Phil Spencer: Fewer 3rd party exclusives, focus is on 1st party

[Goatseye]

Shadow1980 said:
If he can deliver on this, then that'd be great. MS has been sorely lacking on the first-party front compared to Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo is utterly dependent on their first-party output, and Sony has really made an effort to expand their own first-party efforts over the past decade. Meanwhile, MS's own first-party output was essentially Halo, Forza, and Fable, and now Gears is first-party as well. You'd get a one-off game like Crackdown every now and then, but most of their big AAA experiences revolved around just three franchises. Even Rare, once one of the most respected developers there was back when they partnered with Nintendo, eventually became a shadow of their former selves after being bought out by MS. Sure, they made Viva Pinata, but they also made the mediocre Perfect Dark Zero and over the past five years were relegated to making Kinect games. Rare is now making Sea of Thieves, which looks nice (though I'm not really big on MMOs since they come with an expiration date), so we'll see if they go back to being as good as they once were.

MS has a ton of IPs already at their disposal that they've left collecting dust for the past 13 years since they bought Rare. While some of those older games are being released as part of Rare Replay, some of those IPs would be ripe for continuation. MS did publish a new Killer Instinct, but we could use a proper Perfect Dark sequel, or maybe a new Blast Corps or Battletoads as XBLA titles. And of course MS could foster production of new IPs. Over the coming year most of the new IPs coming exclusively to Xbox are second- or third-party titles (e.g., Quantum Break by Remedy, ReCore by Comcept, Scalebound by Platinum).

MS can do better. They should do better. And I hope they actually do better because there's a lot of blue and white spines on my games rack and not enough green. My Halo discs will need more company than Gears and Crackdown.

MS was pumping out Arcade games/ budget games consistently throughout X360 era.

Rare was re-structuring as a studio since they shipped Perfect Dark on N64. This myth of them getting mediocre after being bought by MS is a fallacy.

Nintendo forewent Rare stakes. If they thought Rare was good at the time they wouldn't have let them go. Especially when Rare was making games better than they did.

MS Studios can concentrate on making their holy trifecta and leave 2nd party contractors do the rest. It's much more cost-effective and less time consuming.