if Microsoft sold their next system at $300, made all the Microsoft games exclusive to Xbox @ MSRP of $60USD, and sold it as a hybrid system with graphics more powerful than NSW2, then that’d almost certainly do the trick. Ofc that would never happen, not in a million years (esp not with the current court order that they continue releasing CoD as multiplat); however, Microsoft technically does still have an off-ramp. They’d just need to take some hefty short-term financial hits.

With the Price increase and their current marketing I don't really see it hitting 50 Million, but they are close enough to 40 to barely make it.

I think it might still hit 40 million. It's supposesly 2 years before the start of the next gen in 2027. It'll probably just squeeze past

Last year they sold like ~2.7m units (I think I heard in a podcast).
So far their hardware is down 6% this year (year on year) from last update we have.
Then the price increase...

Lets say they sell 2.5m xbox series consoles this year.
Then start of next year, they are at like 34,5m.

You might look at that, and go, its 2026! and its ONLY 5,5m units away..... it can do that in another 2-3 years.
And yes, it might. I think it depends on when they plan to launch their next console.

Before all this tariff stuff, there were rumors of xbox starting a new gen early, in the hopes of getting a head start on sony.

The 2.7m figure for 2024 is Wellfare's estimate for USA sales only.

VGCharts estimate for global sales is 4.9m, which make no mistake is awful. It was the worst non-launch year sales for a current Xbox console ever. Worse than the original xbox's 2002-2004.

I meant more that there's nothing they could do realistically. They've made it abundantly clear over the last year that they have no intention of bleeding money to save their hardware business.

Hell, even if they did everything you say, which would require sacrificing billions, I'd still be surprised if it turned things around for them when their brand is so thoroughly tainted.

But looking from that perspective, Switch 2 is a fairly cheap way to play all that stuff. 449$ is not exactly an expensive way to play stuff like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft etc. So i don't see how Switch 2 is an uncompetitive way to play all of those games that dominate on PC and consoles.

I never said Switch is not a competitive option though

I am a father and have bought laptops for my kids. It's still twice as expensive as a console for a laptop that runs things worse than on consoles. But they needed them for Covid home schooling.

Problem with using laptops for gaming is that they tend to overheat and have lower lifetime than consoles as well. 2-3 years later I already had to buy them new laptops. My oldest went for a MacBook for high school which serves him well. But no gaming and 4-5 times as expensive as a console. At least it's reliable.

My youngest new laptop already has issues again with cooling. He uses it to play Roblox when at the grandparents and it overheats. A Desktop is much better but not portable. It's a lot faster and more durable for the same price as a laptop with integrated graphics. A laptop with similar specs as his desktop would be twice as expensive again and still prone to overheating. I use Throttlestop on my gaming laptop and an external keyboard since a lot of the keys don't work anymore from it running at 80c-90c continuously while playing demanding games. You can burn your fingers on the numeric keys...

So it's good they do their main gaming now on console and desktop. Much more durable than a laptop for gaming. Laptop is for school.

Yea as @Zippy6 said, it sold 4.8M worldwide. I don't know how big the effect will be of the price hike, but before that the Series was going well for a 3.5M year.