That doesn't make any sense. The ps4 has weak indie games? and what do you mean lack of AAA exclusives? I hope not in comparison to the xbox one.

Ok first off, this is third party stuff you are mentioning and I was speaking first party.  So take Sunset, Ori, Cobalt, and Ryse off of your list as MS did not make them.  MS has  LITERALLY put out nothing but Halo, Gears, and Forza.  Second MC is a collaboration of opinions based on less than 100 people in an era where they will say anything for clicks.  Anyone who judges quality off of that site has an incredibly narrow minded view and will ultimately miss out on a lot.  Third...lets include meta and third party exclusives.

First off, funny how u never had Bloodborn or TLoU remastered on you list.  Laughable in fact.  Second look at Final Fantasy 14, Dragon Age Heros, Guilty Gear Xrd, etc.  Look at upcoming games like Persona 5, Ys, Uncharted 4 , Horizon, Last Guardian, etc. The list goes on and MS is left in the dust.  And it is also laughable that you are regarding a game like Driveclub based on a score given at a rocky launch when through excellent support it has become just as good as the likes of Forza 6 in its own right.

Nice try though, I will give you that.  Ultimately your attempt to shut me down is even worse than MS keeping their 1st party studios open though.

Double post

I personally and others to don't buy indie titles anymore. Last gen when Xbox 360 had more than 3000 indie titles I got burned bad. So many games that were great for 45 mins, then I never touched them again. I found them weak. And not the reason I bought my 360 or PS3 last gen. I can play those games on a cheaps as chips tablet. and often tablet indie exclusives are way better games.

Personally PS4 has a very weak AAA list. This is for me personally. Xbox has the best games in the following genres for me. Sim racing, arcade racing, fighting, 2d platformer, Action adventure, FPS, TPS, RTS, Cinematic, MMO Adventure. This is purely based against exclusive Sony titles. And not PC or Nintendo.

My point is, MS have the best exclusives any gen they have ever had. Phil Spencer has only just announced 2 weeks ago that they have just reinvested more money than in the history of Xbox into exclusives this year.

So its hardly a time to say Xbox is doomed. and closure of studios happens every year. I'd also wager tons of new IP project cancel all the time. just most don't hit the media.

E3 will come, and MS will announce a ton of AAA exclusives for 2017. We already have 7 AAA exclusives this year on Xbox One. Not including any exclusive smaller titles or Indies. And we know we already have Scalebound for 2017.

i've read though the entire thread and kind of see your points but i don't know you can actually make it either.

• ms either lost or pulled out of the CoD marketing for xbox.
• ms really hasn't marketed the marketing deals they did have last year like with witcher 3
• hell, ms barely advertised their tomb raider exclusive
• phantom dust is (i believe) no longer being developed
• recore is,.  who the hell knows.  1 trailer at E3 and not a word since other than it is delayed.
• crackdown is also who the hell knows.  it is supposed to be out this summer but we still don't have any real media on it.

now pair that with some of the things we know

• fable legends was basically done (in beta testing) but ms canceled it anyways and closed the studio
• push play closed too
• team dakota is apparently closed
• twisted pixel decided to go back to being indie
• 5 (or whatever) of those studios that opened to make xbox games are either closed or repurposed somewhere else.
• ms has spent more time talking about windows 10 than xbox lately
• ms has moved a lot of xbox projects to be multiplat with win10
• ms put win10 onto xbox

both of us can look at this list of things that have recently happened and come to different conclusions but here is my take.   ..there is little in that list of things to convience me ms is just cutting the fat and going to reuse any of that money to invest in 3rd party exclusives.  they seem to have cut investment in all areas of xbox including not really marketing their 3rd party marketing exclusives and timed exclusives.  i personlly don't think we'll see much if any 3rd party exclusives after the ones we already know about (quantum break, scalebound, recore).

what i see is this:  nadella has decided that xbox is not core to his vision of the future of ms and things are going to be moved to windows or cut.  i don't think this has much if anything to do with spencer or even sales or profitiability.  i think nadella is just being ruthlessly cold in repositioning ms into his vision.

But this isn't the case though. As stated, these are places that made kinect games. Some of these are going to hololens, and others are moving to other places around Microsoft. Their talent isn't leaving, but no longer used for Xbox. Hoping that Phil starts building up though...

People need to realize the end of xbox is speculation, and is built on little more than Microsoft making games on PC. They did the same thing last gen, and trust me, it'll end the same way.

I wouldn't call it the end of Xbox, but what you just stated points towards Kinect being an ill fated decision that couldn't even hold the masses from one console generation to the next.  And less studios is a sign of less games.  Otherwise, you'd see more Kinect games coming out of these studios.

What really gonna bake your noodle latter Neo is why Microsoft had 7 Kinect studios.

I agree with the chopping the fat analogy, it's true. These studios were Kinect-Focused studios, and they should have been shut down. There are staff being moved to other parts of the company, and I think, just as an aside, Microsoft has a new studio or two on the rise as well, or they would have never shut down these teams. The other thought that I had is this: When these studio shut downs happen, and teams disassemble, what usually happens? The teams break off and make NEW studios! I'm pretty confident that we will hear of the cast offs opening up new shops in the next few months, it's inevitable. So while Microsoft may have lost current studios, it could be just an effort at re-branding and giving these guys and gals a real shake at first-party game creation. Spencer is too smart a guy to just shut them down, and I think they may have been shut down to rise as other names, as their current studios probably had negative public perception - even Lionhead.