No I’m saying it’s not clear. We only have estimates. Take Two’s estimates put the Series X|S at about 50 million after less than 6 years. That’d be a better pace than the Xbox One and this generation saw a very long cross gen period, pivot away from exclusives, “No console required” cloud gaming, COVID supply issues, price increases, AI shortage production issues, and no mid gen upgrade. At the low end of estimates Xbox Series consoles are doing slightly worse. The only official information Microsoft gives are year over year percent changes for investors and all that really tells us is that yeah when Xbox costs more and there’s no new mid Gen upgrade, sales dwindle overtime especially when all the enthusiasts long since upgraded. Actual hardware sales performance and comparisons to Xbox One at this time are still just estimates from different sources.
At the end of the day, all that’s clear is well none of that. 2025 was a bad year for hardware for EVERYONE. Even the Switch 2 slumped a bit despite it being its launch year. It was when the AI shortages started happening and the economy kept seeing people’s Financials squeezed. Not to mention the global trade wars (which even indirectly impacted the money people had for commodity spending). Microsoft wasn’t producing Xboxes to sell because it was too expensive. Games wise they still did fantastic and earnings calls cited subscription services as offsetting and expected downturn. Even if everything went perfectly 5 years into a 7 year (expected) generation with no mid gen upgrade/pro model most people who want a Series X or S would’ve bought one already and sales would slowly be going down and then there’d be a next gen announcement in 2026 and launch in 2027.
C’Mon most say it’s around 30 to 40 million & that worst still, Xbox only sold 2 million consoles in 2025. Sure Sony saw sales dip, but 2025 was a poor year for Xbox console sales & where even revenue saw a dip
I can’t imagine these decisions are made lightly, but yeah. Maybe before Phil went, “Are people going to leave or join Xbox over being able to hide achievements? Probably not. Let’s focus on XYZ for now instead.” Xbox has also been in a major growth phase up through 2025. Maybe internally things are at a point where they can focus on QOL. I mean before now updates focused more on brand new features. Stuff like play history. I really like the play history update. It helps bring the experience together across platforms and it’s great on my Xbox console home screen. But I’m like 100% sure no one requested it. Maybe before it was “We need to get these things done to evolve the ecosystem and welcome Helix (converge PC and console).” Now those are done and mostly and it’s, “Okay. Let’s do these things users requested.” Could also speak to the being energized. It probably feels more like “work work” have to come up with new features and meet goal deadlines vs responding to feedback
Who is most? Most what? Most random people on the internet? I’ve said that on the low end estimates put it at around 30 million and high end there’s the likes of Take Two saying they’re already around 50 million. All I’ve said is these are estimates from various sources with various methods. Nothing is clear.
And again I said 2025 was a bad year, but it was a bad year for everyone. It was a bad year for the economy far beyond gaming. Microsoft had already projected a decrease in overall revenue. They actually beat that for part of 2025 and had surprise increases in year over year revenue, but for that last quarter especially they did see that expected dip. According to them that was offset by subscription revenue and the overall gaming revenue dip was largely due to COD Black Ops 7 not being as big as 6 (which yeah, it’s the fatigue year).
Not sure if you have been following many other related Microsoft news, but it does appear more and more the company is taking a back seat on their push for AI. Windows is also receiving a lot of updates that have been warranted as well as stealth removing any push of AI alas Co-Pilot.
While it’s early to call, it is possible that Satya and others were blindsided by the tech of AI. They hit bullseye with cloud, but it hardly interfered with other divisions aside from save to cloud and/or Azure. If anything, they have been good to millions. AI on the other hand is basically if NFT took off for a longer period of time.
It definitely has its use and it can be helpful. The problem is the scope the businesses, let alone Microsoft, took it way far too deep into the future that it simply wasn’t ready. Even so, the way how they handled rubbed consumers the wrong way. They didn’t keep it as an assist, they made it appear as a replacement.
It remind me of South Park episode where the bar was set so low, anything garbage is deemed great and acceptable. Once its risen, everyone will realize what they thought was great is crap and remember what’s truly important. Case in point, it is possible Satya and others are seeing things clearer and perhaps AI isn’t the golden goose. After all, he did take Microsoft to the top. It’s just the thought of AI was the wrong course to take.
