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

[Zanten]

S.T.A.G.E. said:

Zanten said:
Soooo now that the dust has settled, just wanted to throw in my statement of 'Good!' =D Microsoft turning its attention to bolstering its first-party output, ideally by developing new IPs to join their established franchises as well as dusting off older ones like Crackdown, can only lead to good things. :3 I am curious as to what shape their first party efforts will take over the long term, or more specifically, what genres they will end up trying to target with their titles.

Buying ips doesn't mean you can make it. Microsoft does themselves no justice by buying first party. Its just as good as third party. If anything once their contract ends with the primary developer they would just have to keep commissioning developers to make the game if they dont pull a 343 like Halo and dedicate a studio to said game.

Yeah, they probably will commission studios to develop new IPs, and down the road perhaps add them to the first party roster, and might well buy studios outright, but that hardly condemns the exercise as pointless, or any titles released as inferior. o.o If we go through Sony's own first-party staples, both Sly Cooper and Infamous were both made by Sucker Punch before they became a first party studio, the first Motorstorm was released a number of months before Evolution Studios became a first party, and Killzone was released before Guerilla became a first party studio, meaning there were commissioned and third-party titles across the board. Meanwhile, Naughty Dog was acquired by Sony sixteen years after it had been founded, and both Cambridge Interactive and SCE Bend Studio were studios under different names that Sony bought and rebranded.

That's even completely ignoring contracted games like Bloodborne, which is easily my favorite title of the generation thus far, and one of my favorites in MEMORY, despite 'just' being a third party title.

Now, Microsoft's approach last gen shot themselves in the foot, because rather than spend the past handful of years building up their first party staple, they opted instead to chase after the Kinect and focus their other efforts largely on the same few franchises. It's that exact mindset that turned me so thoroughly off to the Xbox 360 during the last few years. If, (again, IF,) their untenable marketshare and resultingly steep 'buy exclusivity' costs are leading them to turn their eye to actually FUNDING games from start-to-finish, and not just paying to keep them temporarily or permanently off a platform, then again, I'm happy. =P Maybe nothing will come of it, time will tell, but even the declaration is still a marked improvement over 2010-2013.