Xbox division NOT investing more in first party games: Insider (rumor)

[EricHiggin]

Wouldn't be surprising. Since XB is really only a side business for MS in comparison to its main money makers, then they probably aren't worried about pushing it near the same way SNY invests in PS.

From an upper management perspective, if you look at the more significant investments into XB360, and see how well it did, then look at the relatively weak investment into XB1 by comparison, and see that its basically on par in terms of console numbers with 360, well why bother working harder and creating more chaos if you can do less and meet the same expectations, if not exceed them in terms of profits?

360 still required more physical game sales to cover the console cost and make its profits. XB1 is sold at cost if not a small profit and is focusing more on online/digital to make its profits. XB1 right now is closer to a more efficient version of the 360 in terms of costs vs sales vs profits.

Their problem, as far as upper management is probably concerned, is that not only isn't the PS4 well behind like PS3 was, its WAY ahead. Maybe MS understood that PS was "back for revenge" right from the PS4 launch, and that trying to spend their way to victory would be a waste of time, money, and resources, so just make the XB1 as "efficient" as possible in terms of input costs, and continue to profit regardless for this gen.

Whether or not they would decide to keep this model, or try and push forward and invest into next gen heavily to capture more market share, would be the question. If MS is allowing XB to grow their first party, like Phil has talked about, it sounds like it would line up just in time for next gen anyway, which makes sense, from a business and strategy perspective.