Xbox has been in kind of a weird place ever since the days of the Xbox 360 came to a close. Despite being the undisputed king of the console market for the entire lifespan of the Xbox 360, Microsoft was never really able to to keep the momentum going thanks to one debacle or another. For the Xbox One, it was their requiring Kinect and really aggressive restrictions on playing/sharing your games. For the Xbox Series X|S, it’s been the lack of a compelling reason to buy it. This has, apparently, led to fewer sales over the years.

According to TheGamer, sales for the Xbox Series X|S are still trailing those of the Xbox One and Xbox 360 by about 13%. That is, in the same amount of time (43 months) 13% fewer Xbox Series consoles have been sold than Xbox Ones or Xbox 360s. They present this as a big number, and perhaps it is, but it’s kind of commendable that Microsoft has kept it from falling further.

Considering the overall lack of must-have games on the system, I’d say it’s actually doing pretty good. The value of Game Pass is (or perhaps was) very real, and the system is even easier to use than its predecessors were. Technology-wise, there’s a lot going for the system; it’s just that the X | S split causes some technology problems and, again, there are few killer apps that people would buy the system for.

I myself bought a series S specifically because I wanted to buy Halo Infinite and because I thought there would be a lot of good stuff coming down the pipe in the future. Well, Halo Infinite wound up being a flop, and, yeah, there are some good games coming now. However, most of those games are going to be available to play elsewhere, so they aren’t exactly going to drive sales.

Further, not only is Microsoft raising the price of Game Pass, it’s restricting Day 1 access to first-party IP like Gears of War to the highest tier. A big reason to buy Game Pass in the first place was that Day 1 access, so that’s not likely to help matters. Not only that, but the company has been talking openly about going publisher-only (like SEGA did after the Dreamcast) and selling Xbox games on as many platforms as possible.

I’m not exactly against this since I’m not really against Xbox and neither do I favor PlayStation all that much (I actually think PC is the future). It’s just that it’s kind of a strange thing to be doing right now, when they should still be trying to sell their hardware. It’s one thing to transition after a console generation is basically finished. It’s another to do so while it’s still arguably in full swing. That’s just my take, though.

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What do you think about the state of Xbox? Do you think Microsoft should be trying harder, or would it be better for it to just give up and go publisher already?