Next-next gen consoles, why bother?

[drone]

Worth noting as well that the X-Box division of Microsoft is pushing strongly to be spun off into its own company. They don't like being tethered to Microsoft anymore and want to cut ties.

This would be hilarious. Microsoft put a lot of money and effort into undermining their main profit base (PCs) with the XBox, to set them free after finally getting it respectable would be really, really stupid.

But I was watching the early days of this gen, and the fanboy flame wars on other websites. Whom would trumpet LOUDLY when MS or Sony got their console to the profitability point. And both had planned for a max of 2 years. And both got to is at around 18 months.

These match most of what I recall:
PS3 hardware profitable, April 2010
XBox, Jan 2008, profitability expected projection from May 2007
The XBox is nebulous though, their RROD issues really messed with the bottom line. And I'm sure the various SKUs for both make an real, actual per-piece profit/loss number hard to compute (as well as where they were sold).