Sales primarily. Moving merchandise globally, signing royalty deals and partnering with carries for app bundling deals is the crux of their business. Software

Sales primarily. Moving merchandise globally, signing royalty deals and partnering with carries for app bundling deals is the crux of their business. Software (and other intellectual properties) don't quite have the same supply-side economies. Once the game is done, you can make a sequel or variations with little effort. The rest is just about how many copies/downloads you can move. Or how many partner licenses you can sign. Really, it's all just profit after. I had one person within Microsoft put it as: On that first CD Microsoft ships, it writes off a few billion dollars in losses. After that every Windows license is just pure profit.