Time will tell as it is still early. It’s not too late to fix.
I think they’re realising consumer AI is a money sink and until it’s a lot better not that useful unless you’re paying for it in some way - for example Google Gemini it’s by helping their search business, Alexa+ it’s for Prime members and helps them sell shit, Office 365 it’s becoming a paid add on to the subscription.
Primarily, corporate use of AI is the way Microsoft seem to be going, as Copilot Enterprise that locks the data down to the organisation (so isn’t an ISO compliance or security risk in the same way) can be sold for a lot of money as a productivity tool.
So yes it seems it’ll be tacked back a little as part of a wider shift, accepting true AI is a while off so just put it in the most profitable places while waiting - and in the meantime pivot to other growth opportunities.
Hopefully, Helix / Windows gaming is identified as a major potential growth area, and cloud gaming may improve too as they’re investing hugely in Azure again (in the UK both data centres are nearing capacity, so West is having a massive expansion and South is expanding too), and they’ll maybe invest more…
Yes, Playstation is out selling Xbox… as they have every generation. The only time Xbox came close to closing that gap was when they released the 360 early and Sony absolutely fumbled the PS3. Even then Sony still came back and outsold Xbox. Since then (especially when Microsoft fumbled the Xbox One during digital library lock in) the sales have stabilized for both. The Xbox One as well sold less than half of the PS4. The OG Xbox sold way, WAY less than half of the PS2 (but it gets a slight pass for being first; in general it was a mess though with it being a financial failure and unsustainable). Compared to themselves (not PS), Xbox sales are overall stable and fine. Not fantastic because fantastic would mean a lot of growth, but fine.
Microsoft chose not to even produce much console hardware at the time. There’s a reason why they worked with ASUS for the ROG Xbox Ally, pushed cloud & PC, and the games coming out. Microsoft has financial goals and investors to please and Xbox was too expensive to produce at the time (especially to have it sit on shells because it’d be a tough sell during the holiday season with limited discounts). Sony and Nintendo are much better hardware companies and had stock in hand or cheaper hardware to produce. There’s not much Xbox could’ve done. Still the games were great, there was slight surprise revenue growth during some quarters, and the expected decline was offset by subscription.
It is what it is. I don’t think exclusives much come into play as the “primary” reason for declining sales or even a relevant reason at all when we’re 5 years into the generation without a mid Gen upgrade/new model (storage increases don’t count; a no disc drive series X doesn’t really count either (the Xbox One S had noticeable technical improvements over the XOne)), prices have significantly risen instead of dropped since 2020, and Microsoft is barely producing hardware. During 2025 they seemed to have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to prepare for Helix (next Gen console) and improve the production pipeline for console hardware and accessories. But 2025 was always going to suck in terms of hardware sales and year over year revenue with COD being in its lame duck back to back sequel year (they went from like the most successful COD in Black ops 6 to one of the underperformers in 7, and COD is a major MAJOR driving force of gaming revenue for that quarter now). All this in addition people having less money to spend on entertainment hobbies and other economic issues directly and indirectly impacting Xbox.
Aren’t that proof exclusives isn’t playing the role it once played. 360 played into the social media zeitgeist that was starting at the time. Right now, the core gamers are aging out, and Xbox is looking to get the attention of kids like yours and a new generation. Xbox has to find ways to play into the TikTok zeitgeist or whatever is coming next.
I’d agree that Xbox console sales did fall but that was in my opinion by design, it was obvious they drastically started pushing console production more for cloud than for sales and they were trying to really look hopeless to regulators so those 2 years everything seemed to have gone to a halt. Not to mention ABK brought a new business mandate on Xbox, they needed to target 30 percent or more in profit which meant they couldn’t afford the loss in console sales which drove a price bump and this multiplatform initiative. As for Sony they haven’t had similar issues or a 30 percent profit push on them which if they did would have cut off almost all their funding, marketing and money hatting not to mention they are closing studios left and right and laying off as well.
