ThatDanishGamer said:
"My Strategy is more around our own first party franchises, and investing in franchises that we own, and probably fewer exclusive deals for third party content. I want to have strong third party relations, but paying for many third party exclusives isn’t our long term strategy." "It’s great to have Tomb Raider as part of our line-up, but investing in first party...is really core to our strategy." [Phil Spencer] |
Microsoft considers "1st-party" as games that are only a reality because of their investment in them. Companies like Nintendo do that as well----for example, Nintendo considers Bayonetta 2 as part of its 1st-party lineup.
So Microsoft could theoretically have a very strong 1st-party lineup with most of the games made by third-party partners...that quote doesn't necessarily mean that Phil is going to focus heavily on building Microsoft's internal studios. It appears he sees them more as a liability than anything from all of these studio closures and shutdowns
Rise of the Tomb Raider would have been made regardless of Microsoft...they just swooped in and bought a semi-exclusive deal over it. That's why it's a "third-party exclusive," they only really invested enough into it for a year of timed exclusivity.
Compare that to games like Scalebound which were COMPLETELY funded by Microsoft and literally would not exist if Microsoft didn't pump $10 million into them. That's the difference.