Possibly the worst reveal and console ideas of all time. Kudos to Microsoft for transforming the x1 to the platform it is today by basically reversing all the bad ideas.

I don't see how 30+ million in console sales could be deemed a failure.

True. Isnt it selling closer to the N64? It should surpass it by next year, but its somewhere close to that right now. It will probably cap at 50 million by the end of the generation.

Gamecube type of failure

I'd say yes. Looking at sales numbers alone won't tell you much. Instead you have to look at the big picture. While I think the XBO will sell ~40M-45M in the end, the problem is what it took for them to get to those numbers. Namely firesales. It seems that a lot of the budget for Xbox went into subsidizing the price. While this helped, it still didn't lead to them taking back any market. In fact, I think this is what lead to my next point.

It's more important to look to see if MS see it as a failure. And on this issue, I think we can safely say yes, they do. After the firesales, the budget for Xbox seems to have been slashed significantly. Before, they were bragging about having AAA exclusives, even if a few were timed, but now their time is reserved for pushing timed indie exclusives. Quite the downgrade. This also cut the budget on 1st party games, which led to cancelling a few of their larger ones. And when we started to see a lack of 1st party games, they move the remaining ones to PC, giving the XBO even less of an identity, in an attempt to compete with Steam. Advertising also took a hit, whether it be for the XBO, itself, or AAA 3rd party advertising deals.

in japan, yes.
Anywhere else. No.

Though, If Microsoft's plan had been to throw away everything and start over with a new system, I would have said that the One would have end up being a mild success, or a disappointment in comparison with the 360.

But Microsoft have found a way to transform this into a more longterm plan, and the One and One S became the basis of that plan, and that plan could very much prove to be a success.


Also, the Xbox department is making money, so you can't call it a failure at all.

No its not a failure.

For me personally its a failure, its the console i have the least interest in of all time. None of its exclusives are interesting to me, thats not the case with OGX or 360. Saleswise its doing pretty normal nothing special.

They failed.

They wanted to make a online only system that killed used game sales, they tried to bundle the Kinect.
They failed.

They did not achieve what they set out to do, and have not sold many units.
Especially considering how many people are playing games this generation compared to the last generation.
They failed.

Depends on how you define it, but so far I would say that it failed to capitalise on the success of X360. But one can also say that out PS3. Though PS3 ended up a bigger selling console than all other non-Sony home consoles with the exception of Wii, and it outsold Wii in some markets. Not sure the same will be able to be said about Xb one.

In the context of the 8th gen I think Xb one can be said to be a modest success. It's hard to call 30 million and counting a failure when Wii U crashed and burned at not quite 14 million. And Xb one was staring down the barrel at selling less than XB og, but for the steps MS took to rehabilitate its fortunes.

It is still over-reliant on a single market for putting up respectable sales numbers. Let's face it, without the USA numbers UK performance would be pretty meaningless. So it has also failed to establish a broad global appeal.

It's not a failure as a Xbox product as it's going to finish it's lifespan off as the second best selling Xbox. It's just not nearly as much of a success as PS4.