No, they didn't. Over the course of its life, the XBox brand is still billions in the red. It only started turning up a relatively small profit a year or two ago. It has a long way to go before anyone should consider it successful.

The problem with consoles is that there's no brand loyalty (except for Nintendo). It only takes 1 bad console for an established player to vanish, and 1 good console for a newcomer to succeed.

Xbox live might be changing that, but it's still waayyy too early to call it either a success or failure. Though, certainly financially, it's been a small disaster so far.

Welcome to consumer electronics. Comparatively speaking, Microsoft has fared quite well.

Comparatively speaking, Apple has done much better in consumer electronics.

Sure. Apple has done spectacularly well. It's a big jump from "not as good as Apple" to "worst CEO in America".

I won't make any judgement on leadership, and want to just point out this fact. A peer of Microsoft is succeeding very well in consumer electronics, meaning Microsoft could potentially as well and would become insanely successful (big profits beyond enterprise). Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft and so would love for them to realize that potential. I'm sure it is much more complicated than "replace CEO" to get there.