Everyone knows that Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, although those just below him in rank are catching up fast. Imagine how much richer he’d be if Microsoft didn’t just sell 244 copies of original Windows Vista in China with the rest purchasing pirated copies, but I digress. Apparently Microsoft has recently announced its earnings for the third quarter in its fiscal year, showing the Entertainment and Devices Division operating at a cool $315 million loss. While this is a mere drop in the ocean for Bill, it’s still a huge pile of money to the rest of the world. Anyone wants to take a guess on why the Entertainment and Devices Division are bleeding money? The Xbox 360 line comes into mind.

While the Xbox 360 does not make up the entire Entertainment and Devices Division on its own, one can safely assume it is the biggest contributors to the loss, with the Zune, Games for Windows, and IPTV offerings following behind since Microsoft has already mentioned that “Xbox-related sales generates the majority of hardware revenue” for the division.” To put things into perspective, the $315 million loss is actually an improvement over the previous year’s quarter which posted a net operating loss of $402 million.

Bill need not fret just yet since the entire company saw a revenue of nearly $14.4 billion - that’s more money that you, me, and our families will ever be able to earn throughout our lifetime. I wonder when will the Xbox start to bring in the cash for Microsoft. Still, their branding campaign has been pretty successful, with 11 million Xbox 360s shipped to date.

Source: Kotaku

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