That is indeed the case, however you’re applying logic to someone arguing with none in mind.
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I’m just thinking they’re not aware of it, as this isn’t something that comes up often and the way the gaming media goes around talking about it, is like they would like everyone to believe that the Series S sold less than a million consoles in total.
Targets and Walmarts in the US apparently removing Xbox sections in stores. Soon will only be available online I guess from MS directly and a few vendors if it stays the course. I personally haven’t bought a system in store for a long time, but I’m guessing some still do as I saw online a lot of people lining up for Switch 2 launch. I wonder what this tells us about their business model for next gen.
Also, my prediction is that GTA6 will not boost sales as some anticipate and while we might get a 1 month or 2 of boosted sales, it will be nothing like some expect and this gen’s hardware numbers will still be overall massively under last gen by the end. I expect the PC release of GTA6 to come much sooner than anticipated.
Right now it’s just a rather weird situation because at this moment in several European countries of the Microsoft website any Xbox console is out of stock, refurbished ones too. Hopefully it’s aj error.
It’s never an error - outside of US, Series stock ebbs and flows - there is a drop, price goes closer to ERP, over time consoles sell out and price goes way above ERP again until another drop. I imagine production capacity goes to cloud.
I would argue that one of the biggest hurdles for the Series S was that publishers were continuing to release cross gen titles. The appeal of the Series S was that it was the cheapest entry point into the next gen. However, when most games continue to release on last gen, there was very little reason for most to make the jump.
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I find it weird considering we know they have millions of users still on Xbox One generation and should at least have some sort of device available for them to transition to a newer generation and keep subscribing to Gamepass. Unless they really don’t care or think those people will just transition directly to Xbox PC but if the value proposition isn’t there I just don’t know what to expect.
Like I don’t want to act like I know more than a company worth several trillion dollars, but I’m still somewhat completely clueless as to how 2 smaller companies are able to put out consoles at a cheaper price and keep stocks at retail while the biggest company in the world is struggling to do so, especially with all the resources they have and the money they could through at the right people to fix the problem. Even a CFO should know that focusing solely on profit margins isn’t necessarily a smart business move.
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I see. It’s just wild to me how all those countries the MS site doesn’t have any in stock anymore. Of all things happening I thought a Xbox console would always be available for me. Because let’s say my Xbox dies, knocking on wood that it doesn’t, it sounds like it might be a challenge to find a new one. Which is just crazy to me.
Exactly that. But it seems they don’t have any faith in consoles selling in these European countries any longer, and I guess they don’t expect it would change much if they lowered the price significantly for the holidays.
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I always assumed that since they bought Bethesda and ABK, both companies with worldwide presence and that know how to market their stuff, that MS would be smart enough to integrate their marketing departments into Xbox and have them give them a lesson on how to sell your product to different audiences in different parts of the world.
But alas, it seems like MS preferred to lay them off and keep focusing on what they were already doing without listening to people with actualy experience.
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There are rumors that MS requires high profit margin across all divisions, which may kill 1st party hardware in the long run, and since 3rd party hardware will be able to run PC games as well, it may cripple 3rd party support from indies that will simply prioritize all other consoles. And it may eventually kill some 1st party studios, because just making back the costs wouldn’t be enough any longer.
https://x.com/JezCorden/status/1941557161378951631 https://x.com/KoreaXboxnews/status/1977000476215591173
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Yeah I remember reading about this, I just think they set unrealistic expectations and that not all divisions can have super high profit margins like Office 365 or Azure. I mean, car manufacturers are used to running single digit margins and it’s just the way it works in that market. I also highly doubt Nintendo and Sony have 20% profit margins as well.
So it’s somehow insane they’d be willing to destroy a whole division just to try to reach the impossible. If you go to the supermarket to buy milk and that one costs several dollars more than the others because that company needs higher margins, the reality is people will get the cheapest.
So if you head to the store and have several systems that essentially do the same thing but one costs a lot more, it’s also highly likely you’ll come out with one of the other systems.
Now, if they do that on purpose to kill their own system, it’s also somehow a bad look for them as they’ll end up alienating millions of customers and if we’re honest, that 5 billion per year Gamepass money probably falls to less than a billion if you take away console users. So all of that added up to me looks like their division could actually make a lot less revenues in the future instead of growing.
That next gen transition will most likely make or break them, and right now it does look like they are setting themselves up for failure as cloud isn’t ready for the spotlight and users aren’t ready for it either and the economy right now is so bad that a lower entry cost is almost mandatory for success.
Maybe a miracle will happen by the time they release their console, and I think at this point sooner is probably a much better idea than later!
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Wouldn’t be the first time Satya killed a division only to regret it later.
You’d think that the lesson was learnt, but I
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Since the next Xbox is going to be a pc will all those third party pc controllers work on it. I hate the bumpers on the Xbox controller and if the rumored steam controller is real and is basically a steamdeck layout without a screen I’d rather use that
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The reason they raised the price on the Xbox consoles is because of Tariffs. Anyone who ignores that is ignoring reality.
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Also inflation and the stagnating market. Playstation and Xbox prices were increasing (mostly in non US regions too) long before the current administration took office in the USA.
I think there’s a big concern in Xbox es sitting on shelves. Prices were going up even before the tarrifs. It costs more to produce Xbox hardware and they probably aren’t projecting a ton more sales with most of the core Xbox fan base having upgraded. It could also be some more wheels like them maybe not wanting Xbox One gamers to upgrade to Series if the next box is so close and represents a massive shift in what Xbox even is.
