Gaming

They'd be dumb to keep making consoles as we know them today. A much better long term business move would be to make a "cloud gaming Chromecast" a la Stadia but, if they want to retain their fan base, a disc player that mearly reads and validates your disc and then runs the game from the cloud. Thus letting Xbox fans still have access to their games. That in turn would allow them to have the base subscription have a library that changes to a great degree every month and you only get "permanent" access if you buy the games. Hell if the "buy" cost is lowered then people would by and large applaud them for it.

The hardware has almost always been sold at a loss but with how many datacenters they have now, how long they've been refining the game pass and the Xbox Cloud gaming service it seems like the only way to wrestle away Sony and PlayStations dominance in high end console gaming.

Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely hate the whole "you will own nothing, rent everything, and be happy" paradigm were in now and refuse it for a lot of things. But I also understand business and I'm reasonably sure the average consumer will actually love it. "Console" for like $100, the subscription say $15 at base, $25 for the full month and you get all the games you could ever play. It would be a no-brainer for any non-gamer parent. The kids will love it, no more begging for that new game, they'll have it day one and so will all their friends. Hell parents will probably also love the blanket, one time, parental action of setting which ESRB ratings are allowed instead of having to vet it game by game while the kid screams that Johnny gets to play it. Now they can just say 'no if the Xbox won't let you see it and play it then there's nothing I can do honey' and it's just enough deflection that it might pass.

It's really only when you zoom out that it becomes a shitty deal. But that's not something the majority ever cares go do.