Halo 3 Leads Microsoft Games Division to Profitable Quarter

Fresh off the news that their primary competitor Sony is reporting a $841 Million loss this past quarter, Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, which houses all things Xbox, has turned a profit. In the most recent quarter that ended September 30, the division had revenue of $1.929 billion and operating income of $165 million -- a remarkable turnaround over the same period last year, when they reported revenue of $1.011 billion and an operating loss of $142 million.

It's seems a certain record-shattering Spartan soldier had something to do with it.Microsoft Corporation itself had an operating income of $5.92 billion and revenue of $13.76 billion. That's a 27% revenue increase over the same time last year, reportedly its biggest increase since 1999.

Meanwhile the $841 Million loss by Sony's game division was more than double the $381 Million loss reported during the same period a year ago.

Losses from Sony's Game's Division Double

Sony has announced its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2007, showing an overall revenue growth year-on-year of 12.3 per cent. That's the good news, the bad news is losses from their game's division doubled to $841 Mil USD.

Sony attributed the loss primarily to pricing the PS3 at less than the price of manufacturing it. Losses on hardware are nothing new to console manufacturers who reap the huge bulk of their profits from software sales. However, considering the slow pace of sales of PS3 consoles combined with low software attach rates, the immediate future looks pretty bleak for Sony's bottom line, at least from their games division.

Don't worry too much for Papa Sony though, he won't be dipping into the kids college fund anytime soon; the company as a whole reported a profit of $787 Mil USD during the quarter.