According to this article at Game|Life, Microsoft’s Xbox division has posted a $1.89 billion loss for the fiscal year, a 47% increase over the previous year’s losses. Attributed mainly to the donkey-chokingly huge wad of cash MS has set aside to cover their ass in the Red Ring O’ Death debacle, the tremendous loss places Microsoft well ahead of both Sony and Nintendo in the race to make accountants the world over cry blood.
In what appears to be a bid to prevent stockholders leaping from tall buildings and further congesting Seattle’s poorly designed roadways, Microsoft has assured us all that their Entertainment and Devices Division (the people responsible for the Xbox) will be profitable in the new fiscal year, before mumbling something about buying and selling every one of us.
I hate to be pessimistic about all of this, but both Microsoft and Sony are hemorrhaging money at a rate that would make the corpse of Karl Marx rise from the grave and set out on an Altered-Beast-ian quest for revenge. Even a company as notorious for its money vaults and rolling papers emblazoned with the face of Benjamin Franklin as Microsoft is, cannot keep this sort of financial freefall up for long, and you have to imagine the suits in Redmond are praying that Halo 3 is going to be the metaphorical white wolf they’ve been hoping for ever since that last one tore their shirts off and metamorphosed their pants into a snug-fitting loincloth.