It feels to me like Xbox have been on the back foot and tripping over themselves since the end of 7th gen.
They went all in on Kinect, and let the initial hype for that peripheral and the huge success it brought the 360 go to their heads, thinking they could get away with blatantly screwing their customers with the XO's shitty plans and arrogantly sacrificing the consoles gaming capabilities to leverage more ways to get money out of our wallets.
Then the PS4 curb stomped then, and They've been desperately flailing around ever since, hoping that if they scrabble around long enough they'll find something solid sales wise to hold on to.
So they buy studios, cancel some games while releasing others that are a but toss just to have gamepass fillers, create aforementioned subscriptions, make a ridiculously powerful consoles, then make a ridiculously weak one, stoke the fires of console warring then bemoan them, claim to have made the beat unified environment for game development then blame their own tools when the PS5 is slightly better, state they have the most diverse ever line up of games at launch, while every exclusive is delayed, promised in some ever changing vague future date, as well as being either cross gen or coming on PC as well anyway.
It's all a bit slapdash and half the time undermining itself. They're so desperate for a win, that they end up accidentally hobbling themselves.
They need to pick one thing and stuck with it instead of hedging their bets.
Are they platform agnostic and happy for games to release on PC and other consoles, or are they a console platform holder, so need real exclusives?
Are they creating a Netflix like subscript service, needing to crank out lots of small shorter easoly consumable experiences like mobile games, or creating platform selling big, bespoke, block buster exclusives like Sony and Nintendo?
Do they want to have an everyman, casual, low cost, easy to use gaming environment, or a best in class graphical powerhouse for hardcore hobbyists?
Because right now, they're a jack of all trades and master of none, while their competitors know exactly what they are, what they do best, and what their audiences want.
Unless they get their shit together, lose the chaff and commit to something they will do well at, it's got to only be a matter of time before MS get sick of constantly sinking capital into an investment that will never see any returns.