Xbox brand has lost Microsoft $3 billion

10 years in and they still haven't made the money back. Two years ago they still hadn't made the money back so I decided to check if things had improved and the brand is finally profitable for them.

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-has-lost-nearly-3-billion-in-10-years

They can afford to lose that amount as they make tons of profit with other things unlike Sony. Sell some more buildings plz

Xbox division has lost close to $3 billion in the last 10 fiscal years. Sony's gaming division lost even more money in the same time period, with a lost of almost $5 billion

Pal should also proof read his articles

I make that in an hour. Sucks for them.

292 Billion...........with a B

They are fine.

As opposed to Sony, who has been reduced to "Junk" status and selling their real estate to stay afloat. Oh, and also losing more than MS in their gaming division. Go figure.

not to mention ALL of that money lost was from the original Xbox. Microsoft has already broken even on the 360, and the xbox brand has posted profit for the past 6 years or so.

Well, that, and the $6 billion profit the company as a whole makes every 3 months doesnt hurt.......

They lost a ton of money on the first XBox because people were modding them and pirating games, which is why they quit selling them and supporting the system..

Microsoft has made a good amount of profit off of the 360, though. They would've made a lot more if they hadn't started replacing broken 360's for free, but it was the right thing to do...

Remind me again what was Sony's net profit over the last decade? I don't just mean the gaming division, but the entire company....yeah...that's what I thought

They were at 5-6 billion in the red a few years back so they are making it back.

MS making a profit with the 360 but are still in the red due to the Xbox 1.

Sony on the other hand lost all the money they made on the PS1-2 with the PS3.

Nintendo just print money with a slight hiccup last year or 2.

Yeah, there's no doubt they had lost a few billions. They had lost like $5 billion with the original Xbox. The XBox 360 has been profitable however.

Sony has lost even more then $3 billion. They've lost close to $11 billion with the PS3 alone and not sure how many billion they lost with the PS2.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/02/02/sony-losing-2-9-billion-this-year/

Nothing new really. The only company that has made steadily profits from their consoles is Nintendo.

Viva la xbox... 3 billion dollars of pushing the gaming hobby to new heights and forcing the pretenders like Sony to play copycat catch up.

Bu bu buu according to xbots (and xbots on neogaf) the 360 "won" non existent "market share" and unquantifiable "mind share" from the Playstation....so therefore xbox has been the biggest success ever and the 360 just totally won this gen....even though the PS3 out sold the 360 world wide...even though the PS3 significantly destroyed the 360 in exclusives library-in quality,variety,and quantity etc.. even though the PS4 is currently slaughtering the xbone in every way possible...and even though the xbox brand has cost Microsoft 3 billion......

Got to smh at that Xbot "logic" or delusions more like it. Xbots spinning miles of yarn

@monsterpuncher: " PS3 significantly beat out the 360 in exclusives and library" *insert future emoticon Lmao*

lets look at that graph and be little bit smart...

2003-5 ~ xbox was going up against the ps2 where the ps2 had a extreme large fanbase and tons of games already

2005-2007 ~ HEAVY marketing, getting their name out there + RROD

2008- current ~ PROFIT, PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT

Now samething going happen with ps4/x1. They going lose money in the beginning because of heavy marketing and getting out there THEN bamn! PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT. That is the console business life

This Gen WII made crap tons of money, XBOX made a small profit, PS3 lost 12 years of profits.

So WII>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>XBOX>>>>>PS

@Newhopes: bu bu bu bu according to cows....

LOL at this BS revisionist history trying to paint Microsoft as saints.

Microsoft TRIED TO DENY RROD for the longest time. Microsoft's anti-consumer attitude toward gamers and incompetence got so bad that the government was forced to step in.

Microsoft was FORCED to finally do something about RROD by the government!

Microsoft wanted to avoid giving away any type of warrenties, hence the fact they tried to deny RROD issues even existed... so again they were FORCED into eventually doing what they did....

