So you mean MS is becoming a Steam service.. doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

Steams been doing it since 2004. Far from a bad thing.

@DonFerrari the Xbox One tracked ahead of the 360 for three years because three years into the 360's life, Xbox 360 got the Kinect. Whether or not it succeeded as a great peripheral, it really boosted Xbox 360 sales. Unfortunately, the same thing that boosted sales for the 360 years into its life was one of the things that held back the Xbox One from day one. Microsoft banked on lightning striking twice the same way Nintendo did when they released the Wii U. Both learned a harsh lesson.

Keep in mind the 360's numbers are a little skewed as it includes replacement consoles for the whole RROD fiasco.  For that same reason- Microsoft lost a lot of customers into the next generation because of it (myself included).  I for one went through 4-5 360 consoles during that time period.  To this day I haven't bought a new Xbox system- and probably never will again.

On the first 3 years of X360 there was no kinect.

Which is why Xbox One tracked ahead for three years. 

*Edit* in fact, didn't Xbox One track ahead until this year?

I've seen this a lot since that time period but I recall seeing that repairs didn't count as sales. If someone bought a second console to replace a broken one, that would count as a sale, though.

I'm not sure I follow your line of though.

But anyway my point was that on USA and UK X1 tracked ahead of X360 for the longest time and more recently it is falling back (so any problem causing it is more on recent time than on reveal), also outside of USA and UK it done bad at start and worse after. So I really don't see where the turn around really is when talking from sales perspective (because on technical and effort I can see what they done).

The Xbox 360 really didn't sell well, initially. Coming off of the original Xbox that only sold about 22 million or something like that, vs 150 million plus from the PS2, nobody took the 360 seriously. It was called a "Dreamcast" when Sony showed off amazing tech demos that looked great while the 360 was just showcasing games that looked like higher resolution PS2 games with a game looks Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter every now and then.

The first year, the Xbox 360 didn't really sell that well. They wanted to have 10 million consoles sold before the PS3 launched but that didn't happen. I think they sold under 6 million. There was never any doubt that the PS3 would over take the 360. There's even a popular thread here on this site where nobody expected the 360 to ever sell 40 million (or whatever the number was).

The thing is, after the PS3 press conference, the 360 was able to hold off the PS3 for about 8 years. Mostly due to the one year headstart. If you put the PS3's first year of sales up against the Xbox 360's first year of sales, the PS3 sold more from day one. Same for the second year. Same for the third. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 side by side every year except the year that the Xbox 360 released the Kinect (2010). 

So in 2005, the Xbox 360 started off with decent sales and in 2010, it had really good sales. In 2006, the PS3 started off with Good sales and maintained good sales.

The PS4 started off with GREAT sales and never looked back. The Xbox One started off with GREAT sales and just dropped to good.

So, when you look at 2005 (the first year) for the Xbox 360 vs 2013 for the Xbox One (the first year), the Xbox One looks better because it started off selling better. It wasn't until the Xbox 360 got Kinect that it had a bit of a sales explosion. The XBO never had that sales explosion.

Hopefully I wasn't too wordy. I'm at work and I have to go . I'll check back later

I agree with you, even though I remember some higher up from MS saying at point in the gen that even if X360 stopped selling PS3 would never overtake them (besides that of the first to get to 10M takes the gen). He seemed to really believe it.

And yes X1 started great and dropped to good and then slog (just look at PS4 ever increasing the percentage gap, from perhaps 30%-60% more to 100-120%) so we can't really say it turned around on sales. On HW sure X1S is a much better proposition than Xbox Kinect, plus X1X is certainly a more competent upgrade than Pro (even more with backward compatibility) and the other actions MS have take certainly made the console a better deal (that is if you don't mind exclusives much).

Totally agree with this post. I even remember those quotes!