Exactly, do you think the average joe care about a lot of these niche Japanese games too?  I remember seeing that disagea game flopping really hard and it will probably flop hard on the switch. Why shouldn't Microsoft focus their efforts on giving the best experience on third party games since they sell the most and what most people buy. They can leverage off of power to make games run and look better and leverage off of xbox live as the best network and possibly the controller since I know a lot of people prefer the controller. The 360 sold well because of third party games. Halo and Gears did well, but outside of that third party games ruled the day.

WiiU: great first party, non existent third party

Xbox: lackluster first party, good third party

Playstation: great first party, very good third party

Best selling console: Playstation > Xbox + WiiU

That's why it needs both first and third party support

I'd argue that it was pretty much the intention, ps4 pro is intended as a "premium" option, rather than a replacement, it remains to be seen how the scorpio will be marketed, if they do the same and advertise it as a "premium" option then the higher price and relatively low sales wont matter much - if however (and they likely will), they advertise it as being an upgrade and one everyone should definitely buy because it's the most powerful console to date - sales will be better but not better overall, because it'll just be biting into the current xbox one / xbox one s sales rather than adding new sales (once current owners wishing to upgrade have done so in the initial month or so on the market of course).

Xbox Scorpio will have VR exclusives, so theres that

How does the wii u have a great first party but not xbox? Last year wii u received nothing. Xbox got gears, forza horizon and quantum break. Not to mention third/second party dead rising.

Because they don't have anything right now to draw anyone in.

Not as many exclusives as the competitior
Not as broad a selection of games / experiences
Not as good on third party titles

The scorpio is only going to fix the last of those three, while adding a new issue to the mix too - having to develop for a significantly different system and have that developed game still work on the older systems - that's going to drive up costs, development time and reduce returns.

vr is dead.

xbox is just like the pc but closed off. They can easily scale the games just like they do with pc games. Also, I would argue xbox live being better than competitiors is a huge plus. I think microsoft leveraging off of power, xbox live, controller will more than enough. Also, exclusives are subjective. I am more of an online gamer and games like Halo, Gears and to a certain degree Forza are some of the best online games I can play. I don't think there is a single playstation exclusive online game that is known for online gaming or is that good honestly.

Good point there.

developing for the xbox and developing for the pc aren't the same at all.
it's two fixed platforms, so optimizations and fine tuning has to be made for each, where as for pc you can leave those optimizations and tuning to the end user by exposing advanced video options.

Since it's a console, they *have* to do extensive testing and optimization for both, to get the best out of each, that takes time, that takes money.
You can say that it doesn't till you're blue in the face, but it does.

And yet it isnt.

Subjective or not, more exclusives and a wider range of games and genres attracts a wider audience, regardless of if those games are chart topping blockbusters or niche small following titles, the fact that they exist draws in buyers.

Or do you honestly think the xbox one is 25+ million units behind purