Microsoft reported for the quarter: revenue from Xbox grew by 55%, from Windows fell by 29%

Microsoft said that in October-December 2010 they had a confident quarter with a profit of $ 8.17 billion and a record revenue of $ 19.95 billion. The result is about the same as a year earlier, when they had a profit of $ 8.5 billion and revenue of $ 19 billion - but, although the total numbers did not change much and managed to slightly exceed expectations, the internal changes were significant: excellent sales of the Xbox 360 and Kinect increased the income of the entertainment department and devices by 55% to $ 3.6 billion, while revenue from Windows and Windows Live fell by almost 30% to $ 5.5 billion. This means that the difference between the two device departments and the Windows department has shrunk to $ 1.3 billion, while a year ago it was $ 4.8 billion - and this clearly explains why Xbox was the main topic of Ballmer’s performance at CES this year, after how they usually ignored him,

Update: as our friend Michael Gartenberg noted, in the fourth quarter of 2009, Windows department revenue was reinforced by delayed pre-order payments for Windows 7, and, subtracting them, the difference between Windows and Xbox changed from 3.1 billion to 1.3 billion, and Windows sales were down only 8 percent. It doesn’t change much globally, but the delay in pre-order payments changes the context: Microsoft pushed money to get a large quarter to run Windows 7, and now everything is aligned.