“Microsoft has announced that its latest games console, the Xbox One, has lost the company over $400 million since its release in November,” Jack Simpson reports for The Independent.
“Posted in their annual earnings report for 2014, figures from Microsoft show that an increase in production and advertising costs brought about by the launch of the Xbox One had been responsible for the company’s losses,” Simpson reports. “The latest figures will be yet another piece of bad news for the gaming arm of the software giant.”
“Earlier this year, it was reported that Microsoft were flagging well behind market leader Playstation when it came to sales figures for both company’s latest consoles,” Simpson reports. “Figures in February showed that Sony had sold six million Playstation 4 units in 2013, while only 3 million Xbox One consoles had been sold during the same period.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Beleaguered Microsoft’s Xbox One is failing – August 5, 2014
Microsoft shortchanges 5 million Xbox One suckers – May 19, 2014
Disc Drive of Doom: Microsoft’s new Xbox One consoles suffer disc drive problems – November 25, 2013
Xbox One might not be the game changer Microsoft claims – May 23, 2013
Stumbling Microsoft unveils third Xbox, names it ‘Xbox One’ – May 21, 2013
Horay for loss leaders…awesome! Keep the hurt coming.
XBox One is losing money because they bogged it down with all sorts of features that gamers don’t care about while also loading it down with a bunch of drawbacks that gamers care about a great deal. DRM, no backwards compatibility, and an always online requirement combined with all sorts of “features” to integrate with broadcast TV systems that most gamers have since cut the cord from.
The XBox 360 was preferred to the PS3 when they launched because the PS3 came with a bloated price tag. But now it’s the XBox’s turn to be the bloated one vs. the PS4 that did things right.
The gamers are mobile now and moved on to Surface with Windows in it. Oh, sorry. There is know one buying that turd either. Never mind. Microsoft is working on the next big thing and will demo it any year now. Should be shipping by 4th quarter of 2020 or 2050.
I for one still enjoy playing console games (Final Fantasy 13 comes to mind) but with many games being released on both XBox and Playstation, it comes down to who’s got the right features at the right price. In the last generation, XBox 360 had it right over PS3, whereas this time around, PS4 seems to have it right over XBox One.
But I also am playing games on my Nintendo DS. 😉
At what cost per game? And what bid it cost for the HDTV, the gaming unit and the many games and extra control units? So, what does it cost to set up a gaming station for your kids, family, for you and your wife, …? Those high end iPads are looking really good with those FREE and $.99 games aren’t they?
Well, of course. I was just comparing XBox vs. Playstation, since they’re the most similar. When you compare either of those consoles to the iPad, the Amazon Fire TV, or even the Wii, it’s like comparing apples to oranges.
With game rental business almost dead, why buy a game console. Who wants to spend $60 on every game? Until the game rental business is somehow ironed out, profits will continue to fail on consoles. Online rentals aren’t ready for primetime.
MDN: You ought to read the comments section of items you post. If you did, you would see that this article is entirely false. You also might consider going to the source documents, in this case the MSFT financial report. Lazy work not up to even low standards.
Yes, but great marketshare, and that branding, I mean it’s so reflective of miniscule men needing Viagra, these are the people that need games, or a country they can have war in on a whim.
And that Nutella, incorporating the ice into the frame work of the Titanic is one thing, but incorporating the ice AND the drowned staff into the framework of the Titanic…BRILLIANT.
We like their strategy, we like their strategy a lot.
Hail and raise a glass to the new Triumvirat, of Gates Ballmer and Nutella.
Incomprehensible word salad.
You need a decoder ring.
Try not to read the photo that might help.
But they’ll make it up on volume.:)
Right! That was Ballmer’s thinking. Just like with Surface & Zune & MS retail stores.
Balmer and his Board of Directors were too far out touch with their customers. Same today apparently.
Beats has lost Apple $3 billion so far. But who’s counting?
How? If I recall they cost $3 billion, and Apple has owned them for a month–if that–so not quite sure what the heck you’re talking about.
If you could point to a link to buttress your point?
Oh wait! You can’t, because it’s too early to tell what Beats will do for Apple’s bottom line.
Mike,
Your definition of loss leaves something to be deisired. If you apply your logic, then every company who has bought another company have lost all their money…and that’s only within the first month. Why not wait a while…like, say a year or two or maybe three. You know, something that shows a trend of being a loss leader…like Microsoft and their products outside of MS Office.
Wow, Mike. I know it’s your thing to be “the Contrarian Dude”, but this is pathetic, even by your standards.
——RM
When we look back in a few years at the Beats purchase, everybody will finally figure out that Apple did not buy headphones, but invested in the people that they needed to bring on board. And yeah, they also got headphones!
Microsoft hasn’t had the best luck with hardware and it always seems to be because they haven’t thought things through properly. Not they’re bad at it, they just don’t know how to make money doing it.
Microsoft should stick to software and services, they’re very good at them and know how to make money from them.
How much money has it ever made?