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Xbox Division Maintains Profit in Q1
Microsoft said Thursday that Q1 revenues rose 9 percent to $15.1 billion, a new record for the company.
Company-wide operating income was $9 billion, while net income was $4.4 billion.
Microsoft Office drove revenue growth for the first fiscal quarter ended September 30, but the company also reported "healthy" sales of Xbox 360.
Sales in the Xbox 360's Entertainment and Devices Division were $1.8 billion, down 6 percent year-on-year due to a tough comparison with last year's blockbuster launch of Halo 3 and hardware price reductions that took hold in early September.
Operating income was up 7 percent to $178 million due to "decreased cost of revenue and sales and marketing expenses."
The company said of the ED&D, "We expect sustained profitability for fiscal year 2009." Microsoft said decreased Xbox 360 manufacturing costs partially offset higher cost of revenue in the games division.
Xbox 360 shipments were up during the quarter to 2.2 million versus 1.8 million for the same period a year ago.
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Has Microsoft made any forecasts for the entire fiscal year? I know that Nintendo and Sony have, but I haven't seen anything from Microsoft.
(not spam) ran out of time)
Send me a replacement 360 for the one they wouldn't fix and fix it when it breaks down, and I'll reconsider.
Edit: With the Harddrive.
There's more problems than the RROD, and those are the problems that killed the whole experience because they wouldn't fix them like they should have, they aren't covered in that RROD warranty.
I put way to much time and money promoting and playing the Xbox for them to just toss me off to the side the way they did. So did others.
I ain't letting it go. And next generation they ain't even a consideration for hardware...Even if they have the only console on the market.
My launch 360 locked up at the first turn of every online race. It went to McAllen, TX less than a week after launch and was replaced with a refurb. Unfortunately, once you're in the refurb dead pool, the problems continue. My second 360 RRoDed after the infamous Fall '06 dash update. My third RRoDed after the Spring '07 dash update. My fourth was DOA from the service center after a two-month wait. Knock wood, but the fifth, with the upgraded heat-sink, has been running fine since last summer with only an occasional DRE here & there.
The PS3 I bought while waiting for #4, on the other hand, has been cruising along fine, and playing quite a few games that nobody in Microsoft fanboi-land seems to be aware of. I just replaced the 60GB HDD earlier this week with a 250GB drive I picked up for $90 at Newegg; there was no Sony price-gouging on that, although I *did* pay more for the PS3 than my 360, but some things are worth paying more for (just ask any Apple fan).
I spend equal time on both of them, but I typically rent instead of/before buying. All of my Christmas purchases though, have been for the PS3 & Wii. I'll pick up GOW2 in November, but there's not a whole lot on Microsoft's line-up on my list this year.
Next gen, I'll definitely be giving Microsoft a wide berth for at least the first year to see how they handle things during the next round.
MS ain't even on the radar for me next gen unless they do me right for the wrong. I'd give them more time than a year.
I gave the 360 about 10 months after it's launch and it did no good... I was looking around at the Xbox forums the other day and there are still boatloads of people going through the same stuff.
Can't say I like the attitudes of most the players much either... Seems to be a haven for jerks.
Don't get me wrong on the players though, I've still got alot of really cool freinds who play the 360, but the ones that rear their ugly heads all to often is way to much for me.
I think it has something to do with the headset, sometimes it's like catching a cerebreal bore right in the ear.
"I ain't letting it go. And next generation they ain't even a consideration for hardware."
For you. The other 30 million 360 owners (by the time things are said and done) might consider it.
You're right about the other problems, and people with those problems got the shaft, and that sucked. My bro in law had to get a new 360. So he bought an arcade and kept his old HDD. There's ways around that though...A towel wrapped around your 360 that's being left on all night might go towards getting you your RRoD. ^^
I thought about doing that, but i don't want to be in the same class as Microsoft... If you can consider what they do as "class".
"A class act"...that's for sure.
The games rock. That's why MS is doing so well with the 360. Not because of a "baffling mass psychological phenomenon", as a commentator says below. Gears rocks, Bioshock rocks, Tales of Vesperia rocks... even Halo rocks. Braid is awesome, and the same can be said about a lot of the arcade titles.
