lol I appreciate it but not sure why - Dring put a bow on it.
There is a much larger narrative that should be discussed surrounding this, about how anyone in tech journalism, yes that includes anyone who considers themselves a games journalist or blogger, has repeatedly allowed many folks in the tech sector off the hook, all to protect their access, which basically means everyone in tech media out here in the West, and taken loads of their reported figures at face value. This has been a long time coming. Microsoft has been playing 3-card monty with their reported figures for decades, not even just with Xbox.
On the one hand, Microsoft is notorious in digital media for employing some of the biggest astroturfing groups out there. Not unique to them btw, but MS definitely uses it more pervasively than some of the other tech giants. Which is why I seldom engage folks who are going to bat for a company to this degree.
I have also told fans on here in the past - Game Pass is an absolute steal and consumers should be abusing Microsoft's generosity, and I say that having believed for a long time that Game Pass has been long term harming developers who are releasing into the Xbox ecosystem, and the studios who have been working under Microsoft. Still, its up to consumers to take advantage of whatever deals they can. Given how much higher the cost of core-gaming is nowadays, Game Pass on both PC and Console should be in the 80m-100m user range, and Xbox should be a bonafide marketplace leader. It really takes such a tremendously weak leadership team to not be able to capitalize on basically giving away money to grow a userbase.
To your point, you're absolutely spot-on - if there are folks who are genuinely fans of Xbox and hate how things are going, do know that your blind support for them in the face of their missteps have insulated them from entering a position that would have them even consider the changes that they need to make in order get Xbox back to a place where folks love, which judging by talking with any one I know who still loves Xbox, all seem to be the first half of the 360 lifecycle.