What Went Wrong with Microsofts Strategy for Xbox this Gen?

[Chazore]

curl-6 said:

I am not talking about the Steam OS. The post I quoted did not specify the software, it specified the device. I'm talking about apples, you're talking oranges.

Hardware sales actually do matter. More people play on Switch or PS5 than on Steam Deck by an order of magnitude. 

And people have been claiming for the last 20 years that the days of console hardware are numbered, yet here we are in 2025 and systems like the Switch and PS5 are doing great.

This is going way off topic at this point though, so I'll redirect to the subject of the thread, Xbox's stumbles this gen.

I know you are not, but I am talking about the Deck that was housing the OS, because it has acted as a stepping stone, a proving ground, and now we are seeing other devices allowing support for that same OS. 

You want to talk about it in a separate manner to justify small sales as a nothing burger, and again, I've no idea why you want to hold onto this arguing point of yours (what does it really mean to you?). 

If hardware sales mattered, then the software would be so little if everything was tied to each specific piece of hardware for all of time, and yet history is changing this time and time again. People WANT to be able to have access to their library of what they have bought, and not having to rely on a plastic box that will stop production within a decade at any given time.

You argue for hardware sales because by your own logic, it wins your argument, everyone shuts up, Nintendo lords over all, and yet none of that even matter shown you take into account PC, then mobile, because both of those DWARF that system alone. Brand awareness is also another important factor, which is why it has allowed Nintendo to even make deals in the first place.

You can point me to whatever subject you want, but I told you what I had to say, yet you want to keep us and everyone else bound to a tiny ring, for what purpose I don't know, to feel satisfied?. You know full well MS could not keep both platforms separated, so they had to combine both and buy pieces from the chess board to combine into their ECOSYSTEM, not their BOX alone.

You talk about failure as if life depends on that piece of plastic and again, I've no idea why. You realise MS is one of the richest and ever reaching corps in the entire world yes?. Look at Nvidia, do you think either of those two care about their respective original core markets?, no they don't. One cares about their OS and ecosystem and what they can buy and control, the other Data centers and AI, not failures of a piddling plastic box that some people on this planet happen to buy out of BILLIONS on this rock (yes, there are far, far many more people that still don't own those little boxes your argue for, but there are many that own a PC, a mobile device like a phone or a tablet, and now even a portable device with a Linux OS on it too). 

Also you posted in response to them about Steam Deck sales and it not mattering's, so why did YOU go off topic then?. You could have simply not quoted and carried onto the main topic, but you didn't, you had to debate it because it was a portable system that just so happens to be in the same market as the Switch.

Once again, yes, a small win, not a large one, but the OS, the ecosystem is the one that will truly matter at the end of the day to the people (otherwise Nintendo wouldn't be marketing BC in their latest Switch 2 trailer if you didn't care about an ever lasting ecosystem now would you?).