If it's shorter than 6 years, as long as Series X can play the first year or two of games from X2, I'm cool. If X2 comes out 6 or more years (so November 2026 or later) then I'm cool with no cross gen titles. 6 years is all I expect out of a console.

You said "as long as Series X" can. What about series S? With at least 50% (last stat i saw) having an S - wouldn't that be important also?

Yes Series S still seems to be over half of all Series consoles sales. Matt Piscatella recently said Series S still has sold more than the Series X in the USA, but that the Series X will overtake it next year. It is an interesting question if the Series S customers will be abandoned before the Series X customers or if parity will be forced for the lifetime of both machines.

I doubt dulfite means anything by it. It's quicker to mention 1 instead of both. 

I say 2024 !

What makes you think their first entry in the console space would be a financial loss leader?
Sony entered the console space and the PS1 was a massive success, beating the incumbents.

Microsoft just dumped billions to have a successful presence in the market, they have the money to do it, hence why they got away with it.

You just need a product that can sell itself on it's own merits and the market will take care of itself.

Xbox is still successful, even when they are sitting in 3rd place, it's about making a financial return on investment, not having the most consoles sold... That tends to be something only a select minor demographic who are avid enthusiasts cares about.

Xbox isn't even needed to keep Sony in check. PC, soon Nintendo, and later hybrids, and even later mobile phones and TV's will be enough. GamePass is a potential challenger without a console needed.

Home consoles will inevitably die or massively-shrink as a market. PC, mobile phones, and smart TV's will dominate the future of "console gaming", and we will be reminiscing the good ol' days of true dedicated gaming systems.

I don't feel like it's mixed signals.

They have interest in creating Xbox hardware, for the sake of their players who want to have an Xbox console, with the Xbox controller, Achievements, etc.

But as Phil Spencer said in that post-Redfall launch interview, they are not under any illusions that they are going to sell more boxes than Sony or Nintendo.
It's just not realistic at this point. Barring a massive screw up from the competition.

I have heard the rumor that the plans for their Xbox Series Pro has been cancelled.
But I don't see the point in ending the generation early. It's not going to change much.

People have their physical, but mainly their digital, game librararies builty up. Those will carry over to the next generation, as they did for this one.
People are too priced into in their ecosystems at this point to suddenly leave all that behind and jump ship to a competitor's brand.
Branching out and buy an additional system seems more reasonable. But they'd need really compelling exclusives for that to move the needle in a significant way.
And with the way they are pushing for GamePass, it can conflict with growth of the console userbase. But between the two, the GamePass vision seems more realistic.

Nah, I meant just X, since that's the one I have lol. It's a personal opinion, speaking as a consumer. It would obviously stink for S users,  but since I'm an X user I'm not thinking from that perspective.

If going forward S models were promised 6 years of games and X models were promised 8 years of games, I'd be good with that. So S2, if launched in 2026, would get all new games released through 2032 on it, and X2 would get all new games released through 2034, even if they also released on S3/X3.

Sure, it might. But I don't think timing is the issue here, but rather the inroads MS are making into other regions. We had a thread not too long-ago detailing MS's poor translation practices when it comes to EU, which honestly feels like a major blocker to them gaining ground in the region. And there's the issue with 1st party software that's either been bogged down with issues or failed to push marketshare in their favour. I'd argue that MS's current strategy for getting 3rd party exclusives (requiring day 1 gamepass) doesn't help either. 

Even if MS pushed their next console early, they'd still have to contend with these issues, and nothing is really going to change if they don't. And that's not even taking into account having to vie for attention with a cheaper PS5 (and Pro model) that would be attracting a lot of software just from Sony itself, and their incubation programmes like China Hero/ India Hero projects in a theoretical release of 2026.