Bill Gates flips his wig/orders cancellation of the XBox

According to Microsoft insiders, Robbie Bach will announce in August that Microsoft is pulling out of the game console business. Sources blame sluggish sales and massive losses accumulating from replacing defective XBox 360s, as well as extending the warranty on all XBox 360s. One program manager estimates that, in the worst case, Microsoft will need to replace around 30 million XBox 360s. Although the 360 has sold just shy of 12 million units, Microsoft now expects most of those replacement units to fail as well, and in some cases, fail multiple times.

The decision to jettison the XBox 360 was made after a heated meeting between the part-time executive/full-time philanthropist billionaire and the XBox "team."

Three slides into the Powerpoint presentation of XBox financials, Bill Gates stood up and began screaming:

"What the f*** are we doing here Robbie? All I ever hear from you a**holes is how fantastic the XBox is! How you're so much better than the PS/3 or the f***in' Wii! And look at this! We're f***ing hemorrhaging money on this g**damned thing and now you tell me it will cost ONE BILLION dollars to fix the f***ing things because you had to make it FASTER! You just had to make it the hottest thing and now the motherf***ing things are blowing up and catching on fire! S**t! What the f*** were you thinking, a**hole? Tell me when you're going to turn the corner on this! They make a profit on every f***ing Wii they sell! And they're kicking our asses all over Redmond. So what the f*** are you genuises going to do? How do you fix this? You know how many orphans I could immunize with the g**damned money you lose every single hour on this thing?! You better have an answer in the morning. And you tell Ballmer I'm going to kick his ass all over Medina the next chance I get. How do you think it looks for Microsoft to be getting its ass kicked like this!? Maybe you a**holes think that motherf***ing Zune is going to make up the difference? Take your f***ing Powerpoint and get the f*** out of here!"

Robert J. Bach, President, Microsoft Entertainment
& Devices Division in happier days

Sources say Microsoft will continue to support the XBox and XBox 360, mainly to prevent the flood of class action suits sure to follow the cancellation. All hardware development on the 360 has now been ended. Software titles still under development will be released, however, all game titles that have not reached an "alpha" stage may be cancelled. Some insiders told us that Microsoft is exploring porting 360 games under development, as well as top selling titles like Halo 2, to both the PS/3 and Wii platforms in a move similar to Sega's strategy when it pulled out of the hardware market.

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