Although its a good thing(?) that MS was able to secure the timed exclusive in Rise of Tomb Raider, but its made me realize something truly terrifying about this new generation.
Money is starting to matter more than gamers.
Please Understand, when I say this I'm not saying money wasn't always important. Rather, Gamer's money is starting to matter a whole lot less. Which means decisions are made with the understanding that gamers purchasing games isn't very profitable.
With Square Enix, they were disspointed with the profit of the Tomb Raider (2012) even though it sold well, and now they where happy to take a deal for timed exclusivity, when it would obviously hurt sales. One could surmise that MS money, was more guaranteed, and it would be more profitable then if they released multiplat from the start. In other words, MS money mattered more than the profit they would make from selling on a larger platform, because every major platform, and when I say major I mean PS3, 360, PS4, Wii U, and PC, has a bigger userbase.
Generally speaking, the common understanding of how multiplats and exclusives work is that the console with the largest userbase, will get the most third party and exclusive support, but both EA and SE, two publishing giants of West and East respectively are getting behind the Xbox. At the very least it shouldn't be this easy, especially when we are looking at 2:1 globally.
Look at the entire mobile industry, the advent of pay2win, microtransactions, and freemium games lends cresedence to the idea that these publishers don't care about profit from sales anymore and are instead looking at ads and microtransactions as main sources of profit.
If publisher's have lost faith in the consumers ability to sustain them, then its only a matter of time till the industry shifts its focus and downsizes, and this freemium industry is one that consoles cannot sufficiently exist in. Sure diehards will still get consoles, but publishers are going to be making games similar to those found on Mobile, and their might not be a need for a physical console to play these kind of games.
Ultimately, this right here, this is doom for the console industry.
In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank
