It kind of seems to me like NFT has become a bit of a boogeyman here lately. People see the word and automatically think "that's pure evil" because a media narrative seems to be conditioning them to think that way. Most are probably just sheep who couldn't even tell you what NFT is an acronym for if you asked them, and even if they do know it stands for Non Fungible Token, they probably couldn't tell you what a Non Fungible Token is. I'll be honest and say that even I don't have a very clear understanding of what it is, beyond that it's a digital piece of media coded to allow unique ownership backed by cryptocurrency for it's value.

Much of the hate seems to be based on environmental alarmism, but do we know how much of the crypto is being mined on non-sustainable vs sustainable power sources? It seems to me like if you were to mine crypto, you would want to run your mining farm on renewable energy, as electricity cost is your one and only source of overhead when mining, solar and wind are free after the initial setup cost, meaning you eventually reach a point where you are printing money for free if you mine on renewable energy. I haven't the foggiest idea what the actual statistics are about how many are mining on renewable vs non-renewable though. Seems to me like crypto has a bright future if more people begin to mine on solar and wind. If I had the capital, I would probably get some solar panels on my roof and a couple of small wind turbines and some mining rigs and print money for myself, lol. 

This most people who hate on NFTs have no idea what they’re talking about. Sheep mentality.

This is where you are not being realistic, its not about a question of doing more, the market just isn't there.  The market probably never will be there because there are 2 very strong native products that gets everything and there is no reason for those developers to actually care about the meager sales of the MS products.  Even then, what sales in Japan is more mobile than consoles and if we look on the console side, its Nintendo then everything else.  MS tried the whole buying exclusives and buying support and it barely got them anything.  The thing is, if a Japanese customer want a system that is going to play Japanese games, there is absolutely no reason to ever look at the MS systems. MS games in general do not cater to the Japanese market so its less likely that any of their first party games will do any real penetration.

I disagree that the market isn't there. The Japanese home console market is smaller, but it is still there, and Xbox could have pretty significant chunk of that marketshare if they tried hard enough, a big enough chunk that more 3rd party developers would think twice about skipping Xbox by default or taking Sony hat money like Square has been doing. To say that buying JP exclusives in Japan in gen 7 got them nothing is simply false. OG Xbox sales in Japan were nearly non-existent by 2005 when 360 released, it was an extremely front loaded system. Those early JP exclusives for 360, some of which Peter Moore paid for, and some of which 360 got by default because PS2 wasn't powerful enough to run the developers' vision, paved the way for 360 to sell more than 3x as many consoles over the course of gen 7 as OG Xbox sold over the course of gen 6. Think how much more Xbox 360 would have sold in Japan if Don Mattrick hadn't discontinued Peter Moore's JP exclusive initiative halfway into the generation? The last JP 360 exclusive of significance was released in 2009, if Xbox had had big JP exclusives for 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, 360 could have maybe sold another 1m or more in Japan for 2.6m or more total. 2.6m 360's would have been a large enough install base moving into gen 8 that JP developers wouldn't have ignored Xbox One early in gen 8, and those big JP exclusives for Xbox One over the course of it's lifetime would have allowed Xbox One to maintain a good chunk of 360's market, and Xbox Series would now be getting alot more JP support than it is. It's a cascade effect. But because Don Mattrick abandoned the Japan initiative after 2009, many JP developers and publishers felt slighted by Microsoft, and chose to completely ignore Xbox One. Don Mattrick realized his mistake too late and tried to buy Xbox One a few exclusives like Dead Rising 3 and Scalebound, but by then it was too late, JP gamers and most JP 3rd party publishers had abandoned Xbox as a result of feeling slighted by Microsoft's sudden abandonment from 2009-2013. 

You keep saying Phil and company needs to do more but you have no clue what they are actually doing.  You do not know how many deals they are making or what's in the process or how tough it is to get commitment from studios that see the Xbox as nothing more than some niche piece of hardware.  Having no information on the challenge that MS must go through to get just the crumbs they get today shows just how uninterested Japanese developers are towards the MS products.

