Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said he is focused on rebuilding the brand following the missteps leading up to the Xbox One's launch and the lingering misconceptions which continue to dog the console.
In a frank interview at the 2015 Geekwire Summit, which you can watch in full above, Spencer admitted that Microsoft may never catch the PS4 but that's okay.
"I started off making statements like – 'we want to win'. But I quickly realised you can only control what you can control," Spencer said.
"Sony is having great success with PlayStation 4 and they've earned that. But for me as a leader of my team and as somebody who is interacting with the Xbox community it was much more beneficial and I could have more impact by focusing on the product we had."
Spencer continued by noting Microsoft must focus on improving its own offering rather than trying to one-up the competition.
"It was a change for me in the 18 months [since becoming Xbox boss]. You'll hear me talk less about the competition. People will say 'you're losing, so of course you're not going to bring that up'. Maybe we'll test that some day. But if we are winning I'd hope to stay in the swim lane. It's about the games we have and how we treat the customers who buy our box."
Asked specifically if the Xbox One will ever outsell the PS4, he replied, "You know, I don't know. The length of the generation… [Sony] have a huge lead and they have a good product. I love the content, the games line-up that we have."
In the interview Spencer addressed the fallout of the Xbox One's original announcement and launch on Microsoft employees and said that when he assumed his position he not only had to rebuild trust with consumers, he also had to reassure colleagues.
"When I see that transformation of a team that's questioning the leadership of the organisation to a team that's motivated by the customers that we have and their ability to delight them, I see a team that's making amazing progress.
"We didn't know back compat would work. We started it, a few ninja engineers went off and figured it out – how do you go from PowerPC to X86 and translate game code that's about as time-critical as any piece of code that you would want in terms of its performance? They got it done.
"I would never question the ability of our organisation, but I'll say we're not motivated by beating Sony, we're motivated by gaining as many customers as we can."
Spencer concluded by saying that there's still plenty of work to do.
"Have we recovered? I feel really good about the position and the product and the brand right now, but I was at the Gamestop Manager's Meeting about three weeks ago and I'm sitting with 5000 GameStop managers in Las Vegas and they'd come up and they still have customers that walk in the store that think that the Xbox One won't play used games.
"Just to be clear, Xbox One has always played used games from day one. But that perception that gets set early on, because consumers have five seconds to internalise your brand and your message.
"Regaining that trust and the mindshare with the customer, the gamer, is incredibly difficult."
Microsoft announced in July that it had sold more Xbox One systems globally than Xbox 360s at the same point during the console life cycle. However, the latest figures we have from Redmond are from November 2014 when Microsoft confirmed it had "shipped" 10 million consoles to retailers.
By contrast, Sony announced in July that it had sold through 25.3 million PS4s to consumers.
The Xbox One will likely do well this holiday season, with exclusives such as Halo 5: Guardians and Rise of the Tomb Raider, while PlayStation boss Andrew House has admitted the PS4's line-up for the period is "sparse". Sony's biggest exclusive of the season, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, is already available.
