You don't think GTA6 will impact sales at all?

I'm doubtful that it will help Xbox much as MS seems to have little interest in even stocking the thing properly in most places any more.

Maybe not, knowing how weird the leadership is. But I wouldn't call it miraculous. I think it's easy for Xbox to beat its last year numbers. All it takes is shipping more consoles.

But I don't know if that would be enough to beat the Switch even in the US.

At this point, MS actually giving a damn about Xbox hardware sales seems miraculous in itself, to me anyway.

I expect the Switch to sell at least 7.5 million this year, a number I don't think is feasible for Xbox series

Sony president Totoki stated last year that PS5 have hit peak sales and will continue to decline year on year in the future, its almost impossible to reverse a decline in console sales, because those are dependant on the console life cycle, not even the Switch with its great legs managed to reverse a decline in Switch sales, so that won't happen for PS5 and Xbox series X/S either. The only thing GTA6 could do is to make the decline less than it otherwise would have been, but it won't lead to either of those consoles selling more than they did during their peak.

Switch sales in 2025 will be higher than Xbox Series sales in 2024, and I expect Xbox will do even worse in 2025. If Xbox suffers the same YoY drop it did in 2024 then it will only sell 3.3m in 2025. Switch beating Xbox in 2026 isn't completely out of the realms of possibility at this point.

Past trends are irrelevant. Past consoles received multiple pricesdrops while the PS5 and Xbox Series XS didn't in 4 years and counting (instead they got price hikes). Certain hypothetical scenarios may lead to temporary declines that can theoretically be reversed later.

What Totoki said implies they have no plans to do any significant pricedrops anytime soon, and perhaps he overestimated Xbox's competitive ability and is underestimating GTA6's demand, and maybe they plan to accelerate their PC support and thus weaken their hardware even further. It can be interpreted in a thousand ways.

PS5 with little competition from Xbox, a permanent pricedrop in the first half of the year, and GTA6 would 100% reverse the decline. And since Xbox sold extremely poorly last year, it's possible that both can reverse it if Microsoft decides to ship enough consoles (MS ignoring GTA6 would feed into PS5 selling even more). Nothing comparable to GTA6 ever released before. Every generation has its unique trends and changes that override past trends.

Yes, it's very rare to happen, the 360 being the notable example where it declined in 2009 before exploding in sales in 2010 and 2011. I don't think the PS5 will beat 2023 this year, but if GTA VI releases I can see it beating 2024. GTA VI could be the biggest video game launch of all time and PS5 is the only competitive platform it's slated to launch on. The PS5 already broke the all-time record for November sales with it's 2024 number, but if GTA VI launches November this year I can see it breaking that record again. With Xbox sales at an all-time low GTA VI may as well be an exclusive. It's going to be an insane launch.

Look at yearly sales for consoles, all consoles sell less and less after they have hit peak yearly sales, even with price drops. PS4 continued to sell less even with price drops, Wii continued to sell less even with price drops, and the same is true for all consoles. Permanent Price cuts are a tool to slow down the sales decline, not to make consoles sell more than they did during their peak. So PS5 with price drops would not sell as much as it did during their peak, it will simply slow down the decline in sales. All consoles in history follow the same pattern, a growth phase and a decline phase. The only difference between consoles is that some have better legs and decline slower than other consoles with worse legs do.