Talking specifically about the console side of things, do you think Xbox can be salvaged and made sustainable in the long term, or do you think it's on its way out and nothing can save it?

Yes it is. They have so much 1st party games. If they go to full Xbox only (so no PC and other consoles) they can easily bounce back. I mean, let's be real, they have better 1st party games then Sony. So far, since leadership changed, they made good moves, if they go to Xbox only Sony will have competition.

I'm not sure the industry can be salvaged with skyrocketing prices and AI taking over. I know I don't want a console with windows 11. Vibe coding is destroying devices. It ruined my SSD on a year old laptop. Even if it was $300 and offered physical games. You can't pay me to trust Windows 11 ever again since they use vibe coding.

Was Nintendo’s home console business salvagable during the Wii U generation? Sure the 3DS was selling okay, but the Wii U was far less successful than XBSXS.

Nintendo has a far stronger brand and identity than Xbox, and like you said they still sold over 70m 3DS's and the Switch was the successor to both.

Xbox Hardware business is in a much worse place than Nintendo was in 2016. And yes while the Xbox Series throughout it's life has sold much better than the WiiU, recent sales are WiiU levels.

It's not going to do that much better than WiiU's 2016 this year.

It's possible, but it would be a mistake to try.

They have grown their software development so much with the acquisition of Bethesda and Activision that it just makes far more sense for them to focus on software publishing. Shunning the 200m+ install bases of Nintendo+PlayStation to try and recover a hardware business that only saw good success in one generation seems ridiculous. Because without making their software exclusive they have no chance.

Also Xbox Helix, if the info we have on what it is is accurate, is not the device to do it. A niche, very expensive machine.

Stole my post.  :)

Yes, see Nintendo for details.  Back in the day the popular opinion for Nintendo to go third party, now they are top dogs.  

Microsoft has billions of dollars. They can afford to re-try a million times until they get it right. Of course, they are salvageable. The issue is whether they have the talent.

Of course it's salvageable.

Hypothetically, what happens if Microsoft takes the crazy route and makes ALL their games including Mincraft updates Xbox exclusive? Software sales would greatly suffer in the short to medium term and some IP's would disappear, but the Xbox platform would flourish.

It's just a question of whether or not Xbox is worth sacrificing software sales/brands for. Microsoft's answer seems to be "heeellllll no!!!" and it's understandable; they make an insane sum of money outside the Xbox platform. It's a serious risk, because Micorosft is now a bigger 3rd party publisher than they are a platform holder.

I don't think Xbox is salvagabe without exclusives. In terms of quality, it's actually a very solid platform as it is, but popularity wise it's losing ground to PC, Playstation, and eventually Nintendo due to a lack of identity. More and more people will ask themselves "why am I here and not on another platform?", and this imo can only be solved with popular and quality exclusives that you can't play anywhere else.

Lot's of optimism in this thread. I don't think it can. Phil Spencer said it himself that whoever lost the PS4/Xbox One generation wouldn't be able to compete going forward because everyone built up digital libraries, making it much harder for the consumer to switch sides once they had already picked last gen.