I don't consider myself part of the MS fanbase. My current 360 is the first Xbox I've owned. I bought it recently, since I wanted to lower the chances of it breaking down on me. Still,I know there's still a chance that I'll come across the RRoD. I'm willing to take my chances. Because the games rock.
I think that the XBox is doing pretty well.
No way Sony is going to catch it.
I think that in the next gen Microsoft will dominate the market. The days of Sony ruling this market are over.
Sony made some big mistakes and now they are paying for those mistakes (price is one of them and the overall architectural design of the PS3 is another).
The biggest mistake Microsoft did was to rush the release of the XBox, but by the other hand, that rush gave them some important head start.
I call for a NickgamertagO1 ban request!
I find it hilarious that even when the 360 is selling really well that somehow that means its going to "pack in". I've been a 360 owner since launch and have technically only had my 360 die once (I have purchased 3 total, and not because they broke, so I can network them so my family and I don't have to play split-screen). Out of my 3, only one I purchased near launch died (it was replaced for free, shipping and everything, and I had it back in 18 days, they even sent me one free month of xbox live). We've gone over the whole RRoD a million times on these forums. The later models aren't having the RRoD problem any more, so please...move on.
I'm sure the 360 only has about 2 1/2 years left in it, but that's because the next xbox will be out, not because of how the 360 is performing. It still leads all now-gen systems in total revenue, I don't see how anyone can think its about to die.
And about paying 4 dollars a month for an excellent service (some games to have dedicated servers, too) I'll pay that for life. That's less than a value meal at Macdonalds.
People are just trying to find reasons to complain about the 360 when it really is doing very well. All you haters have to justify your complaining is your OPINION when the numbers don't lie, the 360 is doing just fine. So, complain till you turn blue, but we 360 owners will continue to have a blast while you guys are still fuming at its success.
Why is it so unbelievable, it's not like everyone suffered through the RROD. I have twice, and had EB warranty for 1st one and did coffin box for second one (I had launch unit and unfortunately a very dusty house). For me it all comes down to the games I want to play and for the majority of the consumer market that's the driving force on what they buy.
I have yet to buy a PS3 because a) I bought a HD-DVD/BR combo drive for my HTPC, and b) no games interested me that I couldn't get on the PC or the 360 already. Little Big Planet may be the one that does it for me. If not it probably won't be until the next Kingdom Hearts comes out and my kids make me get one then (much like DDR did for the PS2).
Price and games are what drives the consumer market. RROD will eventually fade away and it will just come down to "what do I want to play and what can I afford".
Why is it so unbelievable that the 6 of us want to play Russian Roulette? It's not like EVERYONE will get a bullet in the head.
I'm sure it seems ok from a 360 gamer's perspective but through the eyes of someone on the outside looking in, buying something with that high a failure rate is strange to see. I know if there was a car or fridge with a failure rate that high, a lot of poeple wouldn't touch it. It just shows the brand loyalty to the Xbox name, I guess.
Russian Roulette is an extremely inaccurate analogy. If your 360 is unfortunate enough to have the RROD, you're covered. My launch 360 got the RROD about this time last year. Within 7 days of sending it in I received one that's given me no problems. And I'll be getting an Elite early next year for the bigger HDD and so I can utilize the HDMI input on my new TV.
Sure, MS's engineers made a mistake in the hardware architecture, but one thing they are not given credit enough for is that they eventually owned up to it and extended the Warranty for the RROD to 3 years. Most people in this world cannot admit when they're wrong and do what they can to correct their mistake, and it's pretty much unheard of for a corporation to publicly own up to mistakes and offer a fix that does not cost the consumer a dime.
People act like the 360 is the first home console to have widespread hardware issues and faults, when more correctly it's the first console in the "internet era" to have widespread issues. The NES probably had one of the worst problems, if you never had to mess with the "cartridge elevator" to get a game to work and not just make the screen flash black, then you probably didn't play many NES games on a real NES console. Even the launch PS2's had "issues" to put it mildly.
As Nick has mentioned, the big "secret" to why the 360 sells, it's that it has many of the games people really want to play. MS really deserves credit for spending money to get 3rd party exclusives and seeing the potential in games that they've published (i.e. Gears of War), whereas Sony initially projected a cocky attitude about how they don't need to "bribe" 3rd parties for exclusivity, then when things didn't go at all like they expected (total domination without any extra effort), they went out and got Haze as a 3rd party exclusive.
