Counting only the games this gen, they are way worse and less, then the games even on the OG Xbox were .. I would take that library over the current one of Series any time.

By the way, I made a chart Series vs the US sales of Wii and PS3, so the gap between 35 and 42M. Let's see where the Series will settle.

Someone posted US sales table sometime ago, but I don't remember if it was only about the PS2 sales or there were other consoles such as GBA as well. Do someone remembers that one so that I am able to take the GBA data from there and put it here ? GBA US sales should be around 37-38M.

I mean yeah, if you don't count crossgen games, then this generation (PC and Playstation included) is an embarrassment. But even B-tier games are bigger these days than even PS2's best sellers, and gamers are accepting that crazy generational jumps are no longer a thing.

Series X/S actually has an excellent game library (all four platforms do), but most people choose to play those games on Playstation, PC, and sometimes Switch.

This graph is kinda funny not gonna lie. Xbox's complete lack of exclusives, and Microsoft's struggle to keep up with Sony's software quality/reputation really fucked the brand. Remember when everyone thought this generation's hardware split was going to be much closer and ignoring how lucky Microsoft got with the shortages? "ItS kEePinG uP wiTh PS5 in EuRope OMG!" Ahahahahaha.

Edited one with the GBA US data thanks to @ShadowLink93 

Looking at current Xbox numbers and yeah, It's not gonna reach 40M. PS5 3:1 over Xbox is Very possible.

The main hope at this point is if GTA VI moves a decent amount of Xbox consoles relative to their recent performance.
GTA V helped even the really old Xbox 360 and PS3.
If GTA VI doesn't increase Xbox hardware sales in a noticeable way, good luck.

It won't sell 40 million.
It's a real shame, because Series is a great machine.

The console, I suspect started to die with the ultra-hyped Starfield being a flop just after it's launch, in late 2023. The game that supposedly had to be the VERY BIG game for Xbox Series... and wasn't that good. Any good: Bethesda did an RPG from 15 years ago, using a very OLD engine... not clean of ridiculous and continuos bugs (please...), with some mediocre FPS gameplay, and a COLOSSAL quantity of useless and ultra boring content... sold as if it was gold. Including the infamous HUNDREDS of FULL EMPTY planets "to explore". I prefer to do other things with my life, Bethesda.

(Maybe some people can enjoy Starfield... but if you played new games the last 15 years... that was an awful game for actual standards. And it is NOT an space exploration game, or space opera game, as it was sold during years: It's a simple 2010s RPG using an space inspirated lore and backgrounds. And BTW, No Man's Sky was already everything Srarfield promised as an "space exploring" game, and much more fun. And not even "No Man's Sky" is THAT interesting to play after a hundred hours of gameplay... because huge worlds are only really fun in Multiplayer Online Games. Has no sense to make 1000 empty planets, and to design lots of redundant and crappy items "to loot" aaaall the time... for 1 player alone experience in the 2020s... we have high speed internet, we are not in the 90s anymore. In my opinion, that concept now is just "STOOOPID", with a very expensive and time consuming game development, that demands too much life-time of the user playing alone and bored. Prrf. "EMOTIONAL DAAAAMAGE").

All that hype for Starfield, in the end... was very negative to Series. And Microsoft did not managed it well, like doing better Game Pass temporal offers to make control damage for its machine. Now it's too late to make another "exclusive" -PC not included- AAA for this generation. You need 5 years to do an AAA.

Series needs to get a replacement as soon as possible, and if you have one Series, do not worry, the machine will have 5 more years of support at least: This won't be the catastrophic situation WiiU was during 2013 until 2017, thanks to the stupid decision Nintendo make with that "Project Café". In 2015-2017 Nintendo was THAT NEAR to be the next SEGA during the late 2000s, and early 2010s: Nobody. That's not remotely the case with MS.

Microsoft ain't going to stock up Series units for GTA VI hoping they sell them. You can already see they are letting the channels dry before restocking them to the bare minimum.

It's the intelligent thing to do: Too late to bet on Series anymore for MS. Thankfully, they seem to know.

Less than 800k in November is dire.
9 million to go, there's still a chance it gets there in the end, but it's moving like a wounded tortoise.
If there is to be a next Xbox, probably best to move on to it sooner rather than later, the Series is a lost cause.

The PS5 is just a far better designed and planned out console. This has been clear since the start of the generation when everyone hyped up the Series consoles and many trashed the boost clocked RDNA 1.5 PS5 lol. Imagine if there were no stock issues and Sony actually took advantage of the lower BOM and priced the PS5 Digital Edition aggressively following the "slim" release.

What's been holding the PS5 back is shortages at first, then prices and struggling EU economy.  Otherwise it's actually performing better than my positive predictions all things considered. Still, PC is definitely stealing market share, even if its main victim here is Xbox so far.

If MS still gives a fuck about hardware, the right thing to do now is to launch the next Xbox in 2026 and hope Sony let them have a headstart. It's a risky move, but less risky than watching the brand crumble for the next 4 years. Another thing they can try is aggressively price drop and again hope Sony wouldn't respond.

Of course they can slowly remedy almost everything by returning to exclusivity or timed-exclusivity (vs PC) and apply it to CoD, but it doesn't seem like that's a direction that interests them. I'm looking forward to seeing what GTA6 does to both consoles.

Edit: I forgot CoD is contract-bound so scratch that.