Silloin joskus Microsoft hallitsi Xbox 360 -konsolilla, ja Playstation 3 oli jäämässä jalkoihin. Sony ilmoitti, ettei aio jatkossa julkaista konsoleiden myyntilukuja. Playstation 4 kuitenkin myi paremmin kuin Xbox One, jolloin Sony alkoi taas julkistaa konsoleiden myyntilukuja Microsoftin sulkiessa suunsa kokonaan.
The Guardianin haastatteleman Xbox-pomo Phil Spencerin mukaan jatkossa kerrotaan ainoastaan Xboxin "ekosysteemistä". Merkityksellistä kun on, että maksavien asiakkaiden määrä on jakautunut usealle eri alustalle (toistaiseksi Android, PC ja Xbox).
"I know it seems manipulative and I'll apologise for that, but I don't want my team's focus on [console sales]. The primary outcome of all the work that we do is how many players we see, and how often they play. That is what drives Xbox."
Konsoleiden myyntilukuja ei tulla kertomaan, vaikka ne olisivat hyviäkin.
"I can promise you that I won't do that. In the last year we've had Google and Amazon and now Facebook announcing they're coming into our gaming space. I'm not gonna go compete with their numbers based on how many Xbox Series X I've sold. [Google] is never gonna talk about how many Chromecast Pros they sold. They're gonna talk about how many players they have."
"If I start to highlight something else, both publicly and internally, it changes our focus. Things that lack backwards compatibility become less interesting. Putting our games on PC becomes a reason that somebody doesn't have to go and buy an Xbox Series X.
I'll hold fast to this. We publicly disclose player numbers. That's the thing I want us to be driven by, not how many individual pieces of plastic did we sell."