I personally have a hard time believing the Xbox division looses that much money. I could be wrong with all their development cost, maintenance costs and sure cost of servers but at $60/ year and 43 Million Gold Members (
http://tinyurl.com/Forbes-Article111 ) that’s an annual revenue of $2.58 BILLION
a year in just subscriptions.
That $2.5 Billion does not include any of their online market purchase or rentals or any other form of incoming revenue. There isn’t even the debate that Microsoft looses money on every console that is sold if your fellow Forbes author is correct in this article.
http://tinyurl.com/Forbes-Article222
I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m not buying it. I would point the finger at either the landfill’s worth of cash thrown at the many different failed prototypes of the Microsoft Phone’s, the Buyout of Nokia or the over the top buy out of $8.5 billion of Skype way before the Xbox.