Basically nobody knows what they are doing in regards to Japan, some insiders have claimed to, such as Nick and Ed from Xbox Era claiming that Persona would come to Xbox, but here we are 9 months after they claimed that and the Persona 4 Arena Ultimax remaster is skipping Xbox One/Xbox Series even though the original game was on Xbox 360. All any of us can comment on is Xbox's current results in Japan. And what are the current results? Well, JP 3rd party multiplat support is significantly better than it was at the beginning of Xbox One's life at least, thanks to Phil's frequent flights to Japan to drum up support over the last 6 or so years, but around half of all JP 3rd party games big enough to get a release in the west are still skipping Xbox. But, on the downside, we are a year into the generation and we have yet to see a single JP exclusive of significance for Xbox Series, and not even a single one is announced for the future either, we just have vague rumors of some Kojima Cloud exclusive in the works. Even Xbox One, as laughable as it's JP support was, had Dead Rising 3 (not JP made, rather Canadian made, but the franchise was originally JP developed and was popular in Japan), Crimson Dragon, D4, and Scalebound all either announced or released at this point in it's life cycle. The whole point is that Xbox wouldn't be having these issues if it hadn't been for that 4 year stint of ignoring Japan to focus on Kinect that Don Mattrick did, he burned so many bridges during those 4 years and decimated everything that Peter Moore had built. The effects of Don Mattrick's idiocy are still being felt now, more than 10 years after he made the decision to abandon Peter Moore's JP exclusive initiative. 

The thing is, you want immediate results but that's not going to happen.  Its probably going to take more than a few years of solid selling to make these developers even consider porting their games and even still MS may never get beyond being a niche piece of hardware in Japan.

Never said I wanted immediate results. I fully acknowledge that it takes time to build a market for an American console in a market that primarily buys Japanese products due to a strong sense of nationalism. It is doable though, just look at how Apple beats JP made Android phones in Japan. Xbox was carving out a spot for themselves in the JP market under Peter Moore's JP exclusives initiative, and then Don Mattrick utterly decimated those efforts in just 4 years when he stopped buying JP exclusives and largely stopped talking to JP 3rd party publishers about their upcoming games, the effects of which are still being felt today.

We are now about 6 years into Phil Spencer's attempt to undo the damage that Don Mattrick wrought. That is anything but wanting immediate results. Spencer absolutely can do more than he seems to be doing. Getting 3rd party multiplat JP support with his semi-frequent flights to Japan is nice and all, but he has the absolutely huge wallet of Microsoft backing him now that Satya Nadella considers Xbox and PC gaming to be core products for Microsoft. There are definitely JP developers who are willing to make JP 2nd party exclusives for Xbox, and Phil Spencer seems to be largely ignoring them, for instance Itagaki has gone on record saying he would love to make another JP exclusive for Xbox, saying that all Microsoft has to do is contact him. There are absolutely JP 3rd party publishers who would take Microsoft's money for 1 year timed exclusivity deals, if they'll take Sony and Nintendo money for timed exclusivity, I can guarantee you that they'll take MS money as well; MS might have to pay them more than they would have had to pay them in the 360 days, but it takes money to build a market in Japan, it's impossible to do it without spending a significant chunk of money. There are also JP 3rd party publishers and developers who would stop skipping Xbox on multiplat releases if MS simply paid them to make Xbox ports and release those Xbox ports on Gamepass day one, we have already seen that with Yakuza and MS could use the same strategy to win over other developers who skip Xbox like Atlus and Nihon Falcom. There are JP developers who would probably allow themselves to be acquired by Xbox if it meant a steady budget coming in, no more having to warry about churning out small game after small game just to keep the lights on. I could name you several JP devs that would have probably allowed MS to acquire them just a few years ago, sadly now MS has squandered most of those opportunities, as the Chinese publishers have capitalized on Microsoft's weakness and made partial acquisitions of those studios to prevent MS from fully acquiring them. There is also the fact that MS could be building new JP 1st party studios from the ground up, something which they seemingly have never attempted. 

The only real way I see MS really getting a foothold is Gamepass but not the way you think.  Its not about keeping Japanese games on the platform its about increasing the reach of the service into Japanese homes.  If MS can get more of a mobile foothold then they have a chance to penetrate the market because mobile rules in Japan.

That is the beauty of xCloud though. Japanese gamers would love to have JP games that will play on both there Xbox at home and there Phone on the train to work or whatever, it is the exact same concept that has made Switch so huge in Japan, console and mobile combined into one system. xCloud does present MS with an opportunity, on that I agree. MS must now seize that opportunity and get plenty of JP games onto Gamepass and xCloud. Release what is essentially a Cloud based Xbox handheld, something which Razor is reportedly working on, giving Japanese gamers something with physical buttons which they can use to play there Xbox games on the train or whatever, so that they don't have to use touch controls on console games that were never designed to work well on touch.