This is a big reason why I want Microsoft to keep its hands off of certain studios - the risk that those studios would be dragged into the grave with Xbox if Microsoft decides to say "fuck it, we're out."

55% of European countries without official Xbox support sounds like a lot, but I hope people know enough about Europe to be able to tell that the vast majority of these 55% don't amount to much in console sales regardless of the brand. In other words, full official support in all these countries wouldn't move the needle for Xbox in Europe much at all.

The translation thing is a serious issue though. While English is taught in all non-native-English countries with few exceptions, there's always going to be a sizeable chunk of the population who prefers all entertainment media in their native language, including people who are well-versed in English. And the more screentext a game has, the more important are the available languages and the quality of the translation.

But putting that aside, it's hard to speak of a crash in a region where Xbox hasn't sold well last generation either. Sales cannot drop much when they haven't been high to begin with. Furthermore, what precedes translations is the existence of games; before Microsoft proceeds to improving in the areas this thread is about, they have to fix their game issue first. But they won't, because their overall gaming strategy doesn't align with making Xbox exclusive games.

This.

This thread is exactly about the thing that I've tried to explain for a very long time. Xbox never really tried to even compete globally and that's the main reason why they struggle with console sales so much. People on this English-speaking forum rarely think about the fact that more than half of world's population doesn't speak English at all. And it's even more strange that Microsoft has an ambition to reach 2 billion gamers without properly investing in localisation. Spoiler - they will fail even with perfect cloud infrastructure exactly for this reason alone. Also nice comparisons of localisation between Starfield and Spider-Man 2, but I think the more interesting comparison would be Starfield vs any Xbox One era game. Like, Halo 5 for example. You'll be surprised, but you'll notice that localisation in Halo 5 was a lot better than in Starfield, which means that despite so called increased investments in gaming, Microsoft in reality scaled back on localisation part compared to Xbox One gen.

Nah.. the thing that is hurting Xbox sales the most is Microsoft's decision to put their games day one on PC. As you can see, people are just comfortable playing their games there, so they don't feel the need to get an Xbox for it, whereas people feel forced to get a Playstation if they want to play any of Sony exclusives.

The localization issue doesn't help one bit either. I would put it as the second thing hurting Xbox sales.

So the Series X/S is going to sell 60m units behind the PS5 because a few thousand people are still playing some old multiplayer games on Steam? 

Starfield is primarily a PC game for the large majority of the core Bethesda audience. It’s a community game for them, where they build mods and share stories together. Those guys aren’t buying an Xbox to play Starfield, they’ll just play a different community game on PC.

The other big release of the year, Forza Motorsport, absolutely bombed on Steam but seems to have solid Gamepass numbers on Xbox.

Maybe.  All I know is my situation.  I owned a xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox one.  The series X had a good sale a few weeks ago.  I was excited so I jumped online to see what series x games I could get that weren't available on my ps5....  saw the list and didn't even bother taking advantage of the sale.  

Looking at the info presented here, MS localisation efforts are really dire to read.

But I think it makes sense when compared to Sony, who were essentially the first to push into Chinese localisation in a hard way back during the PS4 gen, and of course there were their efforts in the Middle East and now another push into Korea seems to be on the table.

Localisation efforts are only going to make the PS5 platform, and the software on it, more accessible to the general public, so you would think that MS would place greater emphasis on it.

I bought the Series X year 2 as I skipped the XOne. I still have more XOne titles for it than Series games... Actually I don't have any current gen games for Series X. The couple I was interested in I already played on gamepass on PC before getting the X. Its main use is 4K blu-ray player when there's a game disc in the ps5 :/

How do you explain PC gamers apathy towards those games from Sony?