Xbox console sales continue to crater with massive 42% revenue drop

Xbox Series X/S sales seem to have peaked early back in 2022.

See full article...

 

[Resolute]

I don't understand this logic. It's not like you could previously play your PlayStation disc games on Xbox. I guess you can trade them, but if that's something you care about, you could still be using physical media anyway.

No, but since a new hardware generation used to typically mean different means of accessing software - differing cartridge format, CD to DVD to Blu Ray, etc, it was easier to go from the NES to the Genesis to the PS1 to the Xbox because you had to get new media formats regardless. Games were entirely tied to hardware.

In the primarily digital world, your games aren't tied to hardware any more, but to your account. And your account will cross generations on the same platform, but not when changing platforms.

 

[DerpGentley]

Considering that Sony is selling 5x as many consoles as Microsoft, I don't think that's an accurate assessment.

I could see a related theory: If you are thinking about buying an XBox, it makes sense to either buy a PC for the hardware advantage, or the Sony for cost/exclusives. If you are buying the XBox, you get the hardware of a console, without the exclusives/games. As times are tough for a variety of reasons, more gamers are buying the lower priced Sony.

Of course, that still just boils down to poor strategy on Microsoft's part.

 

[sword_9mm]

bingo, flagship first party games have been letdowns and full of lies. I would argue this has been the most barren generation, nothing on the console front have I seen and said man thats worth an update.

It's been bad.

The systems are basically UE4 ready and fully not UE5 ready. So performance is great on those 'multi-gen' releases but really sucks in UE5. Hardware is not good. Only benefit we saw this gen was finally getting real drives in there for faster loading. The rest is a nothingburger.

Doesn't help that gaming is again taking a turn. Sony dropped the fun/quirky japanese stuff PS2 folks loved, MS bought half the world and closed it up. The Hifi rush guys didn't deserve that but MS keeps on keeping on being awful. Live service games took over and now finally are seeing a clawback because 99% of em suck. And on and on and on.

Hopefully it can be saved without a crash.

 

[Sfmobius]

People keep trying to measure Xbox success by console sales. Considering MS loses money on console sales, it should come as no surprise they are shifting away from consoles. While they will continue making consoles for a variety reasons, it is no longer their focus. Anyone actually paying attention can see that. The sky is falling comments are hysterical.

I am eager to hear more about their in-house portable. It can't be any worse than Sony's newest "portable."

 

[Deleted member 1070971]

The only reason I bought a Xbox Series X was to replace my previous dying Xbox. I played Minecraft on Xboxes for a number of years, got angry about how it worked on the Xbox, and defected to PC permanently. Every game I play, I play on PC. All I use my Xbox for is to stream Tubi and whatever streaming subscription I currently have. I'm not interested in the "game as a subscription model," which is what they seem to want to move to now. Every month I look through the store thoroughly and try to see if there's anything there I want. Nope. "Free" games with Game Pass usually mean I immediately get a comparison with the "free" version and all the DLCs, packs, starters, and whatnot I can buy to make the game playable. "Deals" are predicated by the fact I've fronted them a yearly fee already. If I play a game with anyone, it's usually a game that has couch mode for multiplayer. They've pissed off everyone by cramming ads everywhere. They keep tweaking the UI. Now I'm sure they're going to put AI in it.

I've been trying for a few years to justify the value of the Xbox, but I have failed. Now I just wonder how much further they intend to fall short of the expectations of their consumer base.

 

[dragonzord]

Sad state of affairs. Microsoft is really repeating Sega's mistakes with not being able to repeat their one hit on hardware. That being said, I think them abandoning ship is unlikely. Despite trailing, this is the only hardware Microsoft has been really successful on. Surface is still around too, but has fallen off the consumer consciousness even more so.

 

[informationsuperhighway]

They destroyed momentum with the horrible and disastrous Xbox one launch which gave Sony a huge win that they still have today..

Worst product launch in history. You can thank Don Mattrick.

 

[disquiet]

Exclusives are what move consoles. The Xbox line doesn't have much. Neither does the PS5, but it has more than Xbox.

The Switch outselling everything despite being underpowered in comparison is a testament to Nintendo's exclusive draw.

 

[Rick Rumble]

With Sony closing studios, and pushing for the live service trend, who knows what kind of quality they'll have in a few years either.

Microtrasactions really hurt MS in the XB1 era, time will tell if something similar happens for Sony.