I would say also console sales are not a good metric as we are not certain how many consoles either have sold and then there is shipped or sell in and sell through which Sony has stopped reporting and removed from their website. So, it’s possible Sony has sold significantly less but shipped more. There was a gap of over 9 million in their sell in vs sell through when it was reported. Then there are households with multiple PS5s or Xboxes so in the end engagement is the better tracker. Engagement wise Xbox is doing well probably because of PC and cloud.
At the end of the day Xbox would like to have engagement on their platform like the Xbox app similar or above Steam, they have talked about the 3 billion plus gamers which they are aiming for, and consoles is not where that happens but can be a foundation for it.
AI was a major driving force of growth for stock valuation “at the time”. It helped Microsoft keep up with Nvidia and temporarily break into the insane 3 trillion market cap territory. But yeah, Microsoft was just shoving it everywhere as a “tool” without any real guidance on how that tool would actually be useful for most people and why most people would want it. That’s ignoring the controversies on human artistic merit (it’s not a GOOD idea to market your generative AI on, “Hey look at this poem AI just **** out!”), environmental concerns, economic concerns (jobs being replaced and layoffs to invest more in data centers), and just general concerns with it still being delusional and not that good (kinda hard to recover from all the messed up stories of like generated responses encouraging self-harm (way worse than self harm)).
So yes, Microsoft seems to be pulling back. They threw everything at the wall and nothing stuck. Okay a couple of things stuck. They seem to related to corporate customers and behind the scenes use. In general though consumer facing AI has just been terrible and they threw it into everything. The only result has been making consumers angry. As the AI stock surges have stopped doing that, it’s become more beneficial for Microsoft to pull back on AI on consumer products and services and to do so in a very vocal manner.
Imo, these were things that were being worked on but got put on hold because Nadella wanted Xbox to focus on new customers over the old. But the massive amount of negativity really hit Microsoft hard, Microslop coming from Windows Central really went full mainstream, and has placed a lot more pressure on them than they thought so they’re going through their main consumer market to build up a more positive image.
Exactly. I do hope those in this new positions can deliver though. I’m really interested in what Asha will do as I can’t really say she’s doing much differently. I would hope the Netflix partnership results in some kind of Xbox show on Netflix to promote the platform.
I think that she’s already doing a good job, as she is using what was left for her to work with effectively. Putting together a new team help answer to fan feedback is a great move, as it shows Asha isn’t as reined in by Microsoft as Phil and Sarah were.
It doesn’t help that this year has started the trend of AI downfall or at least the case of no longer being safe and profitable. Call it bubble burst if you will.
The Jury is still out for me. She is pretty much taking the approach Phil took after taking the reins, He removed Kinect and lowered the Xbox price from there Xbox user voice was started to take fan feedback and they started working on the dashboard.
I certainly like the goals she spoke of, but I want to see how she handles the June showcase.
A bubble bursting would be a LOT more painfully economically and for more than just the tech companies. If anything this seems like Microsoft trying to get ahead of the curve in anticipation of a burst. They’re positioning AI more as something behind the scenes and for businesses. If they’re lucky then they can come out as the “good guy consumer friendly” company while also keeping AI as a lucrative business for corporations. I hope they aren’t that lucky. But unfortunately generative AI will never fully go away. Ideally it’ll just stabilize. Businesses will find sustainable uses for it and it’ll be effecient so it doesn’t harm the environment as much.
I think that’s a fair criticism, but most likely the June Showcase was already mostly planned. I don’t think we’d actually see “PURE” Sharma leadership Xbox until after the Helix launch.
This is what really makes things feel more hopeful for me. Microsoft in general is doing a lot more to win back consumer support. It’s a great chance for Xbox. Sharma is also doing what Xbox needs her for with bringing back some brand love and trust. I think it’s a bit smoke and mirrors, but smoke and mirrors are what Xbox needs right now. For me, Xbox has already been built into the platform and ecosystem that I’m happy to call my preferred place of play. I’m not looking for sweeping changes there. I hope Xbox thinks the same. It’s not about redefining the what the platform has become, but “refocusing” (or looking like they’re refocusing). Right now what Xbox needs is the marketing chops and to put on the show that brings back community trust. The business is already stronger than ever and on a great path, but Sharma needs to match people’s perceptions with that reality.