Also, I'd like to see your source for the statement that they are making money. I'm sure they aren't as huge loss leaders as they were in the past, but I'd be surprised to know if they are making money on them. If Microsoft could cut the MSRP, they would have.
If Microsoft could have, I think they would've offered their subsidized consoles (like they did the 360), and launch with Halo as their premiere title....
(this will probably get a lot of hate) then again Playstation actually decided to play video games this time and xbox one is trying to be a super Roku.
This was clearly mentioned by Sony before the launch of the console. As for the Xboxone, Microsoft also mentioned that if someone buys one game with the system, they are already making a profit overall. They are NOT selling their systems cheap compared to the previous generations, in terms of what's inside the box. I'll have to find the quotes, but I'm sure you can find them as well if you have 5 minutes.
My point is that when the Xbox 360 came out, for example, the games running on it at launch were very impressive versus what the PCs could do at the time. In this generation, watching the launch games on PS4 and Xboxone just feels MEH at best. They are way too late in the game vs the power they are packing in.
Sorry but let me call BS on this one. We're not talking about PS3 kind of hardware here, where the architecture was unknown and new and developers had to learn a lot. The PS4 and Xboxone are using basically PC hardware under the hood, and the learning curve should be close to zero for most developers involved.