I don't get why people are so surprised with Xbox's sales. 

They only reason they sold decent last year was due to severe shortages for the PS5.

Now that the PS5 is no longer supply constraint, xbox sales are considerably down year over year, down to its usual performance. 

I guess people set their expectations high with how well they did last year. But that only happened because the competition has no consoles to sell. 

That actually makes some sense imo.

Because Gamepass has been around for along time, it would be odd, if its just now suddenly haveing a bigger impact, in the 3rd year.
But parrents buying consoles for kids ect, and getting whats available... vs now when sony have stock, resulting in a drop (compaired to last year).
That makes more sense.

Xbox Series XS results are on the lower end of my expectations so far, but they don't surprise me. The platform is getting slowly killed by PC's growth and Playstation's momentum. For such an optional platform, it's actually doing pretty well. Not Xbox's fault that people had unreasonable expectations that ignored its inherent flaws!

Microsoft simply haven't provided much reason to buy an Xbox.
Their first party lineup is simply lacking compared to Nintendo and Playstation, and while they've been pledging to improve this for years now, we're still about to close out the year with what, three notable Xbox exclusives all year, one of which was disaster and two of which were merely decent.
They have no answer to games like Mario Wonder, Spiderman 2, Tears of the Kingdom, etc.
Games sell systems, and Xbox hasn't had a strong output of exclusives since the 7th gen.

Aside from spiderman 2 what else did Sony have. I think Sony just owns the traditional home console marke like Nintendo does the handheld. Microsoft had its shot with 360 and Sony screwed up big time and Sony still beat them in overall console sales. Only way Microsoft gets back in with a massive mistake by Sony or games that are lighting in a bottle even then this it will be on pc day one.

Sony had a slow year, like Nintendo did in 2020, but you can afford to have those once you've already built momentum. Xbox on the other hand don't have that luxury; they haven't built up the same goodwill and back catalog that the others have, so it's on them to work harder to convince customers they're a viable option, which so far they're not doing.

This could change now they have Activision under their belt, but given how long games take to make these days, it may be too late for the Xbox Series.

Interesting