People expected the x1 to dominate this gen especially in the US. 

Not sure how it's doing better then people expected.

How can people vote the X1 as a failure? Its more successful then the 360 which was the 2nd most successful console last gen. To fanboys its a failure I guess because its not the best selling console, to MS its beating there last product so thats what matters most.

Doesn't have to be the best selling to be a success. Ill just laugh at those who claim failure for it.

Yes, it can't keep up with PS4 and it's just bleeding money.

How can people vote the X1 as a failure? Its more successful then the 360 which was the 2nd most successful console last gen. To fanboys its a failure I guess because its not the best selling console, to MS its beating there last product so thats what matters most.

Doesn't have to be the best selling to be a success. Ill just laugh at those who claim failure for it.

What a convenient necrobump.
No the XB1 is not a failure you dinguses.

Way too early to be asking this question. The 360 had great momentum over the course of years. We don't know what Xbone will do as the years go on. Maybe it's steady and stable. Maybe it begins a steady decline. Maybe it drops like a stone. We don't know, it's too soon. The brand has had ups and downs, sure, but the future is still a mystery to a degree.  The only area the Xbone has had real trouble is lucrativeness:  the console is bleeding money.  Luckily for MS the 360  and its install base keep bringing in the cash.

Yes, it is a failure up to this point and there's so much more evidence pointing toward this than not; what's more, we've begun to see a transition into PC gaming recently which means they may very well be planning to leave the console space for good. If things were as rosy as many of you want to believe, they would not be acting like this.

Sales:
Japan - massive failure.
Europe - bad failure.
China/3rd world - eh. These countries are still in their infancy. Couldn't expect much anyway.
NA/UK - this is without a doubt the only countries that you couldn't consider them a failure. Both countries almost retain 50% of the market. Not bad.

Microsoft: if they themselves did not forecast far higher sales, we would not see the kind of antics they've pulled. We have had massive deals early into the gen from them. They've stripped everything from the original vision and completely revoked previous policies. They no lounger mention sales numbers. We still have bundles that are months old that have not been sold through yet. They over shipped millions christmas quarter to deplete excess stock for the next batch. So far their actions have very clearly reflected an unexpected failure this gen.


One of the best and only defenses people around here have is that this console is tracking ahead of its predecessor at the same point in time. What they don't mention - 360 had supply constraints; X1 had a fantastic launch that wouldn't be representative of the next year and a half of sales; the console is $150 cheaper than launch within a year and a half; market research has suggested a decent chunk of previous 360 owners have switched platforms; and finally, they've entirely lost all momentum they had in market share in their strongest territory and have reversed roles in said market.

A console in my opinion sell good with 30,000,000 lifetime.
I predict XBO to sell just more than this (but less than 35,000,000 ) so yeah...

A console with the mediocre sales... but not a flop.
Any way, XBO is not a flop just thanks the super holiday.
In the summer, XBO sales are terrible... and i don't know why people are sure that this year will be better than last year, considering that as for now is down YOY at 350$ VS 500$, so, when the battle will be 400$ VS 350$... is gonna to be very depressing.

Also, for who say "XBO is more succes than the XB360!"

LOL

Its not a failure. The PS4 is just a beast!

This sounds reasonable, though I think it's fair to consider it a failure. I know Microsoft already has.

Think from their perspective. Go back and look at what they were trying to do over the years :

OG Xbox : Build a brand in the gaming space due to fear of machines taking over the PC market from the living room. Of course we know now this was a silly thing to think (Hello Google/Apple, Smartphones, Tablets, etc). But it did get their foot in the door in this space despite losing a ridiculous amount of money. So, with the market opened they follow with :

X360 : Well specced if somewhat riddled with reliability problems for a while, this exploded their market presence from an also-ran to a market leader in many cases. They gained market space in Europe, Asia, and became the strongest US/UK console for AAA gaming, as the Wii kind of petered out and had a ton of 'one-time-only' non-gaming buyers who just bought it for Wii Fit or Bowling. After many years of massive yearly losses in the Xbox project, they started seeing marginal profits (nowhere near enough to put them in the green LTD, but enough to be YoY profits).

X1 : They wanted to expand their current market status with this. That meant growing market share in the markets they had fought to open slightly with the 360 with Europe and Asia, and to expand their strongholds in the US/UK. Beyond that, they wanted to monetize everything home entertainment-wise with the X1. Focused advertising based on what the Kinect saw (products, number of people, items in sight, items tuned with the HDMI pass-through), and an always-online mentality that required XBLG to use all the common streaming services like Netflix/etc. Above all, controlling the sale of games to where they were in control of how you could play it and sell it (if at all) was meant to vastly increase their profits per user. At $499 it would be roughly breaking even unit for unit, and the huge R&D costs for the new controller, Kinect2, etc would be covered over time with their much larger piece of the global market. In case you forgot, almost EVERYONE thought X1 was going to dominate the PS4. There was so much hubris and arrogance steaming out of the Xbox division at the time that it was just unbelievable.

So what did we see with the 360? 80+ million global sales? What do you think MS planned on? Going by some of their interviews at the time, I think they honestly thought they were going to see that grow well past 100M for the X1. For that to work, every market would have to buy in further to the Xbox brand.

And what's happened?

Europe has been an overt disaster outside of the UK.

Japan and China were hopeless for them.

The UK scaled back bigtime vs. the 360 v PS3 splits

The US scaled back bigtime vs. the 360 v PS3 splits

As you say, they're not going to get anywhere even close to 80M again with the X1. I do think 40M is reachable, but that's around the best case scenario. They are already undercutting the PS4 on cost AND adding games, and still losing. Once PS4 lowers their price, it's kind of over. X1's big IP is Halo, and that presents them with a problem :

Halo 5 may be hurt a bit by the MCC issues, and the very rapid dropoff in playerbase of Halo 4 (the long term Halo fans didn't stick around for long). But more than that, Halo 5 only helps for holiday 2015. What next? There isn't another IP in sight with half the exclusive draw for them. Even if Halo 6 was rushed, it would be 2017 at the soonest before it hits the streets. So 2016+ is not going to be pretty. In many European stores the X1 section is either gone or relegated to a tiny spot. Japan is in the low triple digits weekly in range of double-digits.

ALL THAT SAID :

For the end user, the X1 can be anything BUT a failure. If you have fun with it, and feel you got your money's worth, then it's a WIN.

On the business side, it's already a disaster. All the hype about outpacing 360 is really stupid. 360 had a massive number of reasons that it started really slow for the first couple of years, so it's easy to outpace it for that period of time. But X1 is aimed squarely down, whereas the 360 took off like a rocket.