Yep, both are good points. They are (barely) outselling their past consoles with primarily a console that is $100 cheaper. And that is after they have spent nearly $80 billion in acquisitions and have been spending loads of money on Gamepass.
The pre-launch expectations were very different, but I think they overestimated the impact.
Remember how they announced Bethesda's acquisition a day before opening the Series X|S pre-orders? They thought these acquisitions will make all the difference and help them outsell PS5. That didn't happen at all.
Yep.
All these IP, Publisher and studios acquisitions ( which they have spent far more money on, then all the xbox profits combined )
All the investment on gamepass
Cheaper Series S model and still sales aren’t exactly much better than Xbox One which was more expensive and had some bad press.
I think Xbox fans thought this gen was gonna be like how PS4 made a comeback after PS3 and back to the glory days of the 360. I think fans overestimated these purchases and effort into gamepass. Most consumers don’t even know what Gamepass is while playing Fornite on the Switch or PS4.
But the glory days of 360 only happened because it launched a year before PS3, much cheaper, better 3rd party games, much better online infrastructure and taking a bunch of PS centric titles for the first time ( Tekken, DMC, Final Fantasy etc ). These advantages won’t happen again.
I still think PS will sell double Xbox again this gen.
By then the narrative will be console sales don’t matter and its all about gamepass subscription numbers are what matters. The xbox heads and xbot fans both change there tone as soon as its not to their advantage.
Phil Spencer Won't Disclose Xbox Series X|S Sales, Even if it Outsells PS5
Microsoft with the Xbox One quickly after its launch stopped reporting on how well the console was selling, [...]
www.vgchartz.com
Xbox is done divulging console sales numbers
www.destructoid.com
Then when they want to mention it, it matters: