Microsoft Games Division Almost Doubles Profit

Microsoft unveiled its quarterly earnings report for the period ending on September 30, and it was a tale of two reports. The company showing a 14 percent decline from last year, but the Entertainment and Devices Division, which houses the Xbox 360 and Zune, almost doubling its operating profit from $159 million to $312 million. Overall gaming revenue was up almost $100 million, with a 50 percent increase in Xbox Live revenues. Certainly the release of Halo 3: ODST is a big contributing factor here.

In a conference call following the report, Bill Koefoed, Microsoft's investor relations general manager, said that the Xbox 360 is boasting a 8.7 software attach rate and that the system's global installed base is almost 34 million units. This puts it in second place behind Nintendo (with over 50 million Wii systems sold) and ahead of Sony (almost 24 million PS3s).

The Xbox 360's attach rate – the average number of titles bought by each console owner – is key here, as it's software sold that makes Microsoft money in this case and not consoles. And 8.7 is historically very, very high.

With this news of Microsoft's game division doing so well, it'll only be harder for gamers to swallow the rumored Xbox Live price hike, should it come to pass. Of course, we don't know the reasons for the purported hike or where Microsoft is hoping to funnel that money into.

I love how they say that Microsoft has been doing bad this year. Compared to Sony.

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2009/10/23/News-Microsoft-Sees-Green-With-Numbers-In-Black.aspx

I wonder what the PS3 software attach rate is.

lol cool.

Do u know if LIVE's price will increase?
Tbh I don't want to have to pay more than £5 a month.

I laughed at some of the ignorant comments on that site in response to the article.

pspvampire wrote:

lol cool.

Do u know if LIVE's price will increase?
Tbh I don't want to have to pay more than £5 a month.

no, it was just a opinion of an "expert". and when he made it he had no evidence to back it up other than the claim that microsoft could get away with it.

ooooo!

i love seeing these. thx

Oh nice plus windows 7 launch helped Ms stock.

Master_Chief wrote:

I laughed at some of the ignorant comments on that site in response to the article.

Its gameinformer, they are a joke. I used to respect them until they started spewing nonsense this year. For example, they gave Forza 3 a 8.5 while all the big sites are giving it 9+ and above. Plus saying it's the best racing game ever. Well, Gameinformer also stated in the forza 3 review that it brings nothing new to the table. Haha. What a joke, and furthermore they say how 360 has a 54% failure rate according to a poll they did. Also, at e3 2009, Ms owned the show but they gave Ps3 all the praise for their top 10 picks when every other site was saying the exact opposite. Gameinformer? More like Gamefail.

Hmmm great!

I heard that sony is counting Blu-ray movies as a part of the attach rate.

Pretty lame of them to do that seeing as it's suppose to be a gaming console.

fonderplague wrote:

I heard that sony is counting Blu-ray movies as a part of the attach rate.

Pretty lame of them to do that seeing as it's suppose to be a gaming console.

Ha, that is lame. Ms should start counting DVDs.

SWEET

E&D Division includes Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Zune, Windows Mobile and some other stuff. The Xbox brand is always seeing some kind of profit if looked at by itself.