yeah it’s a bit of a stretch lol. This is merely intended as a shot-in-the-dark prediction, nothing super serious.

Yeah if there's a next gen Xbox console I see it selling on par with Wii U or Vita.

Over a decade of horrendous mismanagement have driven their hardware brand into the ground, there's just little point owning one any more when you can play all it's games elsewhere.

If we don't count the months since May, Xbox Series destroyed the Wii U even in the period 2013-2015. The months from May to July (the time after the last price hike) we can say are on par with the Wii U, since they dropped from 200k+ to 130-140k range. Comparing only 3 months next to 3 years period is not very fair, since the data we compare for the Xbox side is too short, but I will go ahead and do it.

When we exclude the holiday periods, the Wii U had 6 months in 2013 at between 88k and 130k, most of them being somewhere in the middle (so lower than the current Series level). And another 3 month between 180k and 205k with the typical stronger January at 265k. In 2014 it did way better, mostly because of Mario kart, and most months were between 155k and 200k which is better than the Series new baseline. In 2015 there were only 2 months outliers doing above 200k, and everything else was between 130k and 175k. So I can't tell if that year's months were better than Series since again we have only 3 months of the Series for the new lower baseline, but it had some months on par with the Series and some months better than the Series.

To summarize, only 2014 can truly be called better than the Series's level those past three months. 2013 had a lot of weaker months than that Series range of 130-140k, going as low as under 90k, and 2015 had months in very similar range 130-140k too, few 160-170k, and only 2 months over 200k, excluding holiday periods of course. But yes, if that baseline doesn't change for the better, we can say that the strongest non-holiday Wii U months are higher than the Series's weakest ones. Keeping pace is still too early to say at this point, again, it's mere 3 months since the new lower baseline. Also, comparing the first 3 years to probably the last three years of other console is also not exactly fair. Wii U power (if it can be called as such) was exactly at those 3 first years. Series is now in it's 5th year. The console is not doing so well in general compared to even the XB1. Of course it's very likely that in it's last 3 years on the market it will start fall behind even under Wii U's peak levels.

Doesn't matter. Consoles mean nothing anymore outside of Nintendo.

Ah looking at Wii U data, you are correct. I think my claim would be more accurately stated as referring to 2014 & 2015. My bad. Also, the reason for XBSXS doing so poorly these past few months is likely a consequence of the NA (or U.S.?) price hike from May; hence, my expectation that this’ll be the norm moving forward, pushing only 120-160k units per month (excluding October through December)…at least until GTAVI releases.

Yeah probably next step for xbox is to simply put out what is essentially an Xbox branded gaming PC that'll sell WiiU-to-Xbox numbers, and an xbox portable that'll sell a few million. Maybe sell 25 million total next gen between those two. During that gen they'll do their best to make deals with Sony and Nintendo to get Game Pass on those systems, at which point they'll be ready to completely give up on video game system hardware and switch fully to Game Pass.

If the leaks are true and we're talking about a > 800 $ gaming PC for the living room branded as Xbox with Steam, then I could see it in the range 20 - 29 million. It should have some appeal for PC gamers or people with a big Steam library, but it's hard to imagine that lots of people are willing to pay more than 800 $ for a gaming device, which is probably way less flexible than a PC.

A device like this isn't passing 10 million, maybe unless power per buck and ease of use are comparable to consoles. PC gamers don't give a shit about some SteamMachine with a spin. Even the SteamDeck which has a giant selling point (portability) will struggle to hit 10 million.

MS gotta find ways to convince its remaining Xbox userbase to basically convert to PC without abandoning their plastic boxes. This is the only way they can retain 20 million+ sales. The PC community will hardly notice this thing.

Steam Deck is not a retail product, lack mindshare, lack marketing, lack advertising, lack branding, lack global distribution and lack a dedicated audience of fans who consume the brand for decade at this point 

The only way for something branded as Xbox, even if it's a disguised PC, to sell less than 10 million is if Microsoft repeat the same selling/distribution strategy of Valve

Edit: Or if the bad initial sales lead to quickly discontinuation 

Do you expect the Xbox Ally to sell over 10 million?