My prediction was too conservative lol. I didn't quite expect Xbox to do even worse this gen. But somehow they have. 

Halo Infinite was delayed a year after launch. ;)

I predicted it was going to be more one-sided than the previous generation, but that was before they acquired Bethesda and ABK which no one saw coming, and before we knew anything about COVID consequences and rising prices.

After the acquisitions, it got harder for me to predict anything, because MS could choose any route they wanted and all of them would've made sense. They can return to exclusives for the long term benefit, or go full 3rd party.

Well it's not like anyone back in 2020 could have predicited the complete wipe out of Xbox as a hardware platform.

Oh no, wait;  that's excatly what I said:

Actually you were more positive than I was at that time lol. I didn't even rule out the possibility of Xbox discarding generations with Series SX following some comments Microsoft made a couple of years prior. Some people believed the One X would be "forward compatible" and I too thought that was a possibility  Microsoft's messaging was all over the place!

I also found it likely that MS would turn Xbox into a branded PC. But I somewhat lost confidence in these predictions when MS acquired Zenimax and ABK (this is the part that no one really predicted. A few people did predict the endlessly rising prices and I wasn't one of them). Series S was widely available in a time where the PS5's shortages didn't seem to end, which gave the illusion that Xbox wasn't as far behind as I thought it would be.

Fastforward and today Microsoft is easily the biggest software maker of the big 3. They are more than capable of "making Xbox great again". But it seems like they primarily want to be a 3rd party publisher, and I'm glad they are, because I would have been pissed that the only way they could beat Sony is via pure brute force amidst incompetence. Incompetence shouldn't be rewarded.

The sad part in all of this is that having owned Mojang, Zenimax, and ABK can mean they will close more studios and bury more IP's. It wouldn't surprise me if Gears and potentially even Halo are next. On the bright side, Forza Horizon 5 is doing amazing on PS5 for a late port, so maybe Gears and Halo can see a healthy boost as well from accessing Playstation's playerbase. Forza Horizon is really big on every system its on.

Hence the layoffs, releasing 1st party games to PS5, and closure of all-star studio Turn-10.

Also your prediction was wrong because Microsoft is going to start selling unsubsidized low-end gaming PCs for $800 and slapping an Xbox sticker on them. /sarcasm

Microsoft certainly surprised us by using their acquisitions not to bolster their portfolio as a console manufacturer, but rather as a boost for their transition to a third party publisher. They took incompetence and ineptitude to a whole new level this generation. All that money at their disposal, but no clue how to form a coherent strategy. Most baffingly, they made the decision to go third party at a time when the Series was actually in a surprisingly good position due to the semiconductor shortages, sometime during 2022. This is when some people on this forum went nuts and dreamt of the Series selling more units than the 360 did instead of being simply satisfied with Microsoft being able to increase their market share a bit in comparison to the One.

Microsoft had the tools available to change the ratio from 2:1 to something like 1.7:1 or 1.8:1, but yeah, we are heading for 3:1 which is massive.

Well that makes the second person to predict 3:1. I'll revisit this thread after PS6 and XBox 1/4 Teaspoon are released. 

At this point the Series won't manage much more than 40m lifetime while the PS5 can reach 120m if it takes eight years until it gets replaced by the PS6.

VGChartz sell-through by the end of May 2025 shows a 2.3:1 ratio in favor of the PS5. Monthly sales for May 2025 show the PS5 winning by more than 5:1. By the end of 2025 we should be looking at an LTD ratio of 2.5:1 already.

I think it's a lot worse than that if you take into account that the Series S isn't as powerful as PS5 or Series X. Series S competes with Switch and Steam deck IMO. I'll count it in vgchartz's platform totals just to be civil but if 20% of Series' sales are Series S then there's currently under 27 million high-end gamers who prefer Xbox over Sony. So the high-end console market would currently be at 2.8 to 1 in Sony's favor. 

I went with saying that things wouldn't change too much because I had a previous thread where I argued that Series S shouldn't be tallied up with Series X. I eventually conceded that it should be, but still think that the high-end console market is a disaster for MS.