Relative to whom? Xbox fans? Forum users? Or Microsoft? Because those answers could be very different.

As it stands, I doubt Microsoft brass is very happy with the Xbox situation. Keep in mind that just being slightly above water isn't enough for a company that brings in billions from other products.

The Wii U isn't anyone's competition.

The Wii U's only competition is Nintendo's image as a console maker.  In that regard, Wii U crushed it.  :)

Considering they jumped ship like the original Xbox to announce a new console, which they claim is the most powerful console EVER, it's already a failure.

I think about the only thing we can agree on is that that is troll bullshit. X1 is already a success, certainly not to the levels they would have liked but it is definitely pretty good, especially considering the disasterous ps3 type start.

The Xbox One will be considered as a success when Microsoft gets proud enough to give us official numbers.

As long as they hide the hardware numbers, they aren't obviously not that confident about the success.

I mean...historically speaking it's sales will eclipse those of consoles that were considered successful.

But there's no doubt it's a failure overall.

They had to have expected it to outsell the 360, and probably by a comfortable margin.

It's not going to sell nearly as well as the 360, it's not going generate anywhere near the revenue they wanted. Lower than expected hardware sales, software sales and Gold subscriptions. Really early price cuts and deals, the nonexistent roi from Kinect 2.0 not to mention the enormous amount of money in advertising and added features (bc, 4k Blu Ray). Financially it's a huge failure for them, it didn't give them the control over their ecosystem that they wanted and it hurt their image in the industry.

That doesn't mean it's a bad system, but it's absolutely a failure.

Alright, fun as it is to dump on Microsoft, simply because it's refreshing seeing them get kicked around by Sony after the shit they tried to pull on us with the original Xbone pitch, it's not like the Xbox One is selling poorly. It's selling well, it's just the PS4 is selling REALLY well.
It's not selling poorly enough to make people wonder if Microsoft should bow out of the console space like they are with Nintendo.
If the current trend of Xbone selling just slightly over 50% of PS4's sales continues until the end of this generation, then sure, Microsoft will have to sit down and work out how not to make the same mistakes, but who knows what the landscape will look like by then.
I'm hoping that by then there will be only one console format, but not a privately owned one, so Sony and Microsoft will make their own versions and services, but the games will play on either. Of course, both Sony and Microsoft will do a lot and spend a lot to prevent exactly that from ever happening. The arbitrary divide of the console space into two proprietary formats is a dichotomy that benefits them much more than the consumer.

I'm not sure the Xbox division has ever made money in its own right. If we go by that on its own standard, the GCN won the sixth gen. Nintendo made a hefty profit on each 'Cube sold, while Sony and Microsoft took large losses in an attempt to sweep the market. 

Lowered expectations isn't an overall failure. I'm sure they would make changes if they could do it all over again, but they still found a fairly comfortable spot. I think Scorpio is proof of that.

You're right about price cuts, but they also designed X1 to not be a huge financial loser with modest specs. One reason they were able to cut the price drastically was the removal of Kinect.

You're trying to make BC sound like a desperation move, but in reality its something they did because they could, it was desired, and it people still buy 360 games. X1 BC doesn't just make X1 more desireable, it moves software. If Sony could figure out BC on PS4 I genuinely believe they would also offer it. But you know PS4 did get? PS2 emulation.

4K Blu Ray is not an expensive feature to add. But you're pretending it's because the competitor didn't do it.

Oh, I agree it hurt their image. But so did charging for online play, so did killing OG Xbox early, so did RRoD, etc. Xbox's competitors have also done things to hurt their image. But there is potential for recovery after screw ups, X1's image objectively improved since launch.