I don't think the recent narrative of "Microsoft have finally turned the Xbox One around" is all that grounded in reality. It seems to credit Microsoft with an ideological shift that I've not really seen any evidence for. I think they have made some good moves recently, don't get me wrong, but they still have a great deal of work to do.
They still have their toxic parity policy.
They're still pushing microtransactions hard.
They're still missing key Xbox 360 system functionality.
They've stopped saying and doing colossally stupid things, which is a great improvement from the pre-release and launch period of the Xbox One. That alone is not enough to enter act 2 of an underdog story.
I still think that everything relating to nuTomb Raider 2, except for the quality of the game, was a total car crash for Microsoft. It's hard to guess without knowing how much they spent on it, but I can't imagine it shifted many consoles. They generated plenty of negative sentiment for their use of deliberately misleading language surrounding the exclusivity, and ultimately it will still have more players on PS4.
Halo is clearly in decline in terms of quality and sales. Fable is going in an unappealing direction for many of the series fans, and is still nowhere to be seen. Forza is ticking along fine but aside from serving Microsoft's existing userbase, at this point "Another Forza" isn't going to sell many people on an Xbox One. I guess we'll see what happens with nuGears, but on the whole I am not instilled with confidence in Microsoft's ability to manage their studios and ip.
There's plenty of ways that they can turn things around for the Xbox One. I think to an extent, it's fate is sealed, it's never going to dominate the market, but it doesn't really need to. If MS are willing to continue investing in it, and keep the momentum it does have now, it could be in a pretty good place in the coming years, but it seems clear to me that they are still today suffering from the consequences of mistakes they have made prior to launch, and they haven't yet rectified all the problems.
That's just my perspective though, no doubt others feel differently.
