Like... i don't mind. But if they are doing that, it makes no sense to continue on the hardware market.

So, to explain, in product development, your product should always aim to be unique. The uniqueness or diferentiation is what is gonna get the consumer to buy it over the competition.
In consoles, especially the "twins" as they are called; they are the same. What diferentiates them are the exclusives.

When MS put their exclusives on PC, naively thinking that just because its a home hardware piece that people would want it, it was a childish mistake. Sure, that segment may exist, but it does not look to be very big.

As for it beeing better for the consumer... depends on pov. If MS sold more consoles they could afford to invest more on first party software and therefore more titles would be made. Maybe some srudios wouldn't have closed. It's hard to say.

That's kind of missing the point. It's not that Microsoft's exclusives are on too many platforms, it's that there just simply aren't enough of them that are of any real quality. They were putting out a good number of high quality games then it wouldn't be a big deal, but they just aren't.

considering the i7 is 9 years old I don't really think it has to be a machine from the last 5 years to play gears or forza lol, sure it would need a card chucked into it during the last 5 years probably, but that's not a whole PC built this half of the decade.

This is certainly an unfortunate circumstance but does this render the games currently on the XBox 1 unplayable? Killer Instinct comes to PC some time after its release on X1 and yet it's still perfectly playable on the X1. Additionally, KI is a 'play anywhere' title if I understand things correctly.

If the console now feels like a paperweight, time to sell it and look towards a future where you won't need to buy a Microsoft console ever again if PC gaming will always be preferrable over console gaming.

With all due respect, I believe it is you who has missed the point of my original post as I was not criticizing criticism of the quality of Microsoft software.

I think they deserve both. Play Anywhere is a fantastic service, and while you are still limited to MS's direct ecosystem (X1 + W10 store), that's still a significant expansion of choice. What sucks though is that shift towards more choice of platforms has coincided with a drop in choice of stuff to actually play. The two might not directly be correlated, and it's possible we're just seeing a scheduling slump from old decisions, but as it stands i rarely find myself actually wanting or even needing to use Play Anywhere. It's been 9 months since i last played a new AAA MS game, and the earliest next option for me (Crackdown 3 being good) would put that time at 13 months. If it's not, then i'll be waiting on games i don't even have a firm release date for yet.

Yeah that's the usual thing that irks me about here. "I'm a PC gamer!"

>plays 1 game on their ancient machine from the early 00's.

I share that feeling though.

Edit: Also it would make for a good thread to ask on who has a decent PC vs who doesn't and how often they use Steam as well (since we're already getting "it's not on Steam" from some in here).

h-how have you survived this long?.

Halo 3+ is not on PC. And if they ever do it. They will lock it to the Windows store. So I don't have praise for MS. If Halo MC and 5 where ported to PC. WITH NO LIMITAIONS ON OPERATING SYSTEM. Then they get praise from me.

Alright, ignore the word quality in my post. They just aren't putting out that many games. It doesn't matter if they come to PC or not. There output just isn't really praise worthy.

Well then, they should put all their games on PS4, Switch and 3DS as well. Consumers would love it, and I would certainly praise them.

I wonder if they already offered, but on the condition of their Xbox live to come with it and so Sony+ Nintendo declined.

I think this is the main point. It really makes arguing in favor of people getting XBO pretty pointless. Like the only thing that is coming out that I'm interested in is Cuphead. But, with it on PC I can just bypass getting a XBO.  So, it's good for me, but it does hurt those who got a XBO in the 1st year or 2.  I bet had many gamers had known that the XBO has no exclusives anymore, a large minority would have not have bought one.  

In the end, it just illustrates MS shifting away from Xbox, and trying to focus more on their gaming efforts on PC.  Unfortunately, it also seems to point to them taking fewer risks from now on, what with the yearly or bi-yearly releases of their big franchises.  We can also see from this year's E3, they are focusing on a few timed exclusives from indie devs, instead of the big AAA titles from last gen and the 1st year or so of this gen.