Yup, MS made sure they can make money outside of consoles.
Numbers are all over... but they still sold 240k in US October.

I must see global sale numbers, but for MS is just another day at the office.

Its not just a matter of exclusives but also good will. MS seems to be taking water everytime they overhype a game to heavens end, and then fall short of those rightly astronomical expectations. PlayStation on the other hand has consistently delivered, and over delivered.

I never thought I would EVER say that its a good thing for a console maker to exit consoles. But with the direction MS is taking… its hard to argue with that they might do us all a favor by exiting.

"What is causing the Xbox to be down"

Not having compelling software this year (no, Starfield is not compelling sorry) and PC getting Day 1 treatment with Xbox consoles.

Xbox down 11% from the Xbox One is non-hyperbolically disastrous. The Xbox One announcement was a PR disaster and Microsoft lost a lot of goodwill from the consumers. Not to mention, you couldn't buy the standalone console without the Kinect until June 2014. Even then, despite those factors, it actually managed to stay not far behind the PS4 in the US for 3 years until Sony really hit the ground running with its 1st party games.

The Xbox Series came into this generation with a bunch of advantages over the Xbox One: no PR disaster, the Series X being the most powerful console, and the Series S having a low-ish entry price. So the fact it's doing worse is very bad.

Xbox is down because absolutely nobody needs an Xbox to play Xbox games with the large push into GP.
There really is no reason at all for MS to continue to pump out hardware when they want everyone and their dog subscribed to GP, so just do what MS does and force it.

Yeah along with his earlier comments about not being able to win the console war, that's been the "read between the lines" message.
It's hard for us to say what's best for MS. The gray area around how many Xboxes out there do they need to be profitable, how many exclusives do they need to keep on Xbox to retain the people they have vs. the potential $ of making those games multi-platform... don't know, it's not an all or nothing proposition.
They may choose to keep churning out some exclusives depending on how those projections / calculations look for them.

“Remember when Phil said he considers PS and Switch to be part of Xbox... we maybe he is alluding to going full third party.”

Phil started alluding to this when he told Kinda Funny that Xbox lost the console war. Microsoft wants to dominate gaming, and they see Game Pass as the way to do it. The problem is selling Game Pass on proprietary platforms. PS5, Nintendo, the App Store, and Google Play store are all walled gardens that want a % of the monthly subscription fee.

Prolonged continuance of the 8th gen is what hurt XB more than PS. MS mandating that all newer games must be made to work on the prior was a big turnoff for many developers. Many of which just opted not to release their game on XB at all and instead went to PS and Switch. It probably also ddnt help that MS kept touting how Gamepass was the best thing ever.

From a consumer POV... its fantastic. Its easy to use and has a huge selection for every type of consumer. From a dev/pub POV... its a bitch to make any $$ at. Its great for exposure, but they rely on people buying instead of renting. Its all about the messaging. Series is a great platform... probably one of their best in terms of reliability and performance. Their messaging of play anywhere and how you want to is keeping consumers from buying because they are being told they no longer NEED to.

I only imagine if XB didn't have the 'cheap entry' to next gen what the numbers would look like

Insane momentum.. Sony show us more 1st party games in the pipeline

You people celebrate these victories like it's your hometown sports team lol. Do you REALLY want your rival console to fail and disappear only to have no competition? Do you people understand what that really means for the industry and especially for consumers??

Specialguest

You have a lot of negativity towards Sony and Playstation in your past comments, so a post like this from you checks out.

And yes, my favourite era was when PS2 was dominating, we were spoilt. So Microsoft failing really isn't a bad thing for gaming.

I have been saying this since the beginning of this year; the writing has been on the wall since Phil's defeatist interview. He himself stated that even with high quality games people will not turn around and buy an XBOX. He has been preparing us from back then already. What a chop, thats exactly what has and will always sell a console. Not services.

GP and no Xbox gamers not buying games add to that 25m GP gamers dipping in and out of GP amd many of them actually not subbing for 12 month.

It's because Phil Spencer sucks at his job and is ruining Xbox.