Actually, Sonic is easy to bring up because it was the only thing that WAS remotely successful Sega did. Everything else WAS garbage :)

Remember that the Xbox was a reaction to Ken Kutaragis plan to take over the living room with the Playstation platform and eventually disrupt Microsoft's PC OS business. Sony doesn't have this as their console strategy anymore so Microsoft doesn't have to "take over the living room" anymore. Smartphones and tablets are a much bigger threat to Microsoft right now, so that's where they are going to put all their effort.

I think they might use the Xbox to make windows 10 media PCs to compete against smart TVs.

The thing is the "living room" device is still a pretty significant market and Xbox has a good share of that market. Hence, getting rid of Xbox is throwing away a lot of market share that can also be used to push other products outside of games. So I don't see Xbox just going away like some think/hope.

I agree mobile devices are a bigger threat long term which is why MS has continued in that market. Albeit with little if any success.

TWO new consoles are being launched within the next two years which is more than they released in the last 3. Yet nobody claims they are leaving until after we learn of the Scorpio. 

I think people just like to say the opposite of what is infront of them sometimes. 

The "always on" fiasco was the beginning of the end. Xbix One losing all its exclusives to PC was another step in this process.

Xbox Scorpion is like a quite powerful PC in a box. And since Xbox got rid of all its exclusives to PC, Scorpion is gonna fail in sales against Sony.

Gradually in 2017, Microsoft will cancel games it thinks have low chance to become profitable. This has the effect that gamers really can see how the Xbox console exclusive lineup of games is much smaller than Sony's. This is talked about lot in E3 2017.

The key next step towards Microsoft leaving the business is when it becomes clear that all the Xbox Windows PC games (the PC versions of Qunatum Breaks, Scalebound, Gears of War 4, Halo 6, Forza Horizons 3 etc) have failed because PC gamers dislike the Windows store. The MS PC games strategy has zero chance to succeed if they don't put the games on Steam. But that on the other hand would cut all the profits from the PC games and there wouldn't be any platform. So Microsoft is in a roch and a hard place.

At that point, when at the same time, now we're in 2018, Xbox is being outsold 3 to 1 by Sony in the console market, Microsoft will realize it's a lost cause and the Xbox brand will be sold for cheap to another company. This could happen already in 2018. After this there is total collaps. Selling a console just doesn't work. The aura of negativity and failure is too strong and gamers will feel it. The other company realizes that there's nothing to do, Xbox Scorpion sales just keep declining, so they will cease supporting the platform, terminate all remaining games in developent and within another 1- 1.5 years, that should be the year 2019, it's all declared dead.

Why someone would purchase the Xbox Brand ?, the brand is damaged and already made a lot of mistakes like Rod, the 2013 E3, now all exclusives coming for PC, I think that if a company would want to enter the console market they would have more chances of Success if they make their own console.