Console sales drive software sales, and publishing fees from 3rd parties.

Consoles are sold at a loss initially, but they recoup that loss by charging a $10 publishing fee for every game sold on their platform.

Because if you're not making as much money as the competition, then why not put the money elsewhere, where it can make more profit?

And why should investors be happy if the gaming division is making money, but not as much money as if they put investors' money towards something else?  

Because most of us can see they're just trying to change the narrative to hide their console failures.

It's like you read enough to argue, but not enough to know what you're arguing with.

I mean your third comment is something I agree with and it's a large basis of my point, the fourth comment is something I didn't even say, and the first comment just seems largely ignorant.

The basis of any argument can be sound by itself, but that's the problem. Bad arguments are arguments that are built on until they just largely become irrelevant or useless. In this case, sure, there are some people (including myself even!) who might buy an Xbox if it had awesome exclusives. Those people are by far a minority, and the potential of a PC gamer buying an Xbox is much lower than a PC gamer buying software that releases on their preferred platform. Beyond that, this play anywhere idea wasn't born out of nowhere, it was obviously in-part a reaction to the fact that Microsoft was spending money on a gaming division that was seeing less returns because of the Xbox One. To be honest, considering how much money they dumped into third party exclusives and third party marketing deals - and how little of that money they got back, I don't think there was any other way for them to make a bigger profit than to increase the division to the PC platform. It helps fund more games and it expands the division which gives more console exclusives.

In an ideal world sure, it would be great if things could be linear and not overly complex. That's just not the case. If everything went right with the Xbox, maybe a lot of these arguments would make sense, but that's a completely alternate universe and therefor they don't. Ironically it's the arguments for play anywhere that aren't in a vacuum, whereas the arguments against it are largely fueled by old mentalities

To put it in a way that makes sense: I doubt the lead 3:1 lead PS4 has on Xbox in Europe has almost anything to do with the PC at all. That's a much more important thing to figure out than how to get PC gamers to buy an Xbox, particularly when you can reach far more PC gamers by not trying to convince them at all.

"And how many of those owned both an Xbox and PC but decided to get it for PC instead? They are almost certainly gaining software sales by releasing on PC too, but they're also transferring some sales from one platform to another (as any game would when releasing multiplatform rather than exclusive). Besides, console profit isn't just about selling consoles, it's about earning royalties from all software sold on the platform. So it's not just the console sales themselves they're missing out on by releasing their games as multiplats, it's a lot of potential additional revenue that they could have earned through platform royalties as well."

Ironically, Cuphead and Ori are the only games you can make that argument for though. All their major releases are exclusive to the Windows 10 store, which is 100% owned by Microsoft. For their major releases they game 100% of the profit and for their indie releases they gain a much wider audience. I doubt almost any of those Cuphead sales would have been on Xbox One if it wasn't on PC, and even if say 20% of the 75% had an Xbox too, that would still be a loss of 55%. 

"Besides, what their games sell on PC really doesn't have anything to do with the success of Xbox, so the question "Why should I buy an Xbox One when I can play a game on a PC" is pertinent. If you want to talk about the success of Microsoft Game Studios as a video game software developer, then fair enough, but that's really a separate discussion from the success (or lack thereof) of Xbox. It's a bit like trying to say Sony's failure with the Vita doesn't count because they were successful with the PS4 (I'm pretty sure Microsoft's PC success is no where near comparable to the success of the PS4 though), but the Vita (like the Xbox) doesn't stop becoming a failure just because Sony had success with something else. "

This is seriously starting to get ridiculous. I've said many times in this thread that the basis of the argument, at it's core, isn't invalid. I shouldn't have to repeat it another 50 times. 

And it isn't the same at all, because what is being argued. Vita being a failure is objective, it is a failure because Sony set out to sell hardware and software and didn't exceed at either. Microsoft's failure this generation is not only grossly exaggerated already (i'd say it's more like a moderate success than an outright failure), but THEY THEMSELVES have changed their mission statement from selling just consoles to selling software and consoles and accessories. My point isn't "hurr durr Xbox is successful because of Windows 10", that literally makes no sense and isn't stated anywhere in the OP. My point is that they're playing into the hand that Microsoft wants: Software sales, no matter the cost. It isn't a failure by Microsoft, because it's by design, and it's most likely more profitable than anything they could have done otherwise (unless you want to create a revisionist history that spans back 4-5 years, be my guest). 

What? I said a lot of these things in this very thread (specifically the one about it being a way to compensate for low HW sales). I don't see how we disagree but then your first two sentences somehow try to create an argument against what i'm saying.

My point isn't that Windows 10 makes Xbox successful. I literally edited this into the OP so people would stop acting like that's what I said. I'm saying that the goal Microsoft is achieving isn't even linearly hardware sales anymore, so judging their success on slippery arguments like "Oh but I can get this on PC!" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That's literally not the ball game Microsoft is playing. Why allow the loser to redefine success? Uh .. they aren't ... they're redefining what route they are taking to success because they realized it's more profitable to try and reach a greater audience and couldn't rebound their console completely.  

My point also isn't that every PC gamer buys Microsoft products consistently? Although Windows is by far the most popular operating system especially for PC Gaming machines and considering how overpriced Windows is for how little it costs to provide it to consumers ... yeah .. (conveniently there is a sale of Windows 10 for $40-60$ right now!) 

In case you missed. If you are losing and change the definition of success to make you look like you are winning people shouldn’t agree with you because you are still losing and the new metric just hide it. Even worse when they aren’t very clear on the new measure of success and still brag and commemorate when achieving older metrics for success.

but as others said when ms gives pnl for Xbox alone then we can say if their metric reflect any success at all or is just that they have enough free cash that using Xbox to promote other products have a low cost for the indirect good return. Which isn’t a measure of Xbox success.

next perhaps we should show the teacher a different way to grade the test and give us a passed the subject. And say “at this method I created to evaluate my performance in your class I have passed so why can’t you use it”?