Actually its not greed it's just business.  The agreement with MS allows the company to help finance a project without any risk.  It means even if TR crash and burn, the publisher and even the developer do not lose out because MS fronted the bill for development and advertisement.  Not sure how long this agreement is from MS but this does mean that if MS paid for exclusive for one year for more than one instance of the game, the project will be funded for multiple years.  

Gamers need to step back with their platform of choice blinders on and think about the finanical situations for developing games.  Its a great deal for Square because they can continue to grow the franchise and tech for the game while someone else pays the bill.  They can get more agressive with hiring key talent and expanding the team to provide better tech all around without much risk financially.  Not only that, they still own the IP and its direction and can sell it on other platforms.  

Greed, I think not.  Smart business, I would say yes.  Either way, Square comes out fine in this deal.

what sort of dumb article is this?

"Tomb raider is an Xbox exclusive.......we were told the deal is timed, but it wasn't until recently that we found out it was exclusive outright... timed for one year"

Am I the only that sees how stupid that all is?

And as for SE, unfortunately this game will bomb. Or at least not sell more than 1M on the XB1.... though MS is gonna bundle it will XB1s this holiday so that's a good thing for them. They will blame fans though for sales not meeting expectations.

This nearly made me burst out laughing in my office lol.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

There's a fine line between 'greed' and 'business' depending on how you look at it and the company's intention. (ie. just think of some random corrupted businesses)

I would disagree and I would say this is not a smart business.  Look at the comments on this thread and negative reactions on the internet because of this deal from the very beginning.  This 'smart' business is tarnishing the company's name (more so) and the franchise, and this wont be good long-term.   Square "may" come out of this deal fine, but just wait until the next TR installment as they might not be as lucky.

So we know that TR fan backlash is definitely less worth than what MS was giving them.

Also, the game is only timed for maximum a few months.

Yes it's purely business decision which might end up badly in the long run. I cannot see how Xbox alone could help Tomb Raider to next level which means if PS4 bombs the franchise will not grow. And if there is no growth then this whole thing has gone backwards. RoTTR sequel will be the one to take all the potential damage, so in the long-term SE has taken huge risk.

Tech wise SE is not thinking long-term making RoTTR cross-gen game.

Because of comments like yours I hope stuff like this continues to happen.

What kind of logic is this. "Restrain fans of the series to play the game", no, they wanted to give another reason for people to buy their console in 2015. This is the same thing as saying Sony is "restraining fans" from playing Street Fighter V because they're doing exactly what Microsoft is doing. 

Yep.... this is probably going to hurt sales somewhat.

The reason is the same for MS and Sony but the circumstances with these 2 games are completely different. It is not comparable what MS and Sony are doing, this has been talked over so many times, huh...

I will never understand why people get so up in arms over this deal. All the companies have exclusives and timed exclusives but yet this one is seen as being so horrible.