Bill and Melinda Gates are having sex on huge piles of your money. It's all thanks to the Kinect and its uncanny ability to help sell Xbox 360s.
Microsoft is reporting a huge financial success of sales increases for both pieces of hardware that amount to a 13% growth in the first three months of 2011 over 2010.
During that three month period Microsoft made a whopping $16.43 billion in revenue with $1.94 billion of that coming from their Entertainment & Devices Division (EDD) which is an increase of 60% over their contribution to last years figure, which was $1.21 billion. Keep in mind though, that the EDD figures include mobile phones and Microsoft Gaming Studios as well. But even with that said, there were 2.1 million 360s sold over last years 1.5 million, which is a new sales record for the console.
On top of those staggering numbers the revenue for the 360 itself was up 69% to 712 million, which helped the EDD make an overall profit of 225 million, which is 50% more than they made last year. Microsoft CFO Peter Klein could not be happier about the news:
"We delivered strong financial results despite a mixed PC environment, which demonstrates the strength and breadth of our businesses… Consumers are purchasing Office 2010, Xbox and Kinect at tremendous rates, and businesses of all sizes are purchasing Microsoft platforms and applications."
Overall, profit was up 10% for the multimedia giant this quarter, who made a whopping $5.71 billion take home after all costs have been deducted. All this growth may be making MS a little cocky though, as they now expect a 25% increase for next quarter. With all the recent bad press Sony has been getting over the PSN being hacked and the potential leaking of consumer credit card information, I would not be entirely shocked to see a large growth in 360 sales. Hopefully by that time you'll all have the image of Bill and Melinda getting it on wiped from your memory.
[Source]
