This point here about MS doing the most and still struggling is why I'm not as against the acquisition as I once was. They do have the cheaper console, they do have the cheaper games, they have a heavily subsidized subscription service when compared to ps now/ ps plus. It's pretty clear at this point they're falling behind the competition despite how much money they're losing on this product. idk whether that should justify MS buying something as large as Activision, but it's not as crazy as it seemed to me a few months ago.
Except MS isn't doing the most, not at all. MS had 2 main issues going into the X1, and 3 main issues going into the Xbox Series launch, of which were just carried over from the last launch and just inherited while adding in an entirely new issue.
1) International Brand Management. Since the onset of the Xbox 360, Microsoft has been able to very clearly note that their brand popularity in any region that is neither NA, with USA being the heaviest market there, and the UK specifically. This is where the Xbox brand is most popular and has the most solid successes in terms of sales in a overarching division history. This is their oldest problem, by far. To be quite frank, this is a problem they simply have never really tried to answer, and part of the reason is because it would involve them opening more HQs specifically for Xbox and hiring capable folks from those regions to begin gathering feedback and creating campaigns and launching initiatives that would right the ship in those regions.
I know some folks will use JP and how MS has never really done well there, but there is a truth we're ignoring here - the 360 was far and away the best selling Xbox HW in that market. Everything MS has done in the region since that early portion of the 360 was to largely just ignore it. Are they playing catch up now and trying to harden the SW support from that region? Sure, absolutely, but thats merely 1 region and market, and they have never tried to actually do things or create campaigns to make the Xbox brand itself more popular in the region. Outside of launches and their first 2 years, they basically stop existing in any market that they aren't already dominating in, which completely clears the way for Sony and Nintendo to serve those audiences exclusively. This is why, even with the most optimal sales forecasts we can give Xbox, they will almost always trail PS 2:1 WW.
2) International Platform Support. There are loads of regions where MS' platform just does not serve it well, whether thats on languages, timely/day 1 releases, etc. This is something they themselves have noted several times. Both Sony and Nintendo have steadily transitioned their gaming platforms into international platforms, with every form of support and maximum effort pushed towards ensuring none of these regions get left behind, and its reflected in both the SW sales and the HW sales. Again, something MS has been aware of since the 360 era, almost nothing done to address this.
3) The third pain point is the games themselves. The first thing to acknowledge here is the efforts MS has put towards improving, whether thats buying up publishers, buying up studios, or attempts to strengthen the production studios they already had. I think its quite clear that their efforts here haven't gone smoothly, but from a project management perspective, I think we need to acknowledge how MS simply dropped the ball on the games they did intend to focus on.
From 2009 to current, Sony has increasingly had an interest in cornering the market on big, show piece AAA SP titles. For most of us observing the industry, its quite easy to see how this came to be - several of the attempts Sony has made in the space over time have all been designed to capitalize on where they feel most releases are happening. They identified late into the PS3's lifecycle that 3rd parties were increasingly going to leave AAA SP experiences to the wayside in pursuit of MP suites and their revenue streams. Nintendo, on the flipside, doubled down on both SP experiences, non-traditional MP experiences, and local co-op experiences.
On the flipside, where MS has decided to dump their budget and marketing into primarily has almost always been core MP experiences. Whether that was their early days of wielding CoD, pushing Halo almost entirely as an MP suite, and the same thing with Gears as well, not to mention several other games. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it unfortunately puts their slate in direction competition with every other MP title that releases, all of whom release on multiple platforms, and until MS changed course on this, were not releasing on Steam day 1. The studio expansions they've done have expanded the realms in which they will be offering games into, but its also kinda clear how they don't market certain experiences that aren't the tradition MP Suite, compared to how they market/advertise games which have loads of MP features.
I do think they are going in the right direction on point 3, but it had more to do with them buying teams that were operating in genre spaces they completely ignored. As for the first 2 points I outlined, they have seemingly done nothing about it while now crying to regulators that they are in not in stronger market positions. Buying ABK does nothing to those first 2 points.