I'm pretty sure MS is still, overall, in the negative from the entire Xbox enterprise 10 years after they started it.
http://m.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/digital-home/home-networking/xbox-360-finally-makes-money-for-microsoft-161411
The Xbox division of Microsoft has been in the black since 2007.
That article explains how they made $137 million in one quarter. That hardly makes up for the billions on losses from the first year of XBox 1 alone. The entire period of Xbox 1 was loss, and not a small amount of it.
BTW, one billion is one thousand million. I only say this because, honestly, I think a lot of people don't actually understand this when talking about huge sums of money, federal budgets, corporate losses, etc. The Xbox division would have to make $137m quarters for...something like...30 years (!) to break even overall.
Making a console is a HUGE risk. Remember Sega? Even they stopped making consoles. MS has yet to generate any real profit and Sony is skipping lower and lower into irrelevance every year. Nintendo is the only one actually doing well in
real numbers, and they seem to be losing the handheld thing a little (maybe) which is a huge amount of their profit.
Its a really really really risky business. It takes enough money to bankrupt several corporations just to launch a system. Personally, I think they are doing pretty well where they are. They aren't rich enough to do what MS is doing, talented enough to do what Sony is doing, or broad enough in expertise to do what Nintendo is doing. They would have to borrow money to make a console...and loans have to be paid back.
Its a terrible idea. So terrible I can't imagine it actually being put into motion.
Topic: The "Steam box" (Read 300 times)
