Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ Mark Kent on Sunday 01 July 2007 12:21 : \____
>
>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> ____/ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Saturday 30 June 2007 20:37 : \____
>>>
>>>> w!
>>>>>
>>>>> > Best Wishes, N.
>>>>>
>>>>> The Xbox 360 is expected to make Microsoft a profit in 08.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Mike
>>>>> Scottish....and proud of it
>>>>
>>>> Could be. I prefer not to make predictions. I hope this one (about
>>>> Xbox profitability) is better than Ballmer's oath to bury Google, or
>>>> Gates' to eliminate spam within two years. If it is, it will be
>>>> interesting to see if Xbox can really hold up to the competition.
>>>>
>>>> Microsoft has some smart people, I know some of them. If their
>>>> products fall short of technical excellence, it has to come from top
>>>> management.
>>>
>>> I'll go further and say that wrt the XBox, making a quarterly profit (they
>>> currently lose $200-300 million per quarter, IIRC) would not mean that a ~$6
>>> billion loss can simply be erased. They are in business for the investors.
>>> They could argue that XBox360 is there to take over the living room, but as
>>> it stands, Blu-Ray is at a better position to gain adoption. They might have
>>> to include Blu-Ray support using an expensive peripheral.
>>>
>>
>> You really need to look at the whole-life cost of the programme, too.
>> If they XBox has been around for, say, 3 years, and has lost 0.8 billion
>> per year, plus the costs in initial development, then it would have to
>> make an annual profit for several years in order to even break even, let
>> alone make an overal profit.
>>
>> Personally, I very much doubt that it can ever make enough money before
>> it needs to be replaced with a more up to date model, when considering
>> the rate at which it is losing money, plus the huge failure rates and so
>> on.
>
> XBox Elite has apparently not resolved the issue and it's more of a rebranded,
> renamed (and slightly upgraded) version. The rumoured (already cautiously
> confirmed, IIRC) XBox 720 might give them a chance, but wait and see what
> XBox360 ownership think about falling a generation behind quite so early in
> the lifecycle.
>
We can be sure that Microsoft will not care what they think, as they are
still sufficiently arrogant to believe that they can finesse the public
at large. Perhaps it will work, perhaps not, but I cannot see it
working for ever. Sooner or later, someone will complain to the MMC or
Trading Standards about their behaviour.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
|
