Your view is surprisingly...traditional.

I'd say their long term goal is to be Netflix for games.

Traditions exist for a reason.

Netflix didn't completely change the way people consume television, it simply replaced cable/satelite television with a more convenient and streamlined service through internet streaming. That worked because the medium suits it.

For Game Pass to have the same impact in the gaming medium, it has to convince people to consume games more like television and constantly try whatever is available at the time. That may suit a certain section of gamers but many just prefer to focus on a couple titles for a long time, which may or may not be available on the service. If not many of the games they like are on the service, the cost of Game Pass becomes a burder fairly quickly.

It's been 8 years since Game Pass launched, how much impact has it made on the mindset of gamers so far compared to Netflix in a similar time span?

They jumped the gun prematurely increasing the price and making the tiers confusing and annoyingly skewed against console gamers. Now that their dedicated console division has tanked they've surrendered it and are going for a low risk low return strategy of OEM branded devices that will still attempt to push people into Game Pass.

Even if the system sells shockingly well it will be because it allows people easy and affordable access to Steam where the majority of software sales will be, making Valve the primary benefactor. If they make the system too expensive or attempt to make Steam too much trouble to access, sales will be more disasterous than their current situation.

All of the success Xbox has right now is a result of buying other successful publishers and developers to take under their umbrella. Now they are practically no longer a console platform but a mega publisher/storefront with a few extra gimmicks.

Seems rather laughable to try and take pride in an innovative next generation console, when the main selling point for people is being able to use a service that isn't Xbox's marketplace.

May be a great product for people, but it also signifies that Xbox can now only rely on partnerships along with their Microsoft bankroll to remain a relevant brand.

Dick-measuring sales contests have always been popular among fans, and to be fair, I'd also prefer that the thing I like be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

However, it seems clear that MS and Sony got enough of that in the seventh generation. Overall revenue and profit are far more important.

Yeah, and I was pretty surprised to see the chart that Sony lost $4 billion during the PS3 era. And that was a console that sold nearly 90 million units, and nearly 1 billion games.

By no measure would any of us deem those kinds of numbers a failure. But, that's the position that Sony has put themselves in, and is a big reason why they're stretching into the PC market. Revenue and profits have to constantly increase at all costs. And so far, that seems to be working.

Xbox was never going to be able to put the numbers that Sony. Even in their most directly competitive state with the 360, they still couldn't get anywhere near the numbers Sony put up. And the numbers Sony put up, still costed them $4 billion. Something that can't continue.

Why do I have the feeling this will either sell similarly to Xbox (24.65 million) or Xbox 360 (85.73 million)? I don't see an in-between.

It won't really matter. It could sell only 10 million and Microsoft would be happy with it because they won't be subsidizing anymore (which Microsoft has never made a profit on any of their console sales in almost 25 years) and the version of Windows that the Xbox OS will now be built on top of is what they're betting on taking over, and can be licensed to a multitude of different devices. Not just Microsoft first-party hardware.

"We're working closely with the Windows team, to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming."

That right there was the key point of what their plans are going forward. Windows is by a landslide the number one OS on PC for both gaming and productivity already and has been for decades. Microsoft did that by licensing the OS to different companies. Dell, Lenovo, HP, Asus, Acer, etc. That's how Windows got as big as it is now. So it was a pointless thing to say unless the plan is to unify Xbox with Windows. The ROG Xbox Ally is a sneak preview of what this plan is. Essentially what Valve is doing with the Steam Deck and SteamOS (which is already going on third party devices as well) but Linux was always the crutch to Valve's plans. If Microsoft is taking that concept and applying it to Windows, an OS literally everyone knows about, and combines it with Xbox, then it goes from a single poor selling console, to a platform that immediately is able to target hundreds of millions of devices that run Windows, that's quite the game changer.

I know the second this new version of Windows is available for download, I'm installing it on my PC. I love gaming on PC, but Windows itself was always the problem. Now it'll be Windows with an Xbox UI and the Xbox store, and by extension Game Pass, will be directly integrated.

I agree with you that that is their long term goal. But having a goal and being able to accomplish said goal are still two different things.

In gaming, reputation matters. Nintendo, PS and Steam are all far ahead of Microsoft in that regard. Nothing in Microsoft's current and foreseeable approach attempts to fix this. The path Microsoft is on is one of getting integrated as a third party publisher on the platforms of Nintendo, PS and Steam. The main reason for that is that we've now gone a full decade already of Microsoft not understanding why exclusive content matters.

WHAt i find so funny is MS decides to partner with a company to make a handheld, something that they plan on using to make and build their new gaming os or XBox OS. But since the first device using this new OS is a handheld we have crazy nintendo fans in here and other topics going wild saying how ms is nothing. But they now own some of the biggest publisers when it comes to gaming and also the biggest OS in the world. 

You've been smoking weed again, haven't you?

Yes i have but thats not the point. Why is it only some Nintendo fans thats missing the whole point of this deal the whole OS thing?. No one is going to beat Nintendo when it comes to handhelds but thats changing the facts if whats really going on here its not about Nintendo at all.