For me, right now the only game that'll get me buying a PS3 for is God of War 3. LBP and MGS4 without a doubt are phenomenal games in their own ways, but what makes them great, does not appeal to me as a game player, and I think that's Sony's big weakness right now, they do not have any games out yet that are amazing games with near-universal appeal.
On Xbox Live having a subscription fee, I've been a XBL member since its beta and never have I been hesitant to pay. It amounts to the price of a game for a year's subscription and that's well worth it for me, someone who plays online very often and utilizes most of the features gold members get. I believe that once the XBL gold user base grows to a point where XBL is more valuable to advertisers and marketplace sales increase, and Sony Online is close to having the base features and reliability of XBL, then MS will waive the subscription fee, or have to offer much more services to Gold subscribers.
I don't want my 360 to be "covered" if it fails. I don't want it to fail in the first place. Same goes for my car, my washer, my dryer, etc.....My friend bought a Ford, and had to replace the transmission twice in the first 2 years. Both times it was "covered," but he was still inconvinienced by not having his vehicle for a certain of time he considered unreasonable. Microsoft can "cover" my 360 all it wants, but that doesn't change the fact that I have to go X number of days without it, which, if it happens more then a reasonable number of times, is unacceptable to myself, and to a lot of other people, regardless if they pay for it or not.
Ozz, you always seem to be one of the more objective individuals on here. I think the whole failure rate thing though warranted in some respects, isn't that obvious to a lot of consumers. For us avid gamers/video game players who go on forums, the 360's failure rate history is more than apparent. But for the average consumers, they probably really have no idea the 360 has a history of being unreliable at all. And since the models coming out over the last nearly 2 years, the problem has been significantly reduced, and with the obvious lack of 360 sales drops, consumers aren't having too many problems with them any more. Its us forum-ers that keep talking about it and won't let it die. I know a few of you on these forums have had bad experiences with MS and their customer service and I undertand your frustrations. But how long ago was it when your 360's died? I say give it a rest, and move on, as it seems 360 owners and new 360 buyers are just fine with it.
And as for my other comment...I've had a bad day last couple days at work, and was a bit more heated than usual when I typed that up.
Sorry to hear about your shitty days at work, dude. I'm sure with a newborn tot at home isn't helping in the sleep department.
I totally understand the average consumer hasn't heard much about RRoD, but that's not who I was talking about. Frankly, uneducated consumers can rot for all I care and flush their money down the toilet. I was referring to the "educated" consumers, who do their homework before making a larger purcahse. It's the educated consumers that are still wary of buying a product with such a high failure rate, past or not.
And, i haven't seen any figures on recent failure rates, has there been anything released about it for like the last year or so? I'd be curious to see the hard numbers of recent failure rates, to see if it's improved as much as many people are claiming.
Yeah, the newborn aint helpin in any departemnt. Sleep, gaming, TV, time with wife, sanity...its ironic most of the time I have to actually get online is at work.
True, I'm sure there are those people that do some research instead of just believe whatever the 17 y/o best buy employee tells them. I think most people don't do that. They're not spending 1,500 bucks on a tv, so its not quite the investment they may feel the need to research too much.
I've read a couple stories talking about it, and there were some posts on these forums a month or so ago when someone defending the 360 put up. I don't personally have them, I just know there's some info out there about it. I usually like to provide links when possible, just don't have them this time. My PERSONAL experience with my 360 friend list over the last couple years shows that they've been dying a whole let less, and only 1-2 in the last year (my friends list has hovered between 55-65 during that period). So, that's a drop in the bucket when it comes to percentage of 360 owners, but at first my friends were dropping like flies, but now its virtually stopped.
Well, from a list that extensive, that's a pretty good number. Definitely boads well for Microsoft if they do have their failure down that low. That's a fairly acceptable %. I guess even the "uneducated shooper" is safe now.
Did some research. Found multiple links (too many to list), just googled 360 failure rates. It seems that no where has difinitive numbers (as I'm sure MS has never released them). Some sites have articles from "good sources" that say now with the new cpus and gpus that the failure rate is "below 10%" while some other articles have said it was as high as "over 30%". It seems like the most common number "speculated" at is 16%. That still seems pretty high. But as I said, no concrete numbers have been released, at least from what I have gathered. 3% is the industry standard for electronic components, so the 360's failure rates seem to be anywhere between even with industry standards to 5x worse depending on what number you go by.
