Microsoft will be fine, or i should say, it will still relevant for the near future. What i am trying to say, it will be difficult for Xbox One to close the gap interms of sales number and profitibility for home consoles, even save to say, there is a big posibilty for PS4 achieving 3:1 sales ratio number, of course it depend also with pirce cut, PS4 longevity life support , and Nintendo performance with their NX. If PS4 can maintain there sales number with price cut, and no direct competion from Nintendo or other big company.  PS4 can be far away a head in the future.

I honestly don't care for those deals either way, as long as the game/content eventually gets released on other platforms (assuming the publisher wants to).

I just think this is a waste of money, especially for optionnal content...  don't care for it, and generally just ignore it and well, I can wait for a game to be released later too.

Some marketing people must have made research to prove some people buy their console taking these deals into account.

Worldwide, games tend to sell almost double on the PS4 over the XB1 (Ubisoft breakdown is a good indication of this). This puts Sony in a good position because they will have to pay less to get these third party deals.

To simplify it, these deals are struck to make money. If MS have to pay more to make a third party deal happen, they might not see a return while Sony have more chance of making a return. This is why Spencer is now against 3rd party deals. Altought he spun it a little to make it sound like he's doing it for the gamers, it's MS that makes these descisions and most of the 3rd party deals are out of their budget.

Sony have got a strangle hold on 3rd party deal and it would be stupid to not use it to their advantage.

You're not wrong.

Don't let Square Enix(japan) go Sony. Keep them close like the PS1 and 2 days(you've already got Hashimoto and Nomura on your side).

These 3rd party deals are getting worst all the time.

I think 3rd party deals are more in favour of sony and microsoft than the gamer. The only good thing that does come out of it is some cool looking consoles. But, as people are saying as long as they keep releasing for everyone we don't care. We do care though about 1st party and 2016 is looking very good in that regard.

Moneyhatting is bad so I don't entirely like this (and I didn't like it during the previous generation either). That said, true partnerships, such as publishing deals, are OK and actually a good thing.

Nothing lazy or cheap about this. its just business. and one that can be afforded by having the larger install base. Trust me, MS would be all over this if they could. It just makes zero financial sense for MS now to secure or keep these deals cause they lack the install base to back it.

And this "moneyhat" thing people throw around. that's just not how it works. Take Sony for instance. By the time COD releases this year they would have an install base of at least 30M. Now let's say they sell 8M copies of the game on the PS4. That's about $160M in royalties money to Sony. and say they paid Activision $30M in the exclusive content and marketing moneyhat. that still leaves them sitting on $130M in profits with the added benefit of moving more consoles and guaranteeing even more sales for the next installment in the franchise. That extra boost to their install base also means more games are bought in general which translates to more money all round.

Its the easiet and most effective kinda marketing there is.  Lastly, you need to understand something.stand I don't get this nonsense of how deals deprive others from getting this or that. If u want to get everything, then have the console(s) that has everything. If whatever exclusive content that comes to a multiplat game matters to you, then that is the version of the game you should buy. and if you don't have the console for it, then buy the console. Which ultimately will mean the money hat served its purpose.

By that, I mean Mod Support coming first to Xbox One.

Just another of your many short sighted comments.

IF Sony did 3rd party deals instead of releasing games, then you would have a point. As it is, Sony has many studios working on many projects.

Is it good for the gamer, no, but there's just has many Xbox fans that have switched their attitude towards 3rd party exclusives as there are Sony fans so please don't play the "when MS do it, it's bad" card.