 

[Fred Duck]

Perhaps people have decided to go retro:

(Hey, it happened with vinyl sales!)

Oh! I believe I saw a YT video about these. You and your opponent set formations and switch it on. The metal "pitch" vibrates and after a short time, the "play" ends and you switch it off to assess how your players did before resetting their positions.

Quaint.

Since it seems I won't be able to use this cultural titbit much longer...

In Japanese culture, ○ has a connotation of good/right.
Its opposite, ×, means bad/wrong.

Since × looks similar to x...
Further reading

 

[planetary]

Oh - killing couch coop for the newest Halo was yet another nail in the coffin, at least for my wife and I.

Wait. what? I was planning on playing that with my grown son when he's back in the house for a few days. Couch coop is what made the Halo name. It's just something I've always associated with the title.

Oh well, guess there really is no reason for me to worry about picking up an XBox.

 

[SeanArs]

Perhaps people have decided to go retro:

(Hey, it happened with vinyl sales!)

 

[fahad233]

Oh - killing couch coop for the newest Halo was yet another nail in the coffin, at least for my wife and I.

Wait. what? I was planning on playing that with my grown son when he's back in the house for a few days. Couch coop is what made the Halo name. It's just something I've always associated with the title.

Oh well, guess there really is no reason for me to worry about picking up an XBox.

FWIW - they do have couch co-op online multiplayer.
Along with PVE modes.

But yeah, no campaign couch co-op definitely sucks.

 

[team:abunai]

The Steam Deck already "hooks up to tv and runs steamOS".

Just like the Nintendo Switch, having a single hardware spec for handheld and TV usage is a strength, not a weakness.

Yeah, I am well aware of that as a steam deck owner.

What I meant by console-comparable was xbox/ps comparable power-wise

 

[auhim]

Microsoft hasn't had a coherent strategy for a while.

You can't sell consoles without trying to sell consoles. Game Pass makes sense to prioritize over selling games if you can increase your average profit per Xbox console owner and as a vessel to sell more consoles. No amount of "prioritizing Game Pass" changes that you need a player base to sell the service to. Constantly repeating "Microsoft doesn't care about hardware sales, they have GamePass" is a lot like someone saying "they're going to make it up in volume" on a product someone loses money on every unit for. GamePass can't work without a strong Xbox console base to sell it to. I have GamePass because I have an Xbox and it's a solid value. If Microsoft stops selling compelling console hardware I'll stop subscribing to GamePass. It's not reasonable to think they'll pick up more subscribers on non-Xbox platforms than they'll lose by tanking the Xbox hardware business. There are multiple competing gaming platforms to switch my primary gaming time to. GamePass isn't available at all on most of them—and is not nearly as compelling on the one it does exist for as it is on Xbox consoles.

GamePass is a way to make money primarily on Xbox gamers. It just isn't a service that can stand on its own long term against inevitable competitors.

 

[Fatesrider]

That's extremely rare for a market where sales for successful console hardware usually see a peak in the fourth or fifth year on the market before a slow decline in the run-up to a successor.

Hello...? COVID and lockdowns probably contributed to the sales in the first place. Now that people have things they can do that don't involve sitting in front of a TV playing games, yeah, sales of indoor activity devices (especially during the SUMMER when people go outside more often) are going to take a hit.

Combine that with some of the bullshittery that game makers tend to pull (especially in the rent to play market) and their devices become less attractive.

This doesn't surprise me at all, other than being surprised Microsoft is surprised.

 

[anon_lawyer]

To be fair, the Xbox names have always been bad, starting with the "Xbox 360" - presumably named that way because they didn't want an "Xbox 2" competing against the "PlayStation 3" (customers will think their console is 1 worse!). And, of course, the we needed some new designation for the original Xbox after they decided to call the third Xbox the "Xbox One". Which brings us to the whole "Series This" and "Series That". I fully expect that, if there is another Xbox, they'll switch over to Greek letters or unpronounceable symbols just to keep the trend going.

Nintendo may have their occasional "Wii U" debacle, but nobody's as consistently bad as Microsoft at coming up with names for their console hardware.

The 360 was the first bad name, but it kept getting worse! To the point now where it is now occasionally confusing even for conversations entirely between people who know what they’re talking about! XsX and XsS? Like holy cow, was this an April Fools joke that Satya fell for and marketing was like “well I guess we’re stuck with the name now”?

Just skip a number and call it the Xbox 5 the same way you skipped windows 9 if you’re that afraid your customers are morons.

