That being said, things would be worse without the exclusive marketing. 

Might see another bump for The Order, as they apparently had a trailer shown during the season premiere of the Walking Dead tonight.

Actually, it got a lot of early praise at E3 and I believe Gamescon.  I think that when it came out how skimpy the initial content was going to be and how much DLC was going to be coming out of the gate, people got turned off to the concept.  Kinda predictable; the DLC whoring is starting to erode long standing fanbases for other games so a new IP wasn't going to get a pass. 

No one is buying the X1 for Evolve though.GTA,COD and AC are still the main selling factors for the few who are buying the console.Those people just want the X1 and Evolve has no impact whatsoever.

I agree. It will still move some hardware, but how much is going to be the question. I don't think Microsoft will be happy regarding the results of how Evolve sells; especially with the aforementioned marketing deal.

Doesnt that depend on how much they had to pay for it? Money might of been better served elsewhere like dying light or something which people seem to like (never played it myself). But obviously hindsight 20/20 its impossible to predict these things...

Maybe, maybe not. What, for example, might have happened at the end of last year if MS had done the $349 thing with a variety of 2-game bundles, as opposed to being stuck with a bundle containing one good but old Ass Creed and one meh but new Ass Creed because of an exclusive marketing deal?

Sure the exclusive marketing did wonders for Ass Creed on Xb one, but did it really have the optimal effect for Xb one sales? I'm not sure about that. Also it seems Ass Creed Sales on PS4 are pretty lackluster, so to what extent did the exclusive marketing for Xb one reduce sales of the game on PS4? Who knows, maybe sales on PS4 would be low anyway because it's simply not all that appealing of a game.

For Evolve it will remain to be seen whether exclusive marketing will do anything for either the game or Xb one.  Given the relative closeness of install bases and that this is an fps online multiplayer for 4/5ths of the people in a match this game should sell the most on Xb one. If it doesn't then it will have arguably had no beneficial effect on Xb one sales, and will have done very little to nothing to boost sales to Xb one owners.

At worst, exclusive marketing ends up not benefitting the publisher and causing a financial loss to the hardware business (what they paid > the increased revenue (if any) from the deal).

No.

More sales will happen. Without this there would be nothing advertising the Xbox One at the moment. Investment worth is a separate topic and when dealing with marketing exclusives, it's a known gamble.

What else would you use to market the Xbox at the moment? Not having any new games to market would be a death sentence. People buying consoles generally buy more new games than people who have had them a while. If PS4 is selling double the Xbox One, that alone would sway things. If they were selling equally, then you would have a point. PS4 has more games coming out in the near futures, new adopters will more than likely pick up Evolve on their new PS4 as a result. 

Seeing Evolve special edition on the psn store for 89€ makes me hope it bombs bad. 40€ would be a fair launch price for this game.

The Order finally broke the top 20 in the hourlies!