Its no secret that Xbox is selling last place behind PS5 and even the much older Nintendo Switch as consistently as a monthly basis even now. The market share split in Europe is 80/20 and in France its 90/10. Microsoft wanted to pull the plug on Xbox and call it quits after the Xbox One, but Phil Spencer pitched his gamepass and cloud plans to Microsoft CEO nadella and convinced him he can turn things around. A lot of people blame the Xbox One disaster, but the Xbox One is 10 years old now, and after acquiring enough third party multiplatform publishers to have more studios then both Sony and Nintendo, they’re still behind. Xbox has actually finished last place in console sales behind Sony and Nintendo every generation, even the 360 that was considered there best generation launched a year earlier and cheaper then PS3 was still outsold by it in total units before the PS4 and Xbox One came out.
But why is this? Some people say the main reason is exclusives, and its true that Xbox has never had a exclusive 90+ review score game of the year nominee console seller. But while its easy to blame Xbox for this it isnt that simple. Most of Sonys studios have been tech wizards making the most of the PlayStation hardware growing their skill and relationship with Sony since the PS1 in the 90s and every generation since. Naughty Dog with Crash Bandicoot, Insomniac with Spyro. That isn’t something you can just buy, no publisher no matter how expensive can replicate that. Naughty Dog was a 10 man team when Sony started working with them in the 90s, Santa Monica was spun off from Sony and founded as a Sony studio from the start to make god of war, square enix made ff7-12 PlayStation exclusive, Fromsoft went to Sony to make the very first souls game Demon Souls. Xbox will never be able to replicate the first party studios talent or Sonys relationship and history with third party studios, and its unfair to expect that of them. Also when Xbox gets talented well respected devs like Rare, Arkane, and Platinum Games to make a game for them instead of getting a great game they usually get a flop or no game at all( Redfall, Scalebound, Rare not doing much).
The Global Market. Xbox doesnt have a presence in areas like Japan and Europe, so even if they were to somehow outsell Sony and Nintendo in the US and UK, by the end of the generation they would still finish last place in total unit sales and console sales
So they should just focus on games that “sell”? That doesn`t say anything about the quality of a game. As someone who played exclusively on PS1/2/3/4 I´m very happy that MS is focuses on a varied and diverse lineup and not heavely focused on specific type of mass appeal games which is something that Sony started to do in the ps4 era. Yes they are very successfull with it, but many of the different and unique type of games they made in the past are completely gone. If I imagine that cinema would only do what “sells” then movies would be very uninteresting most of the time. I wished Sony would fund more bigger budget games like Death Stranding or Returnal even it these games don`t “sell” consoles. It seems more and more that people on ps and xbox only want similiar type of games instead of different kind of experiences and that ms should make the exactly same kind of games like sony while I think it is great that they aren`t doing that and instead do their own thing.
Smash Bros Ultimate is also only one game and I wouldn`t compare it to fighting games like Street Fighter 6 for example that don`t have the kind of mass appeal that smash bros has.