Interesting, I use my laptop,so haven't run across those problems, although I can remember ads that covered most of the screen and couldn't be removed but that sems to be in the past on lap/desktop anway, my advice is to bring it up on the website forum.

I promised to bump this thread in a year so here I am. Looks like the answer is a resounding yes. Hopefully a lesson was learned.

Indeed. Eurogamer just posted an article about it.

https://www.eurogamer.net/activision-blizzard-boosts-microsoft-earnings-but-xbox-console-sales-plummet

No Gamepass numbers either anymore and MS is putting their games on Switch and PS5 now.

Personally I haven't used the Series X since I played Forza 7 on it (not getting 8) apart from watching 4K blu-rays. Same with Switch and PS5 though, I've only been playing PSVR2 whenever I have some time. Last non VR game I bought was for my kids, Lord of the Fallen I think. I dunno if it is all because of VR but nothing flat screen seems to grab my interest anymore.

Looks like I didn't post here, but voted in the poll. I did expect that Xbox will be ever so slightly up in 2023, hence the "no" vote.

The first round of ports for rival consoles in early 2024 means that Microsoft had already given up for good on Xbox about midway through 2023, because ports take at least several months. So from here on out it's pointless to talk about Microsoft's upcoming games as a means to boost Xbox sales, because they've set the expectation that an Xbox purchase will most likely be completely redundant even for the people who don't want to bother with a PC at all.

Turns out that the whole Activision-Blizzard acquisition was never about boosting Xbox's prospects at all, but instead about bolstering Microsoft's standing as a third party publisher in the future.

That Droid guy was pretty damn optimistic. Fucking idiot.

Yeah, at this point it has obviously peaked.
No way it's topping 2022 now that momentum is lost and they've signalled that their games will come to rival consoles.
Haven't seen a console lost steam at a young age like this since Wii U crashed in early 2013 after a decent first holiday.

Well Starfield didn't exactly hit the mark but even considering that it still sold a fair amount worse than I expected last year and with how things have gone the Xbox Series definitely won't be competing with the PS5 even remotely decently for the rest of this generation now. Though the one huge positive is they did manage to get Activision Blizzard in the end so shifting towards being a publisher and putting less importance on console hardware going forward is probably the right move long term.

Well, yeah.  Microsoft tried to tell us, and regulators, a million different ways that they're not trying to tie people to Xbox consoles. But, for whatever reason, people didn't believe them.  

And it makes sense, if you think about the history of Microsoft.  They are a software company. They stated many times in the past, with the Zune, Windows phone, and Surface, that those products were only brought to market as a way to introduce their software to those categories. I don't think they've ever wanted to sell any hardware. They only did so because they felt like they had to in order to get their software into certain segments of the market.  

In fairness, they talked publicly a bit differently about gaming.  So, I understand why people compared them directly to Sony. However, it was also always clear that they saw gaming hardware as a way to get their software into living rooms.  But, they have other ways to do that now (cloud), and they probably care a little bit less about being in the living room anyway.  Also, they see gaming not just as a way in the living rooms, but also as a way back onto mobile devices.

Given this, why continue to operate a money losing business like gaming hardware?  I don't think they are ready to drop put just yet, because the transition to cloud gaming is nowhere near complete. They don't want to lose mindshare among gamers, so they need to continue to be where gamers are.  But, you can rest assured that they will be taking their first good opportunity to get out of the console space. 

Well I was very wrong hahah

Maybe, but Microsoft didn't need to pay $70bln (or whatever it was) to be a games publisher.  They could have just hired some devs.

At $70 a game, they need to sell a lot of games to make that money back...  And although people say: "they bought the IP" or "the back catalogue", punters have already bought those games, so MS still need to make new games to sell...