PC day and date releases may not be the only factor, but its definitely one of the primary factors, as to why Xbox Series console sales are horrific.

Its the same reason why Sony doesn't release their single player, console selling, exclusives on PC Day One. But even with late ports, its slowly making PC one of the most attractive gaming platforms.

And before all this, PC gaming has been growing for over a decade, with Steam and Epic Games accounting for over 200M+ players in 2023. Even if only 15% - 20% of total Xbox One owners decided to migrate over to PC, instead of upgrading to a Series X/S, that's a huge chunk of lifetime sales potential being taken away from Series consoles. 

Exactly.  And not everyone is going to build a PC.  An unheard of amount of 1st party(console exclusives) games are about to be unleashed over the next 4 years to an extent I have never seen from the Xbox brand.  But to say it won't break 50 million or do as good as the Xbox One at this point of the life cycle requires a certain level of disbelief or unwillingness to apply some common sense. 

You really still think the Xbox Series is going to outsell the Xbox One, and further than that, that anyone thinking it won't lacks common sense?

I feel like you could have made a similar statement to this in 2022. "To say 2023 won't beat 2022 requires a certain level of disbelief or unwillingness to apply some common sense" due to 2022 having essentially zero game releases from Xbox and 2023 having what then appeared to be a very very strong line-up. The games came in 2023, the sales for Xbox consoles did not.

Xbox Series is behind the Xbox One launch aligned, the gap is widening fast as Xbox One sold far better in 2016 than Xbox Series has in 2023 and there are rumours the Xbox Series is being replaced sooner than initially expected. I think it's chance of reaching 57m sales is very remote.

Let's not forget their old internal forecasts only had the Series selling 59m by June 2027 and that was before the absolute trainwreck of a year 2023 has been for Xbox Hardware.

Releasing games does not guarantee hardware sales as 2023 has proven. They blew their non-existent 2022 line-up away and sold terribly.

Thanks, I was just confused cause at the end it talked about sales. And the explanations given make lots of sense. Thank you!!

I agree that Xbox Series will not be able to reach their forecast of 59M. But I think that games can sell hardware. We've seen it all the time with PS5 and Nintendo Switch. 
I personally think that Xbox Series X/S isn't getting the sales it deserves is cause of the lack of console dedicated exclusive games. Every game that releases on Xbox Series X/S is on the PC, effectively destroying their console base. Microsoft isn't worried about console sales (at least at the beginning of Xbox Series release) because they are focusing on their environment, the Game Pass and owning big game developer companies. They are investing in the long run (software & subscriptions) because they have an idea of what sells (whether thats true or not).

Microsoft's first party has underdelivered for several consecutive years by now, so giving them the benefit of the doubt requires a lot of goodwill. On their current sales trajectory, they'll have to hit it out of the park with their first party in combination with aggressive hardware pricing, otherwise they have no chance of turning this around. They've allowed to settle it in that Xbox can be ignored and their leadership is bad. Papa Phil and his guys probably believed that they are doing really well early on, attributing the PS vs. Xbox sales ratio to their own actions rather than getting dealt a lucky hand with all these semiconductor shortages that limited PS5 sales.

Since Spencer took over, his strategy has been more focused on PR than anything else. He has had enough time to fix things, but this is basically still the same old Xbox brand like ten years ago, minus the omnipresent PR disaster. Halo and Forza have hit new lows on Series X|S and that's quite something when you consider their state during the One generation. When this is happening to Xbox's former flagship franchises, then where should the trust come from that development of other first party titles can live up to expectations?

Before the launch of the Xbox Series X|S I was convinced that Microsoft should be able to do better. But their first party output has sucked harder than the Dallas Cowboys this past Sunday, and if you watched that game, then you know how low that bar is; this analogy is also fitting because you could say that America's Team lost by only 16 points in the end, trying to convince yourself that it wasn't really that bad. Microsoft opted for price parity with the PS5, that's because Spencer truly believed that their preparations for this generation were great. Game Pass is the only thing where they've been moving in a positive direction, but just like their first party games, it's not something that requires an Xbox.

The bottom line is that Spencer and his team have accomplished the feat to narrow down Xbox's potential customers. Xbox is for people who don't want to deal with a PC and simultaneously hate Sony with a passion, and anyone who doesn't fit that definition either thinks that Xbox is redundant or they buy it on the principle that they buy all major consoles regardless of how they turn out. Good for Microsoft that the last group is quite big in this day and age, but 2023 has shown us that Xbox needs more than that in order to match or exceed One sales. I don't rule it out yet, but like I said/implied in the initial paragraph, Microsoft not only has no room for error anymore, they also have to be willing to lose more money on Xbox hardware.

Top 20 selling games of 2023 in Europe, according to GSD data:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/video-game-sales-up-17-in-europe-during-2023-european-annual-report

*Physical only, since Nintendo doesn't share their digital data

I honestly don't even think 50 million is attainble for the Series X/S anymore.

Hogwarts Legacy was really a massive success, huh.