Conceivably, but MS has also blown somewhere in the neighborhood of $3bn on IE related expenses. Between the patches for the security holes that integrating it so deeply in the OS and other related issues.

Wait, are we talking MS as a whole or just the games division? I'm not sure we want to count IE issues against the games division, yeah I know it's on the XBox 360 now, but those updates were probably done for Win 8 anyway.

If we're talking all of MS, they're fine, Office licenses is big business. The games division is barely a piss in a pot in comparison.

The point I was making is that MS gets desperate sometimes and makes extremely poor decisions. It is likely that the gaming division is profitable, but I wouldn't necessarily assume so as they could have had a much larger hole to dig themselves out of than you might think.

Plus, The Kin managed to sell 500 units total when they tried to do that, so it's entirely possible that they managed to screw the hootch more than might be apparent to outside observers before getting it right.

They took a billion dollar loss early on for the extra RROD warranty, that's been their biggest failure with the console that's made news, I'm not sure anything else could top that clusterfuck and not make the news, so I'm guessing the console is doing fine right now. If they're in the red right now it's due to ramping up production of the nextbox.

I should probably stop arguing.

My personal belief is that they're profitable by this point, I'm just somewhat skeptical of their numbers as the always seem to be rather bullish on things even when it's complete crap and the CEO doesn't seem to know his ass from one of the large number of security holes in their older software.

Well in several areas I'm inclined to assume they are losing money. Just not in consoles:)

To be honest i think the CD-I is much more famous than the 3DO thanks to the lame Mario and Zelda games that Phillips made for it. The CD-I is pretty much a collector's item now, it's really hard to find one. the 3DO, on the other hand, despite selling better than the CD-I, had nothing to distinguish itself from other CD consoles (except for the fact that it was indeed the first CD console released), so it was kind of forgotten pretty quickly. It didn't have memorable exclusive titles either. In fact, i can't remember even one game that's a 3DO exclusive, most 3DO games were ported to the Saturn or the PS1 later on, such as Gex (which is the closest thing the 3DO had to a mascott). The only curious thing about the 3DO is how fucking awesome (and big) the game cases are.

Even the Jaguar is more famous than the 3DO, since it's the last console from Atari and it has quite a few good games such as AvP and Tempest 2000 (which is still considered to be the best version of Tempest).
Nope, it's an unknown console.

Do they? The latest Gears of War sold 800,000 copies, from what I read.

I do take your meaning though, with Halo and such. And Live subs surely bring in a ton of money. They also spent a ton of money though, and continue to do so. It would take someone with more information than either of us to answer the question I suspect.

In the end either way they see it as a investment toward controlling the living room media box which will be central to everyone's lives in the future. I doubt they will be successful at that no matter how profitable the games division ends up being, but that could just be my pessimism.

Got my CD-I for less then 90 dllrs on priceminister.com.
It's among the cheapest consoles... It's pretty much available anywhere in Europe unlike the CD-32 for instance (Payed mine 140 euros)

3DO was pretty famous for having the first NEED for Speed and the best port of Super Street Fighter II.

The 3DO (at least the Panasonic and the Japanese versions, not the Goldstar versions) are pretty expensive compared to the CD-I ... And being unknown doesn't necessarily mean being expensive... Look at the Intellvision Hyperscan... Biggest Flop, Fairly unknown, yet cheap as hell (Maybe to the fact that it was only released 8 years ago)

Is the kinect actually that popular? I only know one maybe two friends that have it?

Well, i guess it depends on the region then. Here in Brazil it's almost impossible to find a CD-I, and when there is one it's usually priced at U$400 or more. The 3DO, on the other hand, is pretty cheap, even the Panasonic version (around U$100).

I did a bit of a search on ebay, and all the US CD-I models are pretty expensive. However, the EU models are cheaper. It really depends on the region.

Oh yes, i forgot to talk about the ports. The 3DO did have some awesome ports for PC games, i have Space Hulk for 3DO myself. But like i said it really didn't have exclusive titles.

Of course not. I didn't say that.

That's my thought, that seems rather expensive compared with other retro consoles.

Hi there :)
Yes, my brother and I are passionnate about old consoles.
We have around 40 different systems (Counting the handhelds)

Recently I'm trying to get my hands on an Atari XE, I love its look...
Of course there are some consoles that are simply too expensive for us to buy at the time (Apple Pippin, Casio Loopy, Playdia, Gamecube Q and PSX mainly) but we'll eventually get them all I hope...
In Brazil you Have a rather exclusive console I'm dying to get my hands on.. It's called the Zeebo...
It's also available in Mexico I believe but never made it to India or China... It flopped...

You also have the exclusive Genesis 3 Models... and I believe they still sell Sega Pico Systems for kids there... None of witch I have...
If only I lived in Brazil !

Oh yeah, the Zeebo is pretty cheap around here. There are still a few new units being sold, but since Tectoy (the company behind Zeebo) stopped producing it it's slowly becoming a collector's item. Especially now that it's impossible to buy games for it (the digital store was shut down a few months ago).


I think Brazil is the only country in which old Sega consoles are still being produced and sold in stores. There's a portable Genesis around here which has a few games in it's internal memory (it doesn't have a cartdrige slot like the Nomad, but it's much smaller, of course). There's also a new Master System model that comes preloaded with a few games, but it doesn't have a cartridge slot either.

Here they are:
http://www.ricardoeletro.com.br/Produto/Master-System-Evolution-132-Jogos-Tectoy/47-264-292-13196
http://www.ricardoeletro.com.br/Produto/MD-Play-com-20-Jogos-na-Memoria-Tectoy/47-264-290-13200

All these Sega consoles are produced by Tectoy (the same company behind the Zeebo).

Oh no, it isn't a good place to live for those of us who love games. Games and consoles here are expensive as hell.

Yes, it's one of the best selling periphs of all time. People who don't even have consoles buy it, there's even an official Windows SDK for it now.