 

[Adamaii]

Looks like giving every exclusive game to their competition and sewing complete confusion to their existing user base has cost them dearly. Meanwhile their competitors keep 100% of their profits on their own games and give nothing to Xbox in return. In the words of the scarecrow, "if I only had a brain".

Surrendering their entire ecosystem in order to sell a handful more games. I wonder how that will benefit them in the long term?

 

[dlux]

Oh! I believe I saw a YT video about these. You and your opponent set formations and switch it on. The metal "pitch" vibrates and after a short time, the "play" ends and you switch it off to assess how your players did before resetting their positions.

So they took the playbook from the early electric football game and applied it to chess tournaments? Brilliant!

(I think that's also how they do traffic planning in Boston.)

 

[Deleted member 440187]

It's a shame because Sony winning with exclusives is just the thing we don't want. Exclusives are anti-player (what everyone feared MS would do with all its purchases). Consumers going for a console with the most/best exclusives is a positive feedback loop allowing Sony to profit from offering more exclusives and, ultimately, that means a monopoly for any console in this high tier. Add to that the cross-platform limitations (the only reason my kids want a PlayStation is to play with friends) and I think we can foresee Xbox as a high-end console coming to an end.

So let's be prepared for less interesting and more expensive consoles in our future. On the plus side, MS has less incentive for its own exclusive because of the low market share.

I'm on a PC. I already have a decent desktop, so the marginal cost for gaming was only a decent graphics card, which is less than either console (especially a graphics card from 2022) and I can do other things with it.

 

[marsilies]

This is a moronic “article”

Those are nearly FIVE year old console....

Xbox Series X and Series S are not five year old consoles. They're not even four years old yet. They were released on November 10, 2020.

And if you RTFA, you'll notice that the PS5, which is just as old, is doing better, and even the Nintendo Switch, which is over SEVEN years old, is doing better. So there's something up with the Xbox consoles that's making them perform worse than its competitors, and worse than expected even for its age.

 

[JustYourAverageJDP]

I've been playing on consoles since the SNES as a kid. I do most of my gaming on PC for the first time with the steamdeck. Now that I've gone PC that runs everything I don't think I'll come back to Playstation or Xbox. Steamdeck might be a small player now, but PC gaming in general is on the rise.

I prefer to own my games, not interested in paying monthly subscription fees to get gamepass. I am highly resistant to any subscription services. Games are too expensive on consoles, I'm happy to buy them on sale and have it hand held so I can play in the limited times available to me. The TV is not always available to me with a family, and my priority is to them first.

I loved my xbox360, the brand has been in steady decline ever since. In the 360 days I never would have considered PC over brands I trusted like Xbox or Playstation.

I wonder why younger people are not buying consoles to replace the old guys like me that are exiting the market.

 

[Echohead2]

I think MS has been too pre-occupied with the big acquisitions. Hopefully now they can focus on hardware and overall execution.

The price is a problem. I mean aren't the series S/X the same price as when they launched? Rumors are of new series X this fall that will be $100 cheaper. I might finally be interested.

As for future generations...I suspect there will be one more and that will be it. Maybe for PS too. the improvements are just really incremental.

 

[Hypopraxia]

No, I'm arguing that Microsoft actually had the completely right direction for the Xbox One at launch (yes the diskless was early and a bad idea) and their up-front losses could've been turned around if they refined their approach instead of abandoning it and were given appropriate resources.

The Xbox One launched as part of Microsoft's Windows 8 platform. It implemented the shared "Modern" (Metro) libraries. Metro wasn't a write once run anywhere yet, but it wasn't bad. Xbox One was arguably one of the best streaming platforms you could own, but it got lapped in gaming performance.

The right solution was to double down on the lifestyle approach, and deliver a streamer that played platformers and retro games and almost nothing else. They could've at the time even reused Windows Phone hardware and really double-dipped (since 1080p light gaming and 1080p streaming was totally viable on the Snapdragon 800 platform that launched with the 2013 Lumias).

Instead, they stripped out that lifestyle platform slowly, removing things like split-screen gaming and video watching and the picture-in-picture functionality. The Xbox team focused on matching the PS platform in performance. While doing this, they didn't realize that the Xbox 360 generation was a lucky fluke that they can't recapture. The Xbox team won that generation (barely) because their shorter hardware development cycle let them snag a far superior GPU (and better CPU layout) that made their platform desirable to develop for.

