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[Brucey]

That's a Circana thread. Back in January I was predicting XBS to be at ~10K weekly sales by end of March and it's more around ~15K a week, so better than I thought.

Using a US based statement to a worldwide revenue prediction is laughable, but the difference between -31% and -33% was only $5M, or ~10K units less than I was thinking.

On Dec 22nd 2025 your claim was 1.1 million units in the US Jan thru Nov 25.

But now your forecast is its selling at 40-60k per month? 400k to 600k for the 10 months of pre-season 2026 how much do you expect nov and dec to bump things up this holiday season?

 

[Welfare]

On Dec 22nd 2025 your claim was 1.1 million units in the US Jan thru Nov 25.

But now your forecast is its selling at 40-60k per month? 400k to 600k for the 10 months of pre-season 2026 how much do you expect nov and dec to bump things up this holiday season?

The 2 price hikes for XBS last year massively impacted sales. Jan-Apr 2025 was >550K and May-Oct was <450K. Nov-Dec was <400K. Q1 2026 is -48% units YOY.

If Asha doesn't do anything to benefit hardware this holiday I can see XBS <900K in 2026.

 

[mckmas8808]

Yup.. but only subsidizing on profits. Valve, Ms... actually, all of them take 30% off every sale made on their stores. On a $50, $60 or $70 game thats $15, $18 and $21, respectively. MS dropping their take to $5, $8 and $11 would allow their store to be the cheapest place to buy those games. Period. And they would still be making a profit overall, especially compared to how things are now. And mind you, they have the benefit of being a full-on publisher, meaning their are games they make the full amount from on their store, and they make money from those games being on other stores/platforms.

This is one of those no-brainer type things that I don't understand why MS never did this. Especially being that they could somehow see it fit to spend $67B on ABK.

Keep in mind, from just being a store, Valve is making almost as much gaming revenue as Xbox... but making significantly more profit. Xbox isn't even making a profit in most quarters.

You answered your own question.....

 

[mckmas8808]

You want to know the crazy part? For years, a bunch of people talked about the length of games and why they didn't play this or why they didn't finish that. For some really odd reason, no one at Xbox paid attention to millions of people saying "I didn't finish/play that game because it was too long." They were so arrogant that they never paid attention to the mass market saying "We're not interested nor invested in playing longass games."

Game Pass is a buffet of games but most people literally can't stomach it. The overwhelming majority of people don't have 10+ hours of gaming a day. Xbox kept pushing Game Pass because they thought they had it right; a 2 hour movie is just the same as a 75 hour game, so Game Pass made sense. They were 100% wrong. I cannot stress this enough; the "Netflix of gaming" will never work because movies/TV shows are not the same as games.

The complete collapse of Game Pass, the need for multiplatforming their titles, the closure and cancellation of their studios; all evidence that their arrogance didn't pan out.

You can say the samething about Streaming Video games. People that say video games will be majority done through streaming by 2030 (comparing it to Netflix versus Blu-rays and DVDs) don't seem to realize that movies/TV shows are different than video games.

 

[Prodyhig]

UK Chart :

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

You answered your own question.....

As it currently stands... yes, they aren't making a profit. I am suggesting a massive business model shift and focus. If Valve makes significant profits off just being a store, then can you imagine what kinda profis MS could make being a store, a publisher, and a service provider? But as it stands, MS keeps trying to support strategies and initiatives that are the equivalent of them shooting themselves in the foot.

Just to add some context to what I mean...

94% of PC gamers game on a Windows system, and an overwhelming majority of those gamers buy their games from the Steam store, an app running on a Windows system. In fact, this is so bad that a lot of devs don't even bother releasing their games on the Windows Store. MS could have spent a quarter of the billions it sunk into fighting PlayStation to make itself the primary source of PC game purchases. By literally paying devs a small amount to ensure that their games release on their store, while at the same time reducing what gamers pay for those games.

MS has been fighting a console war for 25years.... and has pretty much lost for those two decades... all the while the war they really should have been fighting was right in their own house with Steam.

The absolute best thing for MS/Xbox, and this would make them more profitable than everyone... is to be the best multiplatform publisher they can be and be the primary and best source for PC game purchases and services, and to have a gamer-focused version of Windows that just happens to be the best version of windows to run intensive, resource heavy apps, which will make it a version of windows championed by gamers and creators.

And the crazy thing is that it wouldn't even take them 5 years to accomplish this. As it stands, if I ran Xbox, and I had a $10B treasure chest and I am given 6 years, by the end of those 5 years, I will be the best publisher on the market, and I will be the dominant platform for PC game sales and services