To points against...

- Last Gears sales
- PS4 userbase

To points for...

- Microsoft's wallet

I think Gears of War 3 wrapped up the story well enough and that was enough for that gameplay as well with the 3rd person corridor shooting and campaign co-op.

I happily ignored Gears of War Judgement happily and will continue to ignore more unnecessary "gears" games.

What they should do is have the same team at Epic come up with something new. Something with renewed mystery and sense of discovery, but also brutal shooting gameplay mechanics with hopefully enough evolution to make things fresh for returning Gears fans.

They're missing out on 4-5m in sales by staying Xbox exclusive so Microsoft is going to have to pay them a lot of money. Good thing is they can afford it.

it would be bigger than Ff lol. But no one would act like its as big. FF is huge in Japan so it might as well (and was) exclusive to the ps3 there. GoW is huge in the west were Sony is more relevant than MS in japan

even so, investors dont like seeing pointless spending. a few hundred million for a game like GeoW e is very pointless

This time they will probably have to grab deeper into their pockets to keep them as an exclusive with the PS4 being the dominant and easier to develop for console.
Microsoft only has one big counter argument for not going Multiplat

True, but I don't think it would cost as much as you're implying, and if it has a big effect on install base like Gears did for the 360 then I don't see how it wouldn't be worth it.

I will respect people who volunteer to help pay some of the $$$ to the developer to ask for 3rd-party games to be exclusive on their console... 

Still haven't really got our own back for Final Fantasy XIII, so bring it on Phil.