It is unfortunate to see because you would think they’d bolster their own marketing efforts with the massive global success of the publishers, especially ABK, that they own. Sure they can’t make COD exclusive, but Xbox should be synonymous with it (and Minecraft for that matter) as a platform. It’s crazy to me that so many of the biggest games in the world are Xbox first party now and yet the Xbox ecosystem and Xbox platforms are so small in so many regions (virtually unknown in some and with very little physical presence). Xbox is doing a better job with Marketing (with being at events and hosting their own), but it’s just not good enough fast enough.
Right now feels like a lot of “bad situations” coalescing at once. And then the pressure is being laid on by a late stage capitalism with investors chasing an Ai bubble at the cost of everything else for the short term gain. We hope that Xbox has and is implementing a good strategy here. Like maybe they’re holding on console stock until 2026 when they expect demand to be higher with GTA I and their four horsemen. Or maybe they’re focusing on the next box and making sure they have the resources and Microsoft money to not go out of stock of those at launch (like the Series consoles unfortunately dealt with due to covid). And in the meantime they’re using the Xbox Full screen experience and Xbox PC OEMs (handheld in 2025 and maybe a desktop or gaming laptop in 2026) to hold gamers over while preparing us for more Xbox ecosystem unification and growing on PC. Or maybe it’s something else. I do think the timing is the most painful thing right now. Xbox has released multiple videos basically saying the series generation is over and teasing the next evolution of Xbox. So we’re in those lameduck years but it’s only gotten more expensive to produce the consoles themselves and Microsoft is putting more pressure on its business units to increase profit more and more. It’s really depressing to see because Xbox is now an over 20 billion USD business (and they even managed to grow AFTER ABK) and Microsoft’s market cap is insane, but late stage capitalism makes it so that nothing is ever “enough”. And it doesn’t help how the industry and media has responded to Xbox’s actually pro consumer competitor moves earlier in this generation. Nor does this economy which has been terrible since COVID (arguably before) and only worsened since (especially with game publishers thinking COVID was a new gaming boom and trying to grow too much during that time). Oh not to mention how COVID impacted the game pipeline and all supply chains leading to a really rough start for Xbox and then ABK took way too long with how political that became (and now current global politics are making things difficult for Xbox a different way). It’s been a headache of a generation: the Xbox One generation was the worst to lose not because everyone locked in, but because the world lost its mind after it 
.
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I’m torn between the stock being down / out either being a sign they’re using a lot of the chips to get xCloud ready to exit Beta (as it often has queues) or simply a stock issue where they rushed some to the US to beat tariffs and so are taking a while to rebuild stock levels elsewhere - or both of those combined.
Or whispers that we’re actually closer to next gen than we think! 
Apparently Xbox controllers are on some steep discounts in some places - given they’re used for PC too that seems counterintuitive unless it’s just an offer, but maybe it’s clearing the decks for a new Xbox controller for a new gen
Conspiracy mode off now lol, I suspect it’s a combination of the cloud focus, rushing stock for tariffs and the fact that Microsoft is a corporate software company so just doesn’t do stock levels or marketing / promo deals in the same way retail-focused Nintendo and PlayStation do…
Also I think they only use a couple of huge distribution centres for all of Europe - I bought a non-custom controller from them a few years ago in the UK and it shipped from mainland Europe, which might explain why you’re seeing the same stock position in multiple countries @Staffy
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Sales talk is for statisticians. I like the series s, not having the 4K BC that the One x had was a bit of a misstep and don’t think a price increase of 20 buck for the additional memory would have made much difference to sales.
Don’t own a series s myself, dad owns two units One is in his caravan and the other series s is upstairs in his house which he uses for streaming and also got that developer mode on it.
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I have 2 friends exclusively on Series S and they are more than satisfied with it, one of them having just recently switched to a 4K TV as his 1080p broke down.
Both my daughters play on Series S and are happy with the performance of Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite and Genshin Impact on it as well as the odd indie game.
I game on both PC and Series X and so does my brother and again, very happy with the design and performance of that console on top of the insane backwards compatibility it offers.
If MS were godlike, they’d make the Xbox Fullscreen Experience available on Xbox Series S and X and since they already have original Xbox hardware, they’d already be backwards compatible. Then it’s just a matter of MS making drivers available with AMD for that hardware, which should be easy since all Xboxes have the same hardware in them and they would immediately become compatible with PC storefronts. That’s also help you transition people over to next gen much more easily.
I say that as I’m worried they won’t have a lower end tier next gen and keeping Series S and X with a similar experience and easier to develop for PC interface, that’d leave an option for the lower end user who cannot afford to change yet or who would by buying a used console for someone moving upwards.
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The entire crux of your argument was begun from the position of using Xbox Series console sales… do you even know what you’re arguing at this point, or is it just contrarianism for the sake of it?
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Eh, mobile phones are embedded in the everyday life of every young and adult person in the modern world. Video game consoles are not and on top of that the total number of hardware units sold gen to gen hasn’t grown in over twenty years. What growth prospects are there for MS when they’re up against Sony and Nintendo firing on virtually every cylinder?
Microsoft, in the context of being a multi-trillion dollar behemoth that must show growth, is right to go all in on getting their reach across as many devices as possible. They’ve made the transition with the grace of a cow on skates, however. They will forever be terrible at communicating what they’re doing.
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