And in fact, all Microsoft executives did was complain about the fact that the warrenties cost them a lot of money.....

NOT ONCE did Microsoft ever apologise for knowingly releasing faulty hardware upon the public...NOT once did Microsoft ever apologise to RROD victims....NO, the only thing Microsoft did was complain about having to give up warrenties and how it cost them too much. It was like are you kidding me!

Microsoft has always been pure corporate scum and greed at its most ugly...and you saw that even more so with how Microsoft just tried to take gamers rights away

But let me guess, you being the delusional xbot you are, that was just Microsoft showing you they care, right lol

Fu*k Microsoft for life.

If there ever were a anti-consumer company you'd want to perish, it would be the extreme anti-consumer, anti-gamer Microsoft who only wants to do the bare-minium

How can any of the lemmings justify losing $3 billion as "not a big deal"?

I don't really care since i support Sony and as long as i can buy my games for $20-50 then i am happy:-)

Who cares? We're not affected by whether microsoft makes or loses money.

This is microsoft. They make billions of profit each year and a majority of the losses were from the Original XBox because they went all out to put the XBox on the map. Sony have lost tons this gen

Cows are idiots. The Playstation has lost more billions overall then XBox. That's a fact. I honestly don't care, as long as both companies continue to make some great games to play.

With the starting costs of the Xbone to consider, it has likely become much more than that.

Bro-fists post.gif

@monsterpuncher:

Microsoft extended the warranty to 3 years, but it didn't matter. They would replace broken 360's no matter what. Modded, smashed, opened, out of warranty, it didn't matter. No receipt required or anything. People who got RROD got free 360's. Microsoft even paid for overnight shipping both ways..

What happened when all of the 60GB PS3's got the YLOD? Sony charged a nice fee to fix them..

Microsoft handled the hardware failures far better than Sony. Sony gave their customers the shaft compared to what MS did...

Sony's game division lost Sony $5 billion in same time the same source says.

Given they need to make the money back we will eventually be affected. They need to make the money back or they won't see the need to continue. Especially considering Xbox is such a strong contributor to their entertainment division.

Realistically the company will see bigger profits in other areas. Regardless of how rich Microsoft is, they won't keep losing money on Xbox forever. This also shows that despite the Gamecube naysayers the original Xbox was actually the biggest flop of last generation since they still haven't gained the money back for that system.

But, the fact remains that Microsoft has been consistently making money off of the XBox brand for several years. What happened 10+ years ago doesn't matter to them. As long as the XBox is making them money at this very time, they will keep supporting it wholeheartedly. Not to mention the money that they stand to make off of Kinect in the thousands of other industries that it can be used in...

I think that's why MS decided to drop core in 2009 and went upwards of 65% casual to chase the Wii's pot of gold with Kinect(lol). Guess the payoff wasn't as big as they expected.

@Heil68: Fable the Journey, 8.0 scoring genre defining, industry advancing, infamous 2 smashing the last of us tieing killer app from the genius's at Microsoft makes it all better...

No, it was Nvidi, the piracy on the Xbox was not that bad. It lasted until 2007 with even some FP games at the end, I don't see how that's quitting support, they kept running the Xbox, they would have lost more money, especially with all that money spend on the first 2 year of 360

Sony is a pretender? So the Ps1 never existed?

Did you also say that Fable The Journey is "Genre defining"?

Wth? What makes that particular game "genre defining"? I'm just extremely confused with your posts...

No such thing as an "Xbox Division" try again

Yep. The article also states that Sony are at a loss of $5 billion in the same time period.

Even their OS devision isn't doing well now. Windows 8 was a flop.

Their Zune mp3-players were a flop. Their Windows Phones were a flop. How long can MS keep this up ?

Wrong they never make a penny,it was to expensive to make and they never could get the manufacturing price low,in fact they even fight Nvidia about it,because Nvidia didn't wanted to pass any savings to them,it was also a total failure sales wise.

The xbox 360 has even more piracy that the original xbox.

