There is a thread in the front page for this interview already.

Horse armour wasn't a paywall, it was a stupid microtransaction. My interpretation of this latter part is that they are looking for new ways to include microtransactions in games that won't piss people off but will shore up the publisher's investment in risky story-focused single player games.

Well, you still had to pay for it to get it even when you would think that this should be a part in the game you shouldn't have to pay for. I guess people see the word paywall different but in my opinion i tonly means that you have to pay for it in the game with real money to get it and that was the case. 

Well, he is right that you can make so much more money with a service type game than you can with a traditional, story-driven game. It's a shame, certainly, but it's the truth.

However, I think he's missing something important.

Sony isn't necessarily looking to make a huge direct return with a lot of their first party content. What they're doing is improving the image and attractiveness of the platform, which itself will mean better software numbers and royalty revenue down the line as your userbase expands.

Sony uses first party output as an investment into the platform. I think a lot of fans want more of that from Microsoft.

he has been saying this all gen yet their first party efforts keep dwindling. ill honestly believe it when i see it. 

I think what he is saying is that MS will come up with a lot of non story driven games which have microtransactions. And that is perfectly ok for me.

He's basically saying that trying to squeeze money out of people in a single player game they just paid full price for tends not to go over well, but if you lock the game behind subscription fees and such they aren't surprised to see such extra fees and microtransactions.

I suppose I agree with him, but it almost seems like he's in favor of his games being horribly obnoxious and expensive.

Yeah, I think that's about right.

What this interview is, I think, is Spencer pre-emptively justifying Microsoft moving (further) away from a traditional console model and toward a subscription-based model where the financial losses associated with fewer software releases will be recouped by producing extra, paid content for the few releases that remain. 

I guess, in a way, the Xbox ecosystem is a microcosm of the game industry in general. Faced with declining sales, publishers, instead of drawing into the fold new consumers, are relying on current customers to buy premium content: DLC, season passes, micro-transactions, subscriptions, collector's editions, hardware revisions, etc.

In the end, I believe this means fewer games on Xbox but more opportunities to take in revenue from each game. I don't think this can be spun as a positive change for fans, although that hasn't stopped Spencer from trying.

Luckily we still have Sony's first party studios who make plenty of these kind of games. And for some reason they studios till seem to sell pretty good. Anyway as long as Uncharted can sell I million and Horizon selling 2.6 million units in two mere weeks IG will take a while for these kind of games to follow the platform genre.

This logic is flawed and its a poor excuse to the lack of exclusives on the XB1.

And this is exactly why you are getting your "rear" handed to you in both sales and critic scores by the competition, Phil.

Halo that focuses on multiplayer does not have the same impact as before, but you don't hear Phil saying that right?

He needs to focus on fixing the lack of first party studios and Japanese support of his console first.