Should MS 'Spin Off' the xbox brand?

But the thing is though, have the 360 sales really stalled? They have only sold a little over million units this year (looking at the Q1 and Q2 on Wikipedia), have they actually outsold the PS3 in the year 2007? And also with the Wii almost selling as many as the 360 in 7 months as it done in over a year.
Add to that they are losing about 280 million a quarter, in a bid to make a profit in 2008, but with the Billion dollar repair bill, that is gonna push that back another year. With Vista staring a service pack (Six months into its life) in the face, and google doing well with their online office, it may make sense for MS to stick the home entertainment division out on its own.

I think it is a serious cause for debate. Taking the whole gaming side out of this and looking at it more business like, i honestly think MS will be considering the future of the xbox brand. I think this time next year we will hear big news, either no more xbox's or the 720 with a launch window announced.
 
The problem is though, will they start making money next year?
In january they said they would have shifted 13-15 million units by June, then promptly slashed that to 'maybe it will be 12 million by June' If they don't start shifting the units in large quantities again then they may struggle. Halo 3 will give them a bit of a boost, but i think that the people who are desperate for Halo 3, will already own an xbox.
MS wont be able to keep spending money hand over fist, like they done with GTA IV.
I think it is cause for concern, especially with the Zune not making a dent in a market, i dont the next release will do much either, with it only being an 80GB! what is that all about?
 
McDaniel said:
I dont think they'll lose focus its not like they are allocating staff from there software teams under the xbox program - they run seperately so will have no adverse effect on that side of things
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Yeah, but Google are taking huge chunks of revenue out of MS with search engine revenue and office revenue, you also have open office, linux etc to contend with.

I think the point he is making is, they can't afford to throw money down the drain in this manner when they are taking some serious competition in their main areas of income. Not that they have staff and physical resources allocated where they shouldn't be, but they have loads of money being wasted and too busy looking at the wrong market for them.

Sure MS have loads of money, but they make 13 Billion a year, and the repair costs (no matter what year it went into) was a Billion. That is almost 10% of your overall profit gone, by a department that already costs a billion a year anyway. Add to that however much money they are chucking at devs, like the 50 million to rockstar, i think the division will be looked at quite seriously.
 
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