@lamprey263: Making a Console that isnt a glorified set top box costs money.

perfect example and verified what ive been saying for 3 years. That's why I'm rocking PS4 to start this gen with and coupled with my PC/WiiU and 3DS I'm covered.

See people, I only speak the #truth, but when you LIVE by the Live, Learn and Love philosophy, dreams come true.

And PS3 has more piracy than PS2..........whats your point?

Fact is, 360 has more piracy because it has sold over 80m units as opposed to 24.

Another fact: Sony lost more with PS3 than they made during PS2. So who lost more?.

Stop being a fanboy and wake up dude.

Unbiased view: MS started from the bottom. Of course they lost billions going in. And they made some dumb decisions as well......like not owning the parts to the console. They fixed this with 360 which is why they post a profit every year...and by profit i mean they MAKE money during a fiscal year......not that they are out of the hole completely.

Couple that with the fact that sony LOST money every year until recently. How do you figure they are out of a hole? Common sense says they arent, but you ignore that for some reason.

Another fun fact. MS is worth 290+ Billion, so these losses dont affect them as much as Sony (worth 19+ Billion).

Please stop acting like PS4 will be the runaway success of PS2. MS is smarter and leaner than they were a decade ago. The world doesnt work like System Wars hype train.

The OS does well by default, unless you meant Surface, then i agree.

The rest, you are totally correct on.

Hopefully it gets better now that Balmer is gone. (Zune was better than Ipods tho :P)

Again, MSs stock is rising, they are worth 290+ billion, up almost 20B from a few years ago.

Id be more worried about Sony if i were you. They are worth about 19B, down from 40 a few years ago.

I'm not worried about any company to be honest. They can all go down for all I care and I'll still be gaming :)

Zune looked way more interesting to me than an ipod ever did, totally correct. I would've loved to buy a ZuneHD. Sadly it was never released over here, they shot themselves in the foot with that one.

That reminds me, GFWL wasn't released in so many places either. They shot themselves in the foot with that one too.

They dropped their profitable PC gaming division in favor of their Xbox division. Seems to me they shot themselves in the foot with that one as well.

W8.1 Seems to be a step in the right direction again. I hope they continue this route, and stop trying to copy Apple. That's just dumb.

Console gaming is dying

I would really love someone, anyone to challenge this claim. Every division of Sony has lost money in the last ten years, period. Proof if that's a false claim. Xbox brand dealt with Xbox original and the RROD mess, but has been profitable for over half a decade now and will be profitable DAY ONE with the One as they aren't losing any money on the console. Smart business. Sony once championed its free online for PS, and then 6 years later now are in such bad shape they have to draw extra money in by selling the service. Eventually the Xbox Brand will turn a full profit, but as its been said, business is a marathon not a sprint.

Steve Ballmer retiring is a step in the right direction. He was the one who wanted to be Steve Jobs. Before Ballmer, MS market cap was 400+ Billion, not it is just under 300. Heck, the company got almost a 800m stock increase on his retirement. They are moving in the right direction now that he and Mattrick are gone. The last 4 or 5 years of MS were run by executives who had no idea how to innovate. That is different now, which is why i have faith in XB1. The leaders in charge now are very into gaming.

Sony made a similar mistake at the beginning of PS3, now they are fine.

I'm well aware that nVidia wouldn't cut MS a break on the price of the GPU. That's another reason for the money issues and short life span of the XBox, but it doesn't make the fact that nearly everyone modded their XBox any less true. And the 360 may have more pirates, but that's because of the large install base. The percentage of owners that modded their original XBox was far, far higher...

Sony Corp turned a profit in FY 2007 (ending Mar 31st 2008) and most recently last year in FY 2012 (ending Mar 31st 2013).

And Sony has never had a year where every division had a negative operating profit. Music, Pictures, and Financial Services have turned operating profits in the last 6 years, except Financial Services which took significant losses in 2008 at the height of the worldwide financial meltdown.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html

You owe me a cookie.

lol look at all the lemmings mutating into accountants. So cute.