Microsoft's messaging with the Xbox Series launch was that this was a "focused gaming platform" meant to recapture the glory days of the 360, in contrast to the Xbox One launch. No Kinect port, definitely no HDMI pass-through guide, and almost dumped even the $1 IR receiver. In some ways, this was essential: When the Xbox Series launched, MS still shipped Trident-based Edge, but UWP was already basically dead. So you can't reuse your Chrome-only web app (because that's what the state of things already was in 2019) but you also can't use modern .NET libraries (because the UWP compiler was already dated garbage) and you can't reuse C++ (because UWP C++ is a horror story).

So the Xbox division could launch the Series generation with either a gaming performance focus or a software/feature focus, but the latter they literally did not have the platform to support that goal. As it is, the Xbox team has had to dump a lot of effort into improving the GDK (game development kit), because the original plan was that UWP + DirectX would be the default way to make games.

At Sony, this is a non-issue because the PS team has the cost of maintaining an app platform baked into their (relatively) fixed cost of having a gaming division. It is never the highlight or lowlight. Microsoft has not baked that cost into their Xbox division, and at the rate we're going, they apparently haven't baked it into the Windows division either.

I like the general thrust of your argument. The current incarnation of your ideal streamer/lite-gaming box looks to me to be the AppleTV 4K. I have one. I love it. The recent App Store allowance for RetroArch (and other emulators) on AppleTV has been a huge boon for gaming as 3rd party support for games on AppleTV has been less than stellar. The streaming apps on it are second to none, and as long as you don't mind living in Apple's walled garden, Apple services are pretty auto-magical.

All that being said, I would absolutely love if Apple spent a fraction of their cash horde on buying up some proper 3rd party support from studios/developers. I would love it even more if they devoted more engineering effort to gaming and silicon budget to graphics to make Apple products a no-brainer by 3rd party developers/studios.

[an admittedly Apple fanboy can dream of first class gaming support on his desired platforms, can't he?]

 

[murty]

Far from the only reasons they’ve been floundering for a while, but their naming schema for the consoles since 360 have been absolutely doing them no favors. It’s like they watched the Wii U confusion/flop and said “hold my beer”.

I get that selling an Xbox 2 along side the PS3 was a concern, and honestly 360 wasn’t terrible because you at least knew it wasn’t the original Xbox. But it’s been a confusing shit show since. The current generation is particularly bad, even people tuned in to the gaming scene seem to struggle to remember the names/product lines.

I don’t know what the right answer for them was, but it certainly wasn’t what they ended up going with.

This may be some misremembering on my part, but if I recall, another area that hurt them was the push to make Xbox One the all inclusive media center, while at the same time Sony was slowly backing away from that after the very successful run of PS2 being a lot of people’s first DVD player, and focused on gaming first. The streaming media market changed substantially around that time and while MS was still dumping a lot of effort into Xbox One being the do everything media box, most folks already had Apple TVs/Roku/Fire boxes or smart TVs.

PS3 had some moderate success with people buying it for Blu-Ray but I don’t think it was quite the sales leading feature that DVD was for PS2. And, of course, we all know how well HD DVD fared for Microsoft’s fortunes.

One final thing that I think is hindering the current generation Xbox is the two tier console approach with the insistency that all games released need to run on both platforms. It’s lead to instances of ports/multi-platform games running better on PS5 than Series X, despite X’s hardware being ever so slightly power powerful in a lot of regards. From what I understand, by forcing developers to plan for their games to be able to run on both S and X consoles, it’s hindered their ability to make full use of Series X’s hardware. Also, some of the Series S versions of titles technically “run” but the experience is very poor, which further erodes consumer trust in the brand.

I loved my 360. I went whole hog on that ecosystem at the time, I was buying most new major titles at launch (much to the detriment of my wallet and ability to have the time actually play them all), and was generally loyal to the brand. Xbox One’s focus on media center threw a wet blanket on everything for me, and as such, I skipped that and the current generation entirely. I was a late adopter of the PS3, and subsequently an early adopter of the PS4 and 5. Series X/S’s backwards compatibility with 360 almost tempted me to go back, but in the end the exclusive 1st party titles weren’t enough to seal the deal.

 

[thrillgore]

Xbox is done. It's not going to be good for anyone when its just Sony and Nintendo. We desperately need a third player.

 

[SometimesISeeLivePeople]

XBox1 had 20 generic launch titles (most of which were on PS4 or coming to PS5).

