Phil Spencer is becoming the king of the PR spin.

Sadly, yes. This began with the Rise of the Tomb Raider 'exclusive' incident and has progressed from there. He is not at the level that Reggie is, but Xbox's situation is not as dire as the Wii U's.

Oh, well, looking around the internet I have to say 'Spencer well played'. Your PR worked a treat. Every time Sony get an exclusive now XB1 fans are going to pull the moneyhat argument far more confidently and it will be Sony that appear to be the 'bad guys'. It's unbelievable how easily people are drawn in by a classic case of misdirection.

He's telling everyone that the only reason Sony have third party support is because they buy that support. You are all too busy calling him stupid to realise. You should be discussing what he's implying, not the seemingly stupid statement it's concealed in.

Why is he doing this? Because Sony has some third party exclusive we don't know about yet and MS are struggling to get any third party exclusives because they're now too expensive. Take this statement along with 'we are going to concentrate on 1st party' and put them together. Let's see if Sony announce a big 3rd party exclusive at one of the three shows they've got coming up.

I think there is substantial naivety on both sides of this argument - not aided by Phil using the words "nothing to do with" - which was ill-advised.

Marketshare will have an impact on the ability to procure exclusives. But as we saw last generation, this impact is often exaggerated. The PS4 is outselling Xbox One comfortably, but a lot of Xbox's are still being sold - particularly in a America.

Anyone who thinks its ever 'cheap' for Sony to procure a third party exclusive of any major significance (especially an established franchise) is probably deluding themselves. Whilst its probably more expensive for MS to do the same, we'd likely find the difference is more marginal than many assume. Just as, if not more important, would be the presumed ability to market and provide focus to a product, assistance with development, and the role of an exclusive in a console's line up.

For example, a lot of people have mentioned Tomb Raider. Phil has actually touched on this previously. PS4 will have Uncharted, which for a lot of PS4 owners will crush interest in Tomb Raider. SE clearly needed financial assistance to bring Tomb Raider to market. When they went looking for assistance, it was likely clear to them that just as great a market, if not a greater one, would exist on the Xbox One than the PS4 - where no comparative exclusive exists. Their thinking may have changed since UC4 got delayed, I don't know. But this is a circumstance where MS could theoretically been able to offer less money than Sony for the same exclusive, marketshare aside.

There would be examples on the other side as well of course. MS has an established fighter in Killer Instinct, and Sony has a stronger history with fighters - making SF4 likely cheaper to procure for Sony than it would have been for MS.

haha -- why's Persona 5 sony exclusive then? 

pst. It's because they have a dominate japanese market share. While this point is quite obvious, it just pushes out what Phil Spencer just said. Moving along... 

Of course he played it well. His comments are aimed at one dempgraphic, the one that is ready to drink whatever Koolade he mixes them. Fortunatelly, that demographic is not large, and exists mainly on a few internet forums where they stand in circle and pat each other on the back.

Had that demographic been larger, they would now be drinking a physical disc DRM, region locked always online mandatory always on Kinect Koolade, and be happy that they are getting screwed every which way.

It is obvious that 3rd party exclusives cost so much more for XOne, with them being obliterated in almost every market, and that any sensible developer knows that. And theybcannot offset that with 1st party offering because they are very limited by both talent and imagination (they themselves admitted that they tried and miserably failed to create an Uncharted competitor, hence the whole TR moneyhat debacle).

Sure, they'll throw some cash to mercenary 3rd parties like Platinum, Comcept or Insomniac, but gone are the days of cheaply procuring that support.

I am sure that EA is enjoying that situation, they are probably raking in huge money from the FIFA deal on a console that is comatose in Europe. They took their money on Titanfall, and certainly asked for a huge sum to keep TF2 away from PS4 again, but Nadella is not an idiot to give Spencer blank checks. 

That is why Spencer now wants to focus on 1st party, but if they failed to create anything meaningful in the past 15 years (only Forza actually) should people really expect their fortunes to turn around. I think the next few years will be a steady diet of Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable, with one off cheap mercenary moneyhats and a heavy gocus on PC gaming.

Of course, they will still serve Koolade to the thirsty any chance they get.

At least the japanese games such as persona 5, dragon quest heroes, star ocean 5 have to be exclusive taking marketshare in mind. Xb1 is non existant there.

A couple things, I hated it when Microsoft did it. And I hate it now that Sony's doing it. I've never been a fan of timed exclusivity, and even less so of DLC/Console specific content for certain games. It's a shady practice, and I sincerely hope this is the last gen we see any of it.

With regards to a permanent exclusive, that's been money-hatted. In those situations, I need more information before I can be ok with it (or damn it). Like SFV, for all intents and purposes it appears like SFV and all its iterations will be Sony exclusive...now, I think it sucks that Microsoft fans will miss it (on console, it'll be on PC, iirc?), but, if the game wasn't going to be made otherwise (If that's truly the story), then ok...fine. Maybe this helps turn things around for Capcom, maybe not. I don't know. There's a ton of SF fans out there, and if this is the only way Capcom can make it for them...I can't really argue that.

There are a number of reasons why smaller studios need to have staggered releases, and it's generally got plenty to do with support from whichever company is providing them support (marketing, code, hardware etc...), this allows them to actually survive, while making the ports. In those instances, I'm also ok. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest a company go bankrupt in order to release on 3+ different platforms, when releasing on the most popular platform first, can allow them operating income, while they develop the other 2+ versions.

Beyond that, lots of PR speak, doesn't really bother me. Most people have trained themselves to see through it, at this point. So, it's kind of in one ear out the other.

No need to enter the dead set group think on this one.

sounds like sour grapes.