quote:
Originally posted by Dex Luther
Why else do you think they kept building Xboxes when doing so meant a negative income?
Because in the long term the software sales will turn it into profit. It's not like they ran their Xbox program as some kind of charity not expecting any profit.
quote:
Originally posted by Dex Luther
all their projects can have much higher budgets than the same project would have if it was being developed by some other company.
They
can have much higher budgets, but the budgets need be be accounted for. The organization will not throw big budgets on projects that don't seem profitable in the long term. Microsoft didn't become a big corporation big throwing away money.
quote:
Originally posted by Dex Luther
It's not like they NEED it. It's probably more of an opportunity type thing. They CAN put ads there, so they do.
Like Cookie said, many projects inside Microsoft have separate budgets. If a project isn't making money on its own Microsoft wont keep on pumping money from other projects forever to keep it alive. All of their projects will have to make money eventually, or they are canceled (except from charity programs).