It will probably be some time before a next gen version is made. But judging by the last effort the series is on the decline in sales.

No, even if it sold 6 million consoles by itself which equals the highest total game sales achieved so far it wins nothing alone. That total also is not even close to  coming only from  North America.

I actually thought it would remain exclusive.

Apparently not. People are giddy with excitement about future Gears games being exclusive to Xbox... as if the last 4 games were not.

MS has owned the NA (NA is misinformed, they simply own the US market, which (un)coincidentally is the market that buys the most games) market since the launch of the 360. Nothing has changed that. Except widespread cases of myopia induced panic.

MS will win NA anyway. The only difference this time will be by what margin :)
Not sure if Gears announcement will change anything to that (like increase the margin for instance); I'm not convinced.

Simply having Gears on the platform will be a big deal in America. Not enough to win, but enough to give the Xbox One an advantage.

We don't even know how much KI sold, but the top players right now on the Street Fighter scene seem to be behind killer Instinct and hyping it up to heaven.

Not going to happen without a proper price-cut.

Dude, I am just happy there is another Gears. Its my favorite Xbox franchise, period. It was the last game I played before I sold my 360 and was the reason I bought my 360 in the first place after I found out about the ridiculous price Sony wanted people to pay for the PS3. If MS didn't buy it there probably wouldn't be another Gears this gen. Almost a similar situation to Bayonetta because Epic said they want to make another PC shooter (which of course would get ported to consoles).

They haven't won until we get a price drop from $500 and/or we see that Halo 5 is better game than Destiny.

I see Xbox One encountering the problems as WiiU has. Confusing name and not-so-great technical comparisons to the PS4. In the upcoming year, we'll hear more about the technical shortcomings of the Xbox One to the PS4 than we have about WiiU because XOne and PS4 share so many high profile titles.

I'll give you Japan will probably go with the PS4, but why not Europe too? Course, they would have to actually release there, outside of the few current countries.