I mean, to be fair, she also said: "the plan is the plan until is not the plan anymore". I find it a bit amusing that you all seem convinced that they will commit for all eternity to this strategy. As if they haven't been doing 180s left and right.

I don't know how long they will commit to it, but her first words about it when being put it charge is about their games being available outside of the Xbox.

So for now, I have nothing but her own words, Xbox boss, to based myself into.

So I think I made a mistake in my math. XB1 sold 240,000 units for January 2019. This was long after rumors of a next-gen Xbox had already circulated. There was nothing to stop people from expecting a new Xbox in November 2020. So this number would have been reduced unnaturally by the anticipation of Project Scarlett. Meanwhile, for January 2026 Xbox Series sold only 118,000 units, despite a next-gen Xbox not being expected for winter 2027. So you have this big demand for a console that isn't underpowered and abandoned (as in not being produced in high volumes) in 2026 and the only thing to answer that demand is the PS5. So if you were to delay Project Scarlet by two years and deny rumors of a 2020 launch I would expect January 2019 XB1 sales to go up to something like 300,000 units. And if you combine even half of those missing 182,000 in expected Xbox sales, with PS5's natural sales, then that would push PS5 past PS4 pretty easily. But I think it also means the console market is somehow actually growing. 

 TL/DR; I forgot to factor in the demand for XB1 if Project Scarlett didn't exist and then apply that to PS5 sales expectations for the current gen.  

Profit is literally everything to a for-profit company. They aren't a charity.

As for Microsoft and Profit, you can ascertain profit and margins from current reports by extrapolating pieces of data.

Rockstar can pull this off with GTA6 exclusive to their console.
I am surprised they didnt try this yet.
They can sell 40M+ consoles just on GTA6 alone.

I would like to see a Rockstar console. I bet it would have futuristic design like Alienware. :P

A whole lot has changed this generation vs previous generations. COVID, wars, AI and tariffs affecting prices and production, Nintendo unifying home consoles with handhelds. A very long crossgen period, lowend hardware popularity persisting, scalability, diminishing returns, rising development costs etc have disrupted everything. So the fact that PS5 could keep up with PS4 at all exceeded my high expectations. Sony managed to achieve that while retaining high PS4 player activity (which may be explained by Xbox players switching to PS5).

PC and Steam popularity skyrocketed and emerged as a legit console alternative/competitor for mainstream gamers. Nintendo consoles are better supported by 3rd parties than ever and now offer a fairly comparable experience to premium consoles in addition to what makes them unique.

But while PS5's success impresses me more than PS4's, the comparison is kinda meaningless. If PS5 sells more than PS4 due to staying much longer in the market, is it really "more popular" hardware wise? PS4's legs got cut abruptly, this is unlikely to happen to PS5. Ultimately it just doesn't matter to Sony which console we're playing on. They would be over the moon if PS5 retains a high active playerbase throughout PS6's generation, and wouldn't give a shit about how many units the PS6 sells annually as long as the combined active playerbase/spenders continue to rise or at least remain stable, which means people still value the brand/platform/ecosystem. The same way Valve wouldn't care whether you're on a GTX 1060 or an RTX 5090 or a SteamDeck.

I think "console wars" and "generations" as we once knew them are dead. It's all about platforms and ecosystems now. Comparisons to the past will confuse and mislead. Console gaming is stilll going strong and may be growing in some ways, and PC's growth as an alternative is a good thing overall, and more than makes up for Xbox's decline. The fact of the matter is that PS4 alone was more popular than PS360 combined if we are to look beyond just hardware sales, which as you explained earlier were inflated by the same users buying multiple consoles (I for one had an X360 and a PS3. Played more games on X360 and spent more time on PS3 due to free online and TLoU Factions).

Consoles are not dead because Microsoft had the fate of Sega and became a software publisher. :P
Switch sold 150 millions and PS5 sells like PS4. Maby in the future but not now.

One of the biggest problems for modern corporations is that they push profits one quarter at the cost of long term sustainability. Anti-consumer business practices to drive short-term profit often result in company collapse years down the road. Saying that profit is everything to a for-profit company reeks of laissez-faire capitalism. Long-term sustainability, customer respect, and competitiveness are all just as important as profit. Hell, there's even a line on most PnL sheets for "Public Goodwill". You can't just jack up the price of water during a drought, reap millions, and then watch as your sales drop off a cliff and never recover after the first rain. That's a recipe for corporate failure. 

MS will only ever provide incomplete data. So anything you extrapolate will be erroneous. 

If you think a company like Microsoft; that has been chasing a $5~ trillion dollar market cap cares about long term sustainability, customer respect and competitiveness... Then you haven't been paying attention to what Microsoft has been doing for the last 30 years... 
Or the fact that Microsoft has thrown sustainability out the window and started rolling out A.I/Data Centers everywhere, driving up the cost of electricity in those localities, consuming significant amounts of water, gobbling up all the DRAM and NAND which has forced all consumer-facing products (Phones, Consoles, Tablets, TV's, Cars and more) to increase in cost.

They are a for-profit company, they put profit above all else.

Why else do you think they aren't willing to be price-competitive with Sony and Nintendo?
Why else do you think they mandated a 30% profit margin?
Why else do you think they have pivoted towards selling profitable software and services and not loss-leading hardware?

It's because Profit matters above all else.

And why does profit matter above all else? Shareholders.

It's shareholders that push that drive for short term profit signalling, it's literally Microsoft's legal obligation to provide a return to shareholders and chase that next profit-ceiling.

If you think these companies actually give a shit about you, me or anyone else on this forum... Then I have some Kangaroo feathers to sell you... Because they don't.
They care about the cash in your wallet, that is literally the entire purpose of their existence.

Where a companies priorities change is when they are a privately held company like Valve, profit isn't the main goal as they don't have shareholders to constantly appease... But they still need to have profit as a primary goal to continue to exist as a viable entity.

Any other answer in this capitalistic world is simply wrong.