Not knocking the argument that the XBox One's launch lineup was crap, because it was, nor that almost all of it was also on the PS4, which it was, but it seems a bit harsh to slam Microsoft because the XBox One's 2013 launch lineup would end up on a PS5 seven years later in 2020.

 

[lmcdo]

I like the general thrust of your argument. The current incarnation of your ideal streamer/lite-gaming box looks to me to be the AppleTV 4K. I have one. I love it. The recent App Store allowance for RetroArch (and other emulators) on AppleTV has been a huge boon for gaming as 3rd party support for games on AppleTV has been less than stellar. The streaming apps on it are second to none, and as long as you don't mind living in Apple's walled garden, Apple services are pretty auto-magical.

All that being said, I would absolutely love if Apple spent a fraction of their cash horde on buying up some proper 3rd party support from studios/developers. I would love it even more if they devoted more engineering effort to gaming and silicon budget to graphics to make Apple products a no-brainer by 3rd party developers/studios.

[an admittedly Apple fanboy can dream of first class gaming support on his desired platforms, can't he?]

I agree in theory but in practice, the problem is that Apple isn't willing to build an SDK or even a runtime that is guaranteed to "just work" on any version of the OS. A launch title for the Xbox One can run on a fully-patched Series S/X. In that time, Apple has deprecated multiple tools that were once essential (including the supported graphics libraries).

 

[ckm8kng2]

I think what is so frustrating is that it could be good. The idea that i can buy a game and be able to play it on xbox or go to bedroom and play it through the xbox app on tv, or go to another room and play on pc. That is a great option. Sadly they have hamstrung the capabilities. Not all games are available to do that. And the ones that are, you have to pay for the top level of game pass to do it. There shouldnt be a limited number of games that have that option. And it certainly shouldnt cost upwards of $20 a month for the small number you can. Just changing that alone, would make xbox a very compelling option.

 

[marsilies]

This may be some misremembering on my part, but if I recall, another area that hurt them was the push to make Xbox One the all inclusive media center...

That was one of a number of things that hurt the Xbox One launch. They, briefly, were:

• The "Xbox One" name, which you referenced, which caused confusion between it and the original Xbox.
• The push for it to be a media center, which wasn't a terrible idea, but they spent way to much time on this at their announcement event, instead of pushing the games that day-one buyers were going to care about.
• Focusing the media center on the HDMI passthrough with a cable box, right when cord cutting was taking off.
• Initially insisting the Kinect be mandatory, which made it $100 pricier than the PS4. Meanwhile, while there were good Kinect games, just as there was on the 360 Kinect, most developers didn't know what to do with a Kinect in their game, while it ate up some system memory that could go to games to do something else with, so it became this $100 albatross that they eventually detangled.
• Trying to push online activation of disc games, ignoring why many console gamers play on consoles, and letting Sony trounce them on this, causing them to hurriedly backtrack.
• Not including backwards compatibility at launch, which Sony also didn't do, but it arguably hurt MS more as it allowed people to move to PS4 more easily, and as MS showed later, was technically possible for them to do.

 

[Gigaflop]

Old me from Feb 2023 said this here:

Microsoft almost exited the console industry after the failure of the Xbox One. (https://meincmagazine.com/gaming/2020...andoned-xbox-brand-after-the-xbox-one-launch/) They didn't, but the most recent quarter indicates that this generation is going to be a repeat of the last with Sony taking the vast majority of the sales. The only thing preventing an earlier land slide was Sony's inability to manufacture their console.

So despite building a much better machine than last generation, which had a much better launch, and a widely lauded game service, if the trend of this past quarter continues, MS will have the unenviable position of being by far in last place, a place where it might not be financially viable to continue building a loss-leading device.

In a world where the options for Microsoft might be: 1) Leave the console space, 2) buy a big game developer, I suspect 2 would be BETTER for consumers. One could argue, consoles would be fine with one hardware player, or that maybe the console space is a natural monopoly, or that it might be possible for microsoft to continue existing as a small bit player (though the internal discussions surrounding the future of xbox over the years, indicates that this is tenuous position, and that shareholders are ready to kick xbox to the curb).

That didn't go over well here. I argued that the ABK purchase might be the only way to salvage the Xbox console hardware if they're able to make exclusives back in 2022.

Then in order to secure the deal they had to... drumroll... give up exclusives or be out billions of dollars with nothing to show for it because everyone was screaming that MS was going to kill Sony with the purchase and it would end with a monopoly in the "high-end console" space.

