There is no way for me or anyone to look into the books because Microsoft doesn't publish them. A fun article to generate hits but can't be proven. I think the math is a little fuzzy too. The division is on track for 1B profit. Back out 2B in royalties and you are at 1 B loss. Yet somehow xbox is responsible for 2B loss? Did the windows phone make 1 B profit?
Mehdi has said the XBO will break even on day one and tear downs support that.
But it doesn't really matter if Xbox is a failure or not. You seem to be implying that because the competitors are wrong, Nintendo is right. Nintendo is losing money and the Wii U is being rejected by the market. They are not in a good position even if their main competitors are screwing up.
Sure, you can't 100% prove anything but MS and Sony have been trying their hardest to obscure what's really going on with their games divisions as of late. That's never a good sign.
As for weather XBone will break even or not, again we won't ever know that as, again, obscure and hide is the name of the game. Neither MS or Sony are ever going to be honest about what's really going on with their games divisions. Nintendo on the the other hand, has nowhere to hide so everything is in plain sight at all times.
And no, I'm not implying that Nintendo is right. I'm implying that Sony and MS don't have a single clue about how to deal with games. There is a smarter company out there who could easily show up and even blow Nintendo out of the water. That's always possible. What I'm saying is that if you're not making money, which Sony and MS are not, then you're a failure. Even if Nintendo didn't exist I would feel the same way. Sony and MS don't know how to deal with games at all.
Do I need to explain competition? NES had none, Xbox had strong competitors. The 2 situations are completely different. And Nintendo did have game development experience with arcades ( DK) and game and watch.
Do I need to repeat DEAD INDUSTRY? Nintendo may not have had any console competition at the time but according to prevailing thought, there weren't even any customers for Nintendo to sell the NES to in the first place. I'd say that's far more of a miracle than the largest company in the world managing to barely get their foot in the door by blowing billions of dollars year after year.
That's speculative. Microsoft's biggest profits come from supporting businesses. I think dont think xbox is as unprofitable as you think and I dont think they'd be willing to support it indefinitely with losses. Apple/Amazon are their closest competitors in the cloud realm and they get by fine without dedicated gaming devices.
Speculative is it not. MS has stated themselves that the XBox was about getting into the living room before Sony could take it over. Business software is where they make most of their money today, but tablets and smart phones are beginning to eat into that heavily, and businesses want their employees to be as connected as possible so they can work them more hours. MS is currently failing miserably at adapting to that new market. For now the old market will sustain them, but as the old market fades, so will their profits.
It's another reason why they are so willing to continue dumping billions into XBox. They need those new revenue streams badly.
Yes, Iwata was disappointed in 3DS sales in 2011. I haven't heard him say he is now. 3DS hasn't dropped in price in 2.5 years and I can't believe it isn't raking in the dough. 2DS is just a good business move and not indicative that they are unsatisfied with the 3DS.
He stated it in 2012 as well. I believe I read it around the summer. He was discussing how huge the 3DS was in Japan but he was still disappointed in sales elsewhere. And yes, the 2DS is a good business move but having 3 different models at the same time? And in such a short period of time? Reminds me of the PS3 and it's absurd number of revisions. Again though, I'm not saying it's not profitable, just that Nintendo seems to be less than happy with how it's been doing.
See when you say things like that it makes me think you dont understand. If Nintendo held 100% of their cash in yen they would never be subject to currency gains/losses. Yen holdings mitigate the risk, they dont expose them to more risk.
Simply by virtue of doing business with companies outside of Japan they are exposed to risk. Their war chest is pretty much in tact, though it too fluctuates with companies outside of Japan, but their day to day and even yearly profits can swing wildly. Far more than either Sony or MS.
It's fair to say they haven't gotten the results they expected. I think that's different than saying they don't care about making profits on games.
And what results would those be? They haven't made any money on games at all and are set to come in 3rd in the last generation, down from 2nd the generation before. If MS would explain what all these losses are supposed to achieve then we might be able to make some sense out of it. But since all we have to go on is the fact that they've already stated that the XBox is a trojan horse to get their hardware into your home and in control of pretty much everything that you do, we're just going to have to go with that.
And at that, they have failed miserably.
I still remember when they anouced the first XBox and said they were expecting 300 millions sales within the first year. Ah... Good times. Good... times...
PS3 and 360 have both sold over 80 million consoles. There is no planet where you can call that a flop.
And neither has made any money for their respective companies. That, my friend, is the definition of a flop. Again, you can sell all the consoles and games you want but if you're not making any money (you know, the stuff that happens to be the life blood of companies?) you won't be doing it for long. Flops they are and flops they will remain, no matter how powerfully gaming fans want to pretend that they aren't.
NO MONEY == TOTAL FLOP