We got the sales numbers for Xbox in 2024, and they’re not looking too hot for Microsoft. If things continue on this trend, Microsoft might just fail out of the console wars, and it would’ve happened about two decades after I thought it might.

But then, Microsoft has an immense amount of money that they can throw at their problems, thinking that that might make them better.

Microsoft is kinda like the guy who bellys up to the poker table, and eventually beats out all the other players, not for any skill they’d have at the game, but because they have a small mountain of chips and can therefore just keep betting until the other players eventually fold.

Except that, in the console wars, that didn’t happen.

As reported by CBR, Xbox sold about 2.7 million Xbox units in 2024 in the United States. Considering that that’s their greatest market, those are not great numbers. In Europe, they moved only 290,000 units in that same time. In Japan, the Xbox brand gets a participation trophy.

The waning sales numbers of the Xbox brand comes fresh after Microsoft’s eyebrow-raising ad campaign in which they proclaimed that a variety of devices are Xboxs.

Here I thought that if I wanted an Xbox, I could buy an Xbox console. Turns out, I don’t have to. But when it comes down to it, who really does? If a variety of devices could fulfill the functions of an Xbox, then it’s hard to sell Xbox as a dedicated console.

If my smartphone is an Xbox, why buy an Xbox console? Would the games run better on the console by reason of being optimized? And if a phone’s hardware proves insufficient to run an Xbox game, then why not a gaming PC, or maybe even just a PC?

And maybe that’s the point. Perhaps the Xbox consoles are becoming just an expense for Microsoft. For a long time, console manufacturers (with possible exceptions) have been selling their consoles below cost, with the idea of making the money back through the games that gamers purchase. Perhaps Microsoft is realizing that they might be better off just selling software.

That’s one of the reasons why consoles are usually a pretty sweet deal for gamers; they often get better hardware than they pay for.

But I’m getting the idea that Microsoft is trying to bury the Xbox console, in an effort to keep the green brand in the green (assuming it was ever there).

I might come off as a fanboy, but that’s mainly because I don’t like Microsoft’s corporate image. There’s also the fact that Xbox seems to be marketed towards x-treme gamers, the kind that chug Mountain Dew, think that sports cars are practical, and think that graphics make games great as they play this month’s FPS, with a color pallate of gray, brown, and gun-muzzle flare.

I like playing games because they’re fun. Which is, you know, the whole point.

But it seems like I’m not the only one seeing through the crass marketing of a software conglomerate. The 2.7 million sales figure can be largely explained by the likes of niche gamers who buy everything because they have more money than sense, and speculative investors who aren’t very bright. But we probably have to rely on Microsoft to tell us how many of these things are actually connected to the internet, and aren’t just hacked to run Linux by hobbyists who are bored.

Before the Nintendo and Sony fanboys start high-fiving each other, it can be pointed out that having one less competitor in the console war isn’t necessarily a good thing. Competition discourages companies from behaving like monopolies. If you thought that the PS5 Pro was expensive, just imagine how expensive it would be if Sony had no competition. Then there’s how long Nintendo might plug away with decade-old tablet technology, if not for pressure from investors. We could call the Nintendo Switch 2 the Nintendo People Kept Begging Us To Make New Hardware So We Did.

I don’t like Microsoft, but I recognize that a Sony with less competition would not be great for gaming. Sony wants to integrate media under a monolithic name (their own). With less competition, they are closer to that. Sure, Nintendo is currently beating PlayStation in sales, but what Nintendo does doesn’t seem to have much effect on Sony’s decisions. Nintendo and Sony may be competitors in the console market, but they behave as though they are in their own separate worlds.

Whether Microsoft withdraws from consoles remains to be seen. But, at this point, they seem to be going the route that Sega once did. Except, in this case, they took a lot longer getting there.