First, RolStoppable's post is top notch. 10/10.

If you want to know what Microsoft will do, ask yourself, "Who is Microsoft's biggest threat." The answer is Apple.

Microsoft does not sell to customers but to other businesses. Microsoft would go to Dell and say "Hey, don't worry about that pesky operating system. We got it covered." So Microsoft would sell Windows to Dell to be used on their computers. This is why Windows sucked so much. It was for the benefit of the business, not the customer. As an aside, this is why Microsoft has struggled in every consumer business it has tried. Sony has done well because they are a consumer electronics company.

Now, Sony isn't a threat to Microsoft. There is no reason to fight for the living room and Sony as a company has been gutted to the point to where they are basically a video game company. But Apple is a threat. With mobile computing, there isn't a need to sell an OS. The OS is a part of the device. Everyone using smart phones and tablets is a huge blow to Microsoft. So everything in the company is going to be used to defend windows,

If you want another example of this, look at Zune. Microsoft pushed Zune as their media player until Apple ended the iPod. Then no more Zune. Remember the gap from Windows Vista to Windows 7. It seemed like forever. The Microsoft kept making OS back to back. Microsoft has been tuning Windows to be more smartphone friendly.

XBox's future will be to defend Windows. I expect that future XBox machines will be Window machines. Scorpio could be a start of this with its emphasis on power (first thing they unveiled about it). Anything Microsoft will do is to defend Windows. For instance, the OP mentioned, "Why would Phil release XBox games on PC." Because this draw people to Windows. The future of XBox is Windows because Windows is under assault from smartphones.

Microsoft simply couldn't compete against the ipod with the Zune.  Apple hasn't ended the ipod line yet.

Zune Retail availability

November 14, 2006; 10 years ago
- June 13, 2008

Discontinued June 2012

"The Zune hardware players were discontinued in October 2011. In June 2012, Microsoft announced plans to discontinue all "Zune" services"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune

Basically the Zune might have been superior to the ipod but it was Microsoft's lack of marketing the product and Apple being the what "cool kids" bought at the time.  Microsoft simply couldn't win in the cool factor which doomed the Zune.

For the reason MS rarely ever succeeds when it branches out, it is actually found in the iPod wiki.  Date available: November 10th, 2001.  5 years before the Zune.  MS has little foresight, really.  They always wait for a market to mature and become defined, with a few brands already crowned king (1st) and prince (2nd), before they hop in.  Then, they offer an average (sometimes above average) product, while throwing a shit ton of advertising cash at it, thinking that will make them the new king.  It never works, but they'll keep doing it probably.  They never seem to able to see a growing market and then put in the work and time to make their products get in early and become one of the top dogs.

Phil Spencer has been a big disappointment to me: he cancelled games I was looking forward to, 1st party didn't get better, exclusives dried up, games from E3 2014 conference were either cancelled(Scalebound) or still not out(Crackdown 3). First party basically turned into firms that put out the same franchise over and over.

This is the final E3 I'm willing to trust him, if next month there are no new IPs shown then they will never come. I'm also tired of him giving the generic praise to the competition, and then he says Zeruda and Horizon lack impact and games as a service is the new thing.

Playstation isn't even Sony's biggest business, Sony is making more profit now since over a decade, Kaz turned the company around.

Xbox' biggest threat is Playstation, don't kid yourself, Xbox is in the living room. Xbox isn't competing with Apple TV or iPhone. Microsoft lost to Apple and Google in the mobile space, they're losing to Sony in the living room. MS is big in the cloud and corporate business but they have other competitors there.

I agree about Xbox machines being Windows machines in the future, but nothing's gonna stop the decline of the PC market. Xbox games on PC doesn't draw in new people, PC gaming is already big. Windows Store isn't doing too hot compared to Steam, MS has good intentions but they ruin it with things like UWP.

Yep that is about how I view their strategy considering there are numerous examples.  Remember this one?

Palm, which makes the popular Palm Pilot devices, has about 70 per cent of the handheld market.

Microsoft is confident it will be able to break Palm's stranglehold on the market by giving users the ability to do a broad range of tasks, such as send and receive e-mail, listen to music, do word processing, surf the Web and keep lists of contacts and appointments.

Analysts, however, are less sanguine about the Pocket PC. They describe it as a stripped-down version of Windows that simply reflects Microsoft's attempt to extend its domination of the operating system market. They also said the Pocket PC does not offer many new features.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/microsoft-re-enters-handheld-battle/article4162985/

Let's just forget about what happened with their $8 billion dollar phone venture.

"suddenly so coveted" as if he wasn't one of the loudest users tooting the PS4 power horn when these consoles launched. That salt, though. A more accurate quip would be suddenly irrelevant power crown :)

We're not the hypocrites who said power doesn't matter and now act like its the end all, be all.  

Power, like B/C, is always nice.  Just like the PS3 days.  But it means jack all without something to back it up and an attractive price.

No salt involved.

If you have a gaming PC and Windows 10, you're already in MS's ecosystem. But not everybody is interested in a gaming on PC, its more expensive hardware, so X1 will continue to sell.

We'll get a better idea of how X1 is doing when the year is done. It always has a strong holiday, X1S will likely hit $249, and people are waiting for the Scorpio.

The average console gamer is not building PCs. When somebody suggests this it shows how out of touch they're with the average console gamer.

I'm not sure if Amazon is the best source... but okay. I won't question your anecdotal evidence. PS4 Pro isn't held back by the PS4, because its not a significant upgrade. It struggles to achieve 4K in most games and it rarely pushes a game to 60 fps even at 1080p. That's why its a missed opportunity, it doesn't improve PS4 games enough.

Scorpio made a big upgrade on GPU so it will likely acheive 4K with greater ease. In theory the custom CPU sounds like huge upgrade, but we'll have to see it in practice. The X1 isn't holding Scorpio back, it has the power to make X1 content significantly more polished. Scorpio will be able to boast about having the ports and that's worth something as well. For years we've heard the media has been playing multiplat games on PS4, now they may use Scorpio.

Well I'm certainly curious to see how powerful PS5 will be, hopefully they don't underwhelm like PS4 Pro did. However, Scorpio will atleast have the advantage of being cheaper than PS5. I also suspect Scorpio will share games with the next Xbox.

Thats not really a plus. Most people dispise the app programs and just want normal .exe versions.

Same with UWP and windows store, most would rather just stick to .exe and/or another store like Steam.

All these things to make windows more like a mobile OS.

No one asked for it.

Not entirely true but somewhat.  I purchased Windows 10 Professional when I built my new PC a few months back but that is all Microsoft is going to see from me.  They might be collecting data on me after turning the share data that they allow you to turn off (I'm sure there is still data being collected without my knowledge or ability to turn off).  That is about all they can expect from me. 

I won't spend a dime on the Windows Store because I'll just stick to a superior store called Steam.  If Valve had converted all the steam games or a majority of them then I would have probably just went with Linux or Steam OS but since only 20 games out of my 100 are available on Linux based system then I'm stuck with Windows.