"If I sold a console two years ago and now it's in a closet collecting dust, that's not good for the gamer, that's not good for the developers, and frankly, it's not good for Microsoft," Spencer said. "The nice thing about us selling consoles is your console install base will always go up. But that's not really a reflection of how healthy your ecosystem is. We focus on the monthly active user base because we know those are gamers making a conscious choice to pick our content, our games, our platform, our service. We want to gauge our success on how happy and engaged those customers are. We need to keep them happy."

-Xbox boss Phil Spencer

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-one-sales-reach-26-million-report/1100-6447023/

You wont keep them happy by cancelling AAA exclusives

Or because Sony is dominating the living shit out of them.

Not wrong that having an active user base is a great thing to have, but haven't heard anything that suggests Xbox One's userbase is any more active on a case by case basis. Which is why having the bigger userbase by 2:1 is still so important.

Still the best PR in the business

But you can by saving them from wasting $60 on a garbage game.

Because they're bad.

Instead of going "we re happy we re over 26 million units sold now".

There is only one reason not to share numbers, and that's being behind in sales.

Microsoft were quite happy to share numbers last gen in the US, the only thing that has changed since is they're no longer leading.

This is nothing but a bullshit excuse from phil.

You can release numbers *AND* focus on your userbase, you don't have to pick.

That made more sense than I thought it would.

This.