 2006, that being the first full quarter in which Xbox 360s became available. Sales of Xbox and PC games decreased 44 percent over the company's first three quarters to $393 million, which the company puts hand in hand with the decrease in console sales."

Comments

1.7 Units Shipped?

[VE3OGG]

shipped a half million consoles, as compared to 1.7 in the previous quarter

Man, Japanese sales are really picking up!

Re:1.7 Units Shipped?

[CowTipperGore]

Those must be metric consoles. Anyone know how to convert this to Asspiles or Shitloads?

Re:1.7 Units Shipped?

[misleb]

Those must be metric consoles. Anyone know how to convert this to Asspiles or Shitloads?

The only thing you're going to be measuring in ass piles is physical discomfort.

-matthew

Re:1.7 Units Shipped?

[endianx]

Whoever only got 70% of his console is probably pissed.

Bright side...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they can look on the bright side... they aren't Sony... ;)

Re:War of Attrition

[aplusjimages]

"Are they still hedging all their bets on Halo 3?"

Yes.

Which is so sad. Microsoft's BIG first party game, Halo 3, that is supposed to be their key to winning the console market:

* Only supports 16 players per game - pathetic compared to the current best console online game Resistance with 40

* No dedicated servers - Sony and PS3 developers have free dedicated servers for games

* An archaic P2P networking setup that leads to laggy online play

* Looks like a slightly upgraded version of Halo 2 on the Xbox

* And to make things even worse you are forced to pay 60 bucks a year just to play the game online

Microsoft isn't banking on Halo 3 alone. Plus none of the stuff you stated is confirmed yet. Bungie is known for lying about what will be in their next game. They even lied about working on a Halo 3 game. The P2P networking is obviously not a deterrent because on average about 40,000 people play Halo 2 each day. Let's see resistance pull those numbers 2 years from now.