For all the struggles of Xbox Series, it would seem Microsoft are not throwing in the towel, announcing today that they are partnering with AMD to engineer silicon for multiple devices including next gen Xbox consoles:

Let me have access to my legacy titles (Xbox, 360, One, etc) and I'll keep buying new Xbox platforms.

My reaction to this is “meh”. I already know that every game on this is still going to be available on my Series X for atleast a few years after it launches. Might upgrade down the line but have no plans to get one at launch.

Yeah all the evidence was pointing to Xbox going the way of Valve rather than going the way of Sega, but you weren’t gonna be convincing others who thought it was supposedly blatantly obvious that Microsoft was leaving the console market lol

It will be interesting to see just how Microsoft will unify the Xbox and Windows platforms into one.

People i dont think understand how big this could be if they go about it the right way.

Yeah, MS is in this for long term, hardware is irrelevant to them.

From my POV, it's all about the "customers" on as many devices as possible, since those same customers will, in the long term, eventually subscribe to their game streaming service (recent poll, albeit of only 1000 participants, shows 62% would switch to streaming if latency was good).

And guess who's first by a wide margin when it comes to worldwide coverage? MS Azure.

Steam on the XBox could be a game changer, given a choice between a PS6 or an XBox that has Steam and Gamepass, the PS6 suddenly doesn’t look like a very good proposition.

And then Sony retaliates with allowing Steam on PS6...as I said somewhere, half-jokingly/half-serious, Steam is winning console wars. ;)

They are throwing in the towel because in the video they reiterate that Xbox consoles aren't central to their strategy going forward. Which in turn means that their Xbox-branded boxes will continue the trend of declining sales. I say Xbox-branded because the ROG Ally gives a good idea of the future of Xbox hardware. Likewise, so do their recent price adjustments for Xbox Series S and X, plus the prices of their Xbox-branded handheld PCs. Sega made an abrupt exit from the hardware business, but Microsoft has been set up to go the soft route of gradual decline until eventually nobody will mind that they are out.

As for their grander strategy of getting their gaming services on as many devices as possible, it's not going to work well. All their acquisitions have cost so much money that they'll continue to see it as a necessity to publish games on PS, Nintendo and Steam, so gamers won't see a reason to invest in a Microsoft-owned ecosystem. In order to win over people, you've got to have the desirable games that only you offer. Microsoft has lacked them for a long time now and they do not plan to have them either.