What's happening to the Xbox?

[Bruzer]

Recently, it seems the Xbox One has run into a lot of trouble. To name a few:

• The Xbox One had a very rocky beginning, but normally that's no cause for alarm, since the PS3's bad start hardly took down SCE/SIE.
• Xbox One's sales have been so slow that Microsoft doesn't personally release sales figures, but reports from EA show very disappointing numbers, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that the Switch could outsell it despite XBO getting a three-year head start on it.
• Microsoft's exclusives have been a long string of disappointments, including the fading interest in Halo, Rare's latest game flopping hard, and other exclusive failures. As far as I can tell, Forza is pretty much the only exclusive they have left that's still attractive to gamers. PS4 and Switch are leaving XBO in the dust when it comes to quality exclusives.

To me, it looks like Microsoft is well aware that the Xbox One is a threat to the brand overall, and their pushes for backwards-compatibility and playable XBO games on Windows 10 could definitely be interpreted as attempts to salvage it. If the Xbox One becomes the last Xbox home console (and that's a big if), then I'd see it as a foregone conclusion; Microsoft's big success was its forward-thinking on online gaming communities, but aside from that, the Xbox line has just been lucky since then. It really hasn't had much else going for it from the beginning.

[Leon]

I don't think the Xbox is going anywhere, but it is clear that they've been struggling this generation.

I can only speak for myself, but I've always felt like the Xbox was the hardest to justify from a software perspective. A lot of its games are available on Playstation or Steam, and its exclusives aren't as strong as the competition. From a service perspective, I think Xbox Live speaks for itself as a triumph of their work in gaming.

[nocturnal YL]

As someone who only cares about Japanese games for the most part, the Xbox practically doesn't exist. In the unlikely scenario that I have a sudden urge to want to play Xbox One games, I already have a Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10.

I don't know about the others, but the above pretty much sums up why the Xbox line of systems won't work for me.

Personally, I never liked the Xbox line to begin with, precisely because Windows PCs are a thing. I know there are legitimate reasons to want an Xbox, but in my mind, the Xbox stereotype are the ones who are after high-quality online FPS, which largely overlaps with the PC stereotype.

Xbox Live started the trend of paid online services that were eventually copied by Sony and Nintendo. Boo.

[Nester the Lark]

I feel that the Xbox One has similar problems to what the Wii U had: a confusing name, a messaging problem, lack of support, etc.

It seems fairly common for a console maker to stumble in the generation following a highly successful platform. Better luck next time?