Read Ryuu's comment. It sums up perfectly the situation with Xbox. I'm sure if it was up to Phil, he would've improved 1st party presence sooner than he had, but with Xbox still being under the Windows division and Phil having to report to Terry Myerson, he only had so much power. Shortly after Xbox became its own division and Phil became executive VP, Xbox started buying up studios and increasing their 1st party. It's not a coincidence. 

lol people are so quick to accuse execs of lying on this site, it’s crazy.

A crap game is a crap game even if its free, the argument that its on game pass so its OK for it to be crap doesn't work imo. The merit here is the quality of the game not its price, Crackdown wass suposed to be a flagship title for MS, it failled spetaculary.

So he was promising before having power to do so?

So since you are saying he wasn't lying, them the reason for taking 4+ years to honoring the promise to increase 1st party content was?

That’s like... the exact opposite of what I was saying lol.

Idk bro, where did he say this? What was he referring to, exactly? How much control did he have at the time? Was he answering to someone confident in the Xbox brand or was it the guy who didn’t want to spend money on Xbox? What content was there for Microsoft to secure at the time? What studios that they bought recently were available to buy four years ago?

Unless you factually know the answers to these questions and more, you’re talking out of your ass to say he’s a liar. 

Jim has given a pretty damning verdict. His advice to anyone who thinks they'd enjoy this type of game is but Saints row or just cause 4.

In saying that though... Halo put Xbox on the map... And Halo 3 helped sell consoles, but they weren't launch games.

But Nintendo has been extremely successful in moving hardware using software, it's what has essentially kept them relevant, which is a good thing... And hopefully they don't stop doing it.

Digital sales probably hasn't helped matters either... It's taking up a larger piece of the gaming sales pie these days... And generally isn't tracked.

Either way... I think Gamepass will keep the game as a "success" to the bean counters at Microsoft, it's good getting niche' games that appeal to certain demographics even if they don't sell high numbers of copies. (I.E. Halo Wars for RTS fans.)

No its not, you are saying that ppl who payed 10 for it might give it a pass, or have a slightly more positive opinion on it, as oposed to ppl who payed 60 for it. What I'm saying is that the price shouldn't matter, a bad game is bad regardless of the price, no one should waste their times even with a free game that is bad because the market nowadays have way too many games on a wide range of prices and this game is just inexcusable.

Certainly, Halo was a killer app of the time. But I guess something that has changed is we get notable games on a regular basis these days. I mean many of us have massive backlogs because there is so much stuff that seems worth playing. 6th gen and prior wasn't exactly like that in my opinion, not to the same extent.

There was a big shift in the 7th gen where studios began pumping out notable content more often. Nowadays we get endless indie content while interesting AA or AAA games come every month.

In a nutshell, killer apps don't really exist in a era with so many notable games happening all the time. We can't even agree on a game of the year. Even I roll my eyes at GOTYs because they tend to have a huge focus on story driven content while the actual most popular games can be ignored.