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25 million worldwide for the X|S according to Oscar Lemaire (from ludostrie) and with sales continuing to fall agressively year on year, Microsoft they're going to have a hard time reaching the 40 million mark in end of gen.

Starfield had weak reception so didn't boost sales outside of September and this year has the first COD game on Game Pass and they're obviously gonna push that so there's no reason to assume the holiday sales will be worse than last year to such a large degree. A 30% drop would still be really bad and is what I'm expecting and it's currently 30% down so far this year and was 30% down in May so I'm not ignoring the trend at all actually, my expectations are right in line with it.

For why College Football 25 will make a difference it's cause it's a popular game that's releasing on Xbox. The notion that cause the PS5 is more popular big multiplat releases won't benefit the Xbox Series is absurd, it's obviously gonna benefit cause some people will still choose to a buy an Xbox instead of a PS5. For some evidence of that here's a tweet from Welfare who tracks the US console market very closely. https://x.com/Welfare_JBP/status/1813254132079501367

Starfield is a game that literally would have had 100X the effect on xbox sales than college football. Yet, here you are downplaying the effect of starfield on sales and bigging up  the effect of college football. At the time, critically starfield did not have a weak reception (mid 80's on metacritic). People's thoughts of it changed a lot over time when they realised that starfield was a shallow game with little substance. Again, Starfield was one of the most hyped games I'd ever seen in my life. The game was never going to live up to the hype but the hype alone was enough to save the game and give it good sales and public reception

For the Jan-May period vgchartz has the Xbox 30% down on 2023.

That means the Xbox series is on track for just 5.3m sales this year.

If the next Xbox is launching in 2025/2026 then no the Xbox Series will not reach 40m unless they have some miraculous turn around very soon. If the sales keep declining at this rate it'll never sell 40m regardless.

They have to not release an early successor and somehow finally stopping the bleeding to reach 40m. I'm not firmly decided either way just yet but it's not looking good.

What I'm trying to say is that the trend is -30% since two years ago so it should be -50% compared to two years ago this year. Trying to pass the anomalies from last year as a baseline is lying to yourself. There's no Starfield this year and I also highly doubt we will see those insane discounts again more so when they are launching new SKUs.

The College Football 25 reasoning is the same with Palworld earlier this year. The CoD on Game Pass advantage seems to be moot this deep in the generation at least as console sales is regarded.

You don't seem to know that CF 25 is a highly anticipated game for a lot of people, over 2 million spent extra to play it a few days early so that's over 2 million sales already before the game even fully launches. On Xbox specifically it's not gonna have as big a launch as Starfield but this is absolutely a notable release so the gap in effect is not as large as you're making it to be.

And yes, Starfield absolutely has had weak reception overall. While it had a good launch and reviews negativity towards it quickly increased soon afterwards resulting in it having bad legs making it so its console sales boost was limited to its launch. You've made your feelings about Xbox well known so I'm surprised you're arguing that Starfield had good public reception when it has been one of Xbox's bigger blunders of the past couple years.

2023 was not down from 2022 by 30%, it was less than 15% down actually and the lying going on is saying that someone is ignoring a trend when in fact their expectations are right in line with it. And again, Starfield had weak reception so you're exaggerating the positive impact it had on Xbox Series sales last year.

The tweet I linked clearly shows that CF 25 is undeniably boosting sales right now so there's no argument to be had over that part, it's either accepting reality or denying it. Never mind the fact that January being the best month of this year so far for the Xbox Series indicates that Palworld probably gave it a boost that month. Also the COD on Game Pass part isn't gonna turn things around or anything like that but that's not the argument I'm making, I'm saying it'll help it sell better this holiday season which is a given really.

I fear from that happening. I can't be sure 100% of course. I can't see the future. I fear one brand I like and want to succeed, to fail.

And for the pure numbers, I look at the whole picture. How it peaked in 2022, how it is only going down from there, and how much down is this year, and how every next month is a disaster and fail. How XBSX sells 50k or 60k per week (which is the sales level for a console when it's last gen system and 2 years have passed since it's next gen system came out. And how this level of sales often lead to 3/4/5M sales for the year (depending on the holidays and if it sustain sales level through out the year or not). I will be somewhat happy if XBSX can reach 6M for the year (because ultimately I want to sell much more than 6M, but for the position it is 6M will still be good enough) but at 1.5M half the year I can't see that happening. Other than that we now have the june weeks data and it only confirms the sales pace is continuing with those 15-18k per week numbers.

Also about that 30% drop you talking about so much. I just checked, and from the start of the year every single month XBSX has been down in Europe by 40 and 50%. This is on the monthly articles for Europe. The one for the Americas, is little more different, there is 25% down, there is 45% down there is 30% down. So US sales in general are keeping little better level of drops than Europe. The "other" regions I don't know, and japans is weak as always. So Europe is very bad, and the drops there are 40 and 50% all over the place every month this year. US is 50/50 however with the latest very low sales of barely 100k per month there I really doubt it will go above that. And June and September last year did 250 and 310k there. I can't see this year US sales getting to more than half of those numbers, so they can meet that famous 30% drop. With sales barely hitting 100k per month lately I doubt XBSX will somewhat boost itself up to more than 130k and 160k for september. So drops of more than 30% for US are coming very soon. The other months have been around 200k or more, so the drops there will again be close to 50%. I can't see XBSX simply boost itself from nothing. The boost that is coming is the holidays. Till then we should pray there is no drop from 200k per month WW.

I'm not saying that 2023 was 30% down from 2022. I'm saying that -30% YoY is the trend without internal or external factors and what to be expected by default.

Q1 2023 = -30%

Q2 2023 = -13%

Q3 2023 = -7% (Starfield)

Q4 2023 = +3% (offset by the massive discounts)

Q1 2024 = -31% (guidance calculated = -40%)

Q2 2024 = -33% (guidance calculated by Welfare)

Next earnings call is 10 days away anyway. I'm done until then.

6m is definitely looking really unlikely so far sure. How it does in the US is the most important factor and I'd be quite surprised if it only did half of 250k in the US in June but I guess we'll see what happens. September should have a relatively big drop yeah but it seemingly having a relatively decent July this year should help make up for that. My main point is the trend for this year so far points towards a drop smaller than you've been envisioning for the holidays so until more data comes in for the next couple months I guess we can just agree to disagree for now.

The year began with smaller drops yes, however the more we enter into the year the bigger drops they become. XBSX went from selling ~80k per week to selling ~50k per week. It already became ugly. If the sales were steady from the start of the year, then I could agree it can have nice boost, and with steady sales month after month yes, even 6M seemed fine. But with those drops getting bigger every single month, and doing barely 100k in US, I can't just agree it comes July and the steady sales every month begin, and nice holiday boost comes, and 5M+ for the year is there, finishing only 30% down from 2023 (which is still ugly in it's 4th year). The trend points, but the trends also pointed for a level very close to last year, and we are the half of the year and last year it was almost 2.2M by end of may, and now is barely 1.5M. How I can have faith in what the trend points, when I believed it should do something on par with 2023, and Microsoft instead of helping the system to sell more, they help it to sell less. Closing of studious, revealing new models without pricecuts, and even one that is the most expensive one, and increasing the price of gamepass. They act like they are market leader, not the market underdog.