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Xbox is weird. They offer a game pass to play (stream) xbox games onto non-xbox devices (tv, pc even I think). So if you really wanted to play xbox games, you don't necessarily need the xbox itself anymore.

I wonder if this makes sense at scale? Sure the sales of the console itself are down, but are sales of games/passes up? Is selling a subscription to a choice of games more lucrative than selling a console one time, and selling a game one time?

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Historically, console makers have taken a loss on consoles they sell and they primarily make money on the games themselves. I wonder how much Microsoft actually cares about console sales.

Was this true historically? I thought Nintendo made a profit on every console sold they released, and out of the three they are the oldest.

Game pass games are downloaded, only a limited number of games (including those not on game pass) support the streaming you are referring to.

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