My over year old elite (while it does sound like a jet engine as its the original hardware) and my wife's 360 (lucky girl, she got the newest model) have had no problems. My launch 360 did die though, but the newer ones I've purchased have done fine. So out of the 5 360s that have been in my home (counting replacements and the one I gave to my bro in law) only 1 died. As you say, they shouldn't be dying. But at least it was replaced for free. If that happened to me over and over, I'm sure I'd feel a bit different though.
No one is safe, MS obtained the right to kill the CPU in any of their products at any time.
and, if my Xbox isn't connected ot the internet, how does it go about accomplishing that?
Built in Clock or timer
I can't believe people keep on buying the 360 as you know the system is going to pack in.
MS are very lucky in that they have a loyal fanbase, because if this was any other product in the market it would've bombed ages ago due to the unreliability of the system.
Personally, the 360 can have all the games in the world, but i wouldn't buy one. What's the point if you can't enjoy the system without the hardware problems hanging over it.
It's one of the most baffling mass psychological phenomenon of our time.
Should we say 'symptom'?
It's hard not to make a profit if you operate a monthly subscription business THAT large. People paying Microsoft in order to be allowed hosting the games on their own bandwith instead of dedicated servers, that's even beyond Blizzard.
While I agree, and personally wouldn't pay for that, apparently, lots of other people will, so why shouldn't Microsoft take advantage of it if people are willing? Same thing with 360 sales despite the hardware issues, if people are willing to pay, why wouldn't they keep selling. It's money in their pockets, they'd be silly not to.
The question is, do they reach a point where enough people become tired of paying for these things and stop doing it? Only time will tell that.
It truly baffles me that so many people will keep buying into something they know is gonna break down on them.
And it's not like you can go out and pick up a new alternator for it either.
While I agree there have been waaaaaay too many people with hardware issues with the 360, there are quite a few who have not. I bought the Elite when it came out and have had zero problems. It might be less prone to issues, that I dont know.
I own the original PS3(60gb)and also the Wii. I like all 3, but use the 360 the most. It currently has the most games I enjoy and I prefer the controller. Given the same game on both platforms, I tend to buy it on the 360 and use the PS3 for the exclusives and blu-ray.
While a lot of people have had a hard time with their 360 and Microsoft owes them for their loyalty, I've been lucky and think it's a hell of game system
just my 2 cents..........
The 360 works great when it works, no doubt... I think I bought into the second batch and it lasted just about 15 months. (which is hardly what I call a fair shake)
For me it goes deeper than that, I feel betrayed. Broken promises and broken dreams while supporting it fully. Hoping things would eventually get better...The controller got smaller, the games got shorter, the prices got higher, the voices got louder, cheating sky rocketed, the community repect lessened, to much media... Everything I didn't want to happen, happened.
And then I watch all these people who don't seem to think there is a problem with constantly returning and doing without what they love to do, keep on buying into it. It's a joke.
I am glad those who do have a good experience with it are happy though. Because when it's good, it's really good.
Maybe next gen I'll get back into consoles when the new console from a different company comes out.
I can understand your point of view completely. If I had the experience you have gone through, I'm sure my opinion would be different. Hardware is supposed to last much longer than that. usually game systems keep on ticking for years, even after you have moved on to the next system.
Microsoft should consider themselves very lucky that they were not taken down by that whole fiasco. I dont know that they deserve the loyalty they have received.
I have really enjoyed the system and very glad I haven't been one of the ones who had to keep replacing it. I've had great time with Xbox Live and system really does have a lot of quality games available
so yeah for me it's been good, but I've read and heard from many, many who it hasn't been for.
I do have to give it to Sony for keeping online free. That is nice! And from a hardware perspective, they really did make a quality machine.
anyway, if you still have your 360, I hope your experience improves. Game systems were never meant to be that big of a pain in the a@@
And I respect your point of view. Mine would be the same if they had taken care of my system for me because of their error and I could still be playing.
They do have some really great games and I probably wouldn't be as mad as I still am today about it if they didn't.... They took a part of my soul...Enjoy.