Was this gen unwinnable for Xbox?

[curl-6]

Pemalite said:

curl-6 said:

Yeah I feel like Starfield was the system's last chance to prove its viability; after that game combined with steep holiday discounts failed to move the needle, it was essentially over and MS threw in the towel.

Leynos said:

This is why the GameCube was not really a failure. Nintendo made a profit. Xbox did not. Xbox outsold Gamecube.

21 million sold is pretty much a failure I'd say, especially when your competition sells 160 million and your previous system sold 32 million.

Only if Nintendo never managed to turn a profit from the platform... Which ironically is probably hard to quantify over the long term as many of the Gamecubes best games are some of the best games of all time... And Nintendo has remastered/re-released them generation after generation and made money from those titles. I.E. Metroid Prime on Switch being a prime example.

Microsoft Series even though it's only sold a fraction of the Xbox 360 consoles, is still a success as Microsoft has made a profit on the platform. (Their gaming division since the Xbox Series Launched has raked in over $80 billion.)

I wouldn't count stuff like say Wind Waker HD or Metroid Prime Remastered as part of the Gamecube ecosystem personally, as by the time they were remade Gamecube was long dead and buried.

There's factors other than just profitability as well; Gamecube saw Nintendo's market share shrink significantly, which is not the mark of successful platform.