It's not hard to see why sales of the Xbox Series have collapsed; a lack of system selling exclusives, then the decision to bring their first party games to Playstation and Nintendo, then most recently multiple price hikes.

But what of the console itself?

For those who own an Xbox Series, do you think it's actually a bad console, or is it just the circumstances surrounding it that are shitty?

No, it would be totally fine if it did not have better options as competition or the company wasn't moving goals, but the console itself is totally fine.

The hardware is actually fantastic... And can even do things like play Audio CD's that the PS4 and PS5 can't do.
The OS is also fantastic. - Fast and responsive.
The controller is fantastic. - Comfortable, long battery life and does the job.
Backwards compatibility, despite being limited for it's Original Xbox and Xbox 360 support, is brilliant.
The hardware is faster and more capable than the PS5.
The console has a brilliant cooler design which is efficient and quiet.

The Xbox Series is a brilliant platform from a physical perspective, the naming is crap, the exclusive game support is crap... It's a hardware platform trying to push services and that doesn't seem to be resonating with gamers. And who can blame them?

There is no point having great hardware if nothing is going to leverage it properly.

The hardware is great, but I don't like the OS.

It makes me sign in with my Microsoft ID, which has a secure password with is a pita to type in on its virtual keyboard. I should have made a dummy MS account to use on XBox instead but all my stuff is tied to my secure account now.

Controller feels a bit heavy but also solid. The controller that came with the Halo Infinite edition feels great, very nice texture. No stick drift, but also hardly used :/

It's confusing how to put in discs, I kept putting the disc in the wrong way standing vertical (I keep my PS5 horizontal for that reason) while horizontal the whole thing looks weird. It's also too big to fit in my AV cabinet so it stands like a mini tower next to the TV.

I've used it most for BC, playing disc XOne games on it. Forza 7 the most played. I already played Forza Horizons and Halo / Gears on PC, didn't feel like playing them again on the Series X. I bought it mainly for Halo Infinite couch co-op (never arrived), Forza 8 (disappointed) and Star field (disappointed). So nowadays my kid uses it to play Roblox and Fortnite on :/

No, after using both they’re fine. From a user experience I’d say they’re superior to what PS offers but … there’s just no reason to own one and MS have made it very hard to invest into the Xbox brand at all at this point.

I think the hardware is fantastic. Xbox is known to have the better hardware than PlayStation except the VCR Xbox One. I think everyone that has an Xbox can agree the hardware and features are better than Playstation 5's. The OS is easy to use an fast, backwards compatibility, FPS Boost, Quick resume, and a better storefront. There are problems the Xbox has (and some out of their control) that make people not look at it.
1. Playstation outside of the U.S. and UK is the "default" home console to get because of Playstation's dominance and marketing.
2. Speaking of marketing, Microsoft is now trying to push their games on all Platforms (which I do like), but their console marketing has dropped a lot. I rarely see an Xbox console commercial anywhere.
3. Microsoft gets all the Western games including the AA and Indie. They have a problem getting all Eastern games. I will say that they improved a lot compared to past Xbox consoles getting these games, but we still see like a game or two a week skip Xbox. They don't get Falcom games, some Chinese games skip Xbox, and Sony does money hat games still which doesn't help.
4. The price increases for their consoles is ridiculous all because the top Microsoft executives doesn't want to take a loss on hardware anymore, and not even a Black Friday sale this year. The price increase on Game Pass Ultimate to $30 doesn't help.

The Xbox Series X is my go to over PS5 since I prefer the hardware, but they need to do better. Also, I do not think them putting their games on PS and Switch is hurting their console. Putting games on PC didn't hurt their console, so I don't think this is either. It goes deeper than that as I point out in this post.

No, it's quite a great system. Sales not always means quality.

Series X is an excellent console as far as capability and game library (this generation is easily superior to the last two imo), but it's super redundant because the alternatives are clearly better. Going full 3rd party and increasing prices effectively killed it.

Their weak-ish first party games since Xbox One contributed to the decline too, but Microsoft can remedy this weakness by making COD and the likes exclusive (thus breaking these IP's association with more popular platforms). But they won't, because it's too "high risk, low reward" for them.

Having said that, if you only have an Xbox Series X this generation, you should still have a great time, and you would still miss out on too many awesome games due to money, time, and knowledge constraints.

The Series X isn't a bad console at all... it's just not better enough compared to the PS5. In the previous generation, the Xbox One X could absolutely wreck the PS4 Pro in multi-platform titles, so there was a clear incentive for people to buy it. This time around, the Series X has a much smaller advantage in the GPU department (arguably balanced out by having a slower SSD, though I'm not sure games really take much advantage of the SSD speeds in either system), and there's not really any standout feature to make people flock to the Series X.

The Xbox Series X isn't a bad console at all, but I believe its potential was wasted.