In recent days many sites have published the news that Microsoft would lose 400 million dollars in the Xbox division due to the Xbox One. It is, however, a bad news , derived from the mistaken interpretation of a document released by Microsoft on the results of the last fiscal year. Indeed, many did not even read the document, but have confined themselves to bring back blindly wrong assumptions made by a user on NeoGAF, whose topic was closed by admin just because it contained erroneous information.

MondoXbox has not published the news precisely because it was a non-news: Microsoft has lost 400 million Dollars as claimed by many. It is therefore time to clarify how things stand, helping with the excellent analysis published by the site Neowin. What Microsoft said in his report is that, compared to the previous fiscal year , in the fiscal year just ended section Xbox revenues have risen by 34%, up to 1.7 billion dollars . At the same time, the " cost of revenue " (i.e. the costs of production, marketing and distribution) of the sector of Xbox increased by 72% from the previous year, namely by 2.1 billion dollars . It is important to note that in both cases it is not absolute but relative deviations last year.

The news was generated by the fact that many have taken the two values (or rather no, many have simply copied as read on NeoGAF without even understand what they were actually speaking), noting a difference of 400 million dollars and considering that this was the loss of the Xbox. Actually the difference is only an increase of Xbox costs compared to the previous year , one thing absolutely physiological in the case of a console's launch as it increases investments in marketing, there is a peak in production and distribution costs, and so on. Just think, for example, that the same document explains how, in the last financial year have been spent 600 million dollars more in research and development costs compared to the previous year, a figure that obviously affects the overall calculation. What that number does not indicate absolutely is a loss, i.e. a red in the balance sheet, in the Xbox.

In fact, by applying the percentages indicated by Microsoft, we note that in the last fiscal year the Xbox had $ 7.1 billion in revenues compared with 5 billion dollars in costs . This indicates a profit in gross operating profit (EBITDA) of 2.1 billion, which is furthermore in line with Microsoft's earlier statements that the Xbox would be active and not at a loss.

Some sites that had given the news much like sensationalist popular financial magazine Forbes, published a correction explaining that in fact this is not a real loss but only an annual decrease in MOL; but that is a financial magazine whose readers are very careful to errors of this type, number to the editor. How many of the sites that took advantage of the news to make easy sensationalism looking for clicks, rettificheranno what? You evaluate.

And now, sorry, but I have a plane to catch. Destination: Cologne!