So they had no path to actually save the console. The government deal essentially made it impossible to salvage. Delaying the deal by over a year, and then preventing exclusives. And here we are.

All they have left is trying to go all in with gamepass, but they're failing there too, and because all of their plans have fallen apart, they've had to increase subscription prices to try to make up the shortfall.

Of course, the same crowd that was screaming that Microsoft was going to be a monopoly if they were allowed to buy ABK is screaming "I told you so, see this is what happens when you allow MS to buy ABK they increase prices because they have consumers locked in" when it's the exact opposite, the government made it impossible for the deal to save Xbox, and because of that, they're desperately trying to recoup costs.

And where are they? They certainly seem to be quiet in this thread. The console as we know it is dead. Sony won the console war. Whatever Microsoft does next will not compete directly with Sony. If that's a PC steam machine, or a mobile steam machine, both without subsidies due to allowing full fat PC games to run from other stores, that's what we're going to see, but a console that's sold at a loss or at cost, subsidized by the walled garden? That Xbox is done.

Sony has that market to themselves. Will this be good for consumers? I would argue it isn't. But I was dead right about what would happen with Xbox.

Maybe I'm wrong though, and maybe the government should've prevented the ABK purchase which would have allowed Tencent who was the other buyer considering ABK to buy it. That would've put Xbox in an even worse situation since they wouldn't even have the upside of ABK revenue, and so the division likely would've been internally on the chopping block. Would the consumer have been better served if Xbox died earlier and Tencent owns ABK?

I would love to see the posters who said "there is no universe where Microsoft leaves the console business."

 

[murty]

….

• Initially insisting the Kinect be mandatory, which made it $100 pricier than the PS4. Meanwhile, while there were good Kinect games, just as there was on the 360 Kinect, most developers didn't know what to do with a Kinect in their game, while it ate up some system memory that could go to games to do something else with, so it became this $100 albatross that they eventually detangled.

Ooof, forgot about that one. A colossal blunder. Forcing a poorly implemented and even more poorly received motion control system on games as people were already getting sick of it on better implemented solutions (Wii), definitely made them look out of touch and bumped the costs for no reason.

There may have been a few fun titles, but I never found any. Friend of mine worked at Xbox support at the time and gave me a free Kinect for 360. Every game I tried it on was either a completely mediocre game to begin with, or a good game hamstrung with bad controls. I also very much disliked the idea that the camera/mic were always on. I ended up keeping mine unplugged unless I wanted to actually use it.

 

[sake]

Just bring back the jumbo controller...

 

[Darc Sentor]

Dropping the consumer/prosumer ball seems to Microsoft thing of late. I used to love my windows phone(gone), windows mixed reality was cool but just as VR/AR is getting more traction they announced they where dropping it, android for windows(dropped), xbox hardware(which I love) seems to going the same way.

Really confusing they spent all the money on acquisitions but then the Xbox arm seems to have no advertising budget and was almost given up in some markets e.g Europe. Real shame because the more competitive the market the better it is for gamers.

 

[marsilies]

There may have been a few fun titles [for Kinect], but I never found any.

Dance Central was a fun party game, with up to 4 players. Fruit Ninja seemed designed for the Kinect. Double Fine Happy Action Theater and its follow-up Kinect Party were fun party games too. And Child of Eden worked well with Kinect.

The Xbox 360 version of Kinect was a bona-fide hit. People were really excited about it. But similar to how people liked Windows Phone 7's Metro interface and then MS decided to try and force it on everyone, trying to force Kinect on every Xbox One owner, player, and developer just irked people. If the Kinect 2 had stayed an optional add-on, it could've gained ground as people opted-in to play the experiences it had to offer, but MS was convinced they had the next Wii. Instead, they had the next Wii U.

 

[BilTheGalacticHero]

Everytime I see a picture or an illustration of an Xbox console I think it's a Wyze camera...

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

The 360 was the first bad name, but it kept getting worse! To the point now where it is now occasionally confusing even for conversations entirely between people who know what they’re talking about! XsX and XsS? Like holy cow, was this an April Fools joke that Satya fell for and marketing was like “well I guess we’re stuck with the name now”?

Just skip a number and call it the Xbox 5 the same way you skipped windows 9 if you’re that afraid your customers are morons.

Xbox 360 is a relatively decent name once you apply the Microsoft Names grading curve. And given their tendency to jump on trends a little late, you'd probably get the Xbox 5ive. /shudder