$315M and $929M aren't that horrible. Its a cost of business to continue to be relevant.

A $315M loss in a quarter isn't horrible? You're right, it's atrocious!

That's a loss of $1.26B in a year. There are over 40 countries in the world that don't have a GDP that high.

Not a $929M loss

fell by over 20 percent to a mere $929 million

As Ive said before, this loss is for the entire division! That includes IPTV, Windows Mobile and Zune along with the Xbox. Xbox actually makes the money, its all the other crap thats costing them so dearly!

Plus its still early days for the 360. I doubt Sony's Playstion division will be making money this time next year.

Microsoft's Xbox division has always reminded me of Abramovich's Chelsea. Spending cash like there's not tomorrow and buying all sort of big name players. Veron, Crespo, Shevchenko, Ballack. All of them the wrong players when spending money on the likes of Henry, Gerrard and Ronaldo would have been wiser choices. (steal your nearest rivals best players of course)
It's just like how they bought Rareware, Lionhead and neither of them has come up with vey much at all.
If sales in Japan were the critical factor for them to actually make profit then as I said in a post a few years ago on here they should have bought Square-Enix and made the Dragon Quest and FF games Xbox exclusive.
If you want to build something from the ground up and are happy to spend limitless resources doing so then on you go, if you want to splash some cash and get instant return then I think my way is the way to do it.

But hey, I'm neither the CEO of a multinational software company nor chairman of a football club so what do I know about it all! ;)