Market share and demographics are not the same thing.  Last gen market share was 37.4% Wii, 31.3% PS3 and 360 each.  This gen it is currently 48.1% PS4, 28.6% XB1, and 23.3% Wii U.  That is indicative of the market share lost by the Wii U being taken up by PS4 more than it is that PS4 is taking it all away from the XB1.

No. It did not meet expectations for Microsoft, i'm sure but they have only themselves to blame.

I dont think its a failure, but i dont think its a success either.

It's lost lots of marketshare to the PS4 and its had to reduce price in the first year to remain competitive. The situation has been forced on to them by stiff competition and by mistakes they have made during the initial reveal period.

However, given its momentum i think its well on its way to becoming a success :)

Where wii you buyers goes probably not on ps4
Ps4 probably attract again ps2 buyers that didn't bought a console laste gen

Everything is up in the air with the X1.

There's always these looming questions with X1:
-If/when MS starts focusing gaming more towards PC than Xbox
-If/when MS ditches having a dedicated hardware platform for gaming as it is not explicitly financially profitable for them
-If/when Xbox loses 3rd party support as PS continues opening the sales lead and hardware limitations are reached more quickly on X1 than PS4
-What X1 should really cost. It started out really high -- but now we've seen a lot aggressive price cuts and gimmicky 'limited time only' sales that seem more like permanent pricecuts.
-Is Kinect still worth anything
-Will there ever be a truly amazing exclusives. There's *good* and *great* games as well as excellent multiplats-- but so far not much of anything that we'll be talking about 10, 20 years from now. 343i really seems to be mismanaging the Halo franchise.

I don't consider it a failure. I am fairly certain it is profitable for Microsoft. As people mentioned, there is no RROD fiasco like last generation. And sales are up compared to the 360. They are probably going to sell 60 - 80 million units by the time the generation is done.

I have to agree with the consensus here. The Xbox One is definitely not a failure!!! It's selling very well. The PS4 is just selling that much better. XB1 is a great console with a lot to offer. Its showing that it has staying power!

Partially true, but there is a misguided assumption hidden there. Demographics matter because they construct the market. We know that many Wii owners are not traditional gamers and are not entering the new gen at all. Some stopped playing, some are on mobile, and some even died (the Wii had an impressive elderly audience).

Given that so much of the market has changed, it is evident that PS4's gains versus PS3 are the combination of gaining some Wii audience, some 360 audience, and some brand new/PC audience. Sony have commented on this, but I wish stronger numbers were possible. That would require a gaming census.

Nonetheless, we can be informed in other ways.

In a word: no.

Looking at its healthy library that has both good exclusives and all of the same third party games actually puts it above the PS4. Of course, it still doesn't come close to the flavors of exclusives on the Wii U...

Just because something sells well doesn't always mean it's the best. Hell, iPhones are a good example of this

I'm not really sure why this topic exists. I'm not trying to be mean, but you already gave the numbers, and the only logical answer is that the Xbox One is not a failure. If it were a failure it wouldn't have moved so many units. That would be like asking if the PS3 was a failure at the end of its first full year of sales. Sony was being destroyed by Microsoft in terms of sales. They ended up catching up, and then surpassing Microsoft. I personally don't see Microsoft surpassing Sony unless they get some major game changers in (e.g. Xbox exclusive titles that people actually want), but Microsoft has too much money, and too much influence to just roll over because Sony is doing better than them at the beginning of the current-gen "console wars". Microsoft knows the gaming market is huge, and they won't back out of it. This discussion is kind of pointless because anyone with half a brain already knows that.