ok why do i simply not belive this article. the prices they give for the hardware is what someone like myself would pay if i were to go out and buy each piece individually, such as that memory for example. microsoft is obviously getiing a huge discount because of the millions of pieces of hardware they are purchasing, not to mention the deal im sure theyve cut with some of the manufacturers as to getting some cut of the sales. i simply do not believe miscrosft is paying the full price for each individual piece of hardware. though the article says they are just doing it as normal marjeting strategy or whatever, i dont think so, why would you purpossily lose hundreds of millions of dollars just to wait for production costs to go down so you could lower the price. by then you would be competing with the likes of sony and nintendo and would not have the dominance as when you had the head start and were the only new console out there. by then sales wouldnt be as great and would they really catch up to the loss they already took? again as stated that would be the price sure, if average joe me were to go out and buy each piece individually. thats my opinion.
I think what he's saying is though they are obviously losing money, they are not losing as much as they say. I doubt Microsoft pays a lot either, but after all they probably are heavily equipped in the bureaucracy area
I guess they do not pay supliers upfront but let them credit Xbox so to say until it pays back. It's probobly more complex. Put simply I mean this calculation has little to do with real money flow. Such launch is probobly mind-boggling financial operation and M$ must have best brains behind it. This way or the other they make money and a lot of it. Such declarations are made just to make ppl believe console is a bargain. Apple has done the same with the iPoo In reality R&D and marketing are the main costs while hardware constitutes a fraction of that. Let's waiting for a Chinese-made clone and see how much that will cost
