Xbox became profitable almost a year ago. Way to keep up, kids.

Yes, and some people can't afford ipods. God forbid, and may the rot in h*** and die a slow death, but some people just don't have $200 to spend on an mp3 player.

One day someone will explain to me why fanboys hate competition. Never been a bad thing... ever.

When MS offers to pay customers to haul the Zunes away, then they might be able to move a few.

MS is the $.99 store of technology - people might buy it as a last resort if it's cheap enough, $399 PC's, XBox price drop, etc, etc ... but not enough for the Zune ... BTW, the Xbox division might've had a profitable quarter but it is still $15 BILLION dollars in the red which mans if MS sells 1 BILLION Xboxes, they are back to breakeven ... good luck with that. It's not that alledged Apple fanboys hate competition, it's that MS comes 4 years late to a market (every market whether's it's video game consoles or DAP devices) but they pretend that they arrived here completely unaware there are even any other comapnies ... MS is the GM of the 21st century - that is the fact. They have not had a consumer success in 10 years - think about that.

MS is the $.99 store of technology - people might buy it as a last resort if it's cheap enough, $399 PC's, XBox price drop, etc, etc ... but not enough for the Zune ... BTW, the Xbox division might've had a profitable quarter but it is still $15 BILLION dollars in the red which mans if MS sells 1 BILLION Xboxes, they are back to breakeven ... good luck with that. It's not that alledged Apple fanboys hate competition, it's that MS comes 4 years late to a market (every market whether's it's video game consoles or DAP devices) but they pretend that they arrived here completely unaware there are even any other comapnies ... MS is the GM of the 21st century - that is the fact. They have not had a consumer success in 10 years - think about that.

This isn't about bashing Microsoft, but no matter how you slice it, news like this makes it clear that Zune isn't doing well and quite frankly has no potential future.

Microsoft usually hits it's stride by the third generation of a product. Indeed, Zunes have become better over time. The problem is, so have the market leading iPods. To drop prices during the peak holiday sales is to make it clear the product simply isn't selling. Margins are already believed to be tight for this product. Microsoft is not getting the volume discounts that Apple is on manufacturing, etc. I would seem that this is an act of desperation to try to maintain an already low market share rather than to try to turn a profit. Microsoft can afford to do this, perhaps at the expense of the remaining players in the non-iPod market.

At this point, the Zune is more of an embarrassment for Microsoft. It's not helping the Microsoft brand image. Rather, it only serves as a reminder of failure. If Microsoft doesn't show a profit for the Zune on the holiday quarter of it's third season, I have to question Ballmer's business case for continuing to compete in this market.

how the h*** is something that is over 6 billion in the hole going to be profitable in 2 to 3 quarters? what, suddenly it makes money and we forget about the years before?

and the point is that ms bought their way to this point. name one other company, one will do, that can afford to keep a product commercially available for over 6 billion big ones.

So, everyone who posted that Microsoft is making money or something positive about the zune got thumbs down to their post. There are so many friggin apple fanboys here it sickens me. Have any of you actually had a zune FFS? I had a zune, then took it back for an ipod nano-choromatic. The sound quality of the nano-chromatic was horrible compared to the zune. So I got myself a 80gb zune instead.

So why are people buying products with lower sound quality and less features? (I even bother with the ipod touch because for an 8gb player I won't pay over the price of an 80gb player). The zune is a superior media player IMO. (Not to mention the tilt was useless and the stupid shake to shuffle function.) iDiots.

I forgot to add this to my comments about the Xbox being profitable: Microsoft are currently taking huge losses for the Arcade units. So they're most likely not making money and back to bleeding themselves again. Moreover, while they received a huge lead over the PS3 last month in November's NPD, they only increased their sales by 8% compared to November 2007. That's pretty disappointing considering they currently have the cheapest next gen console on the market and have been advertising the h*** out of the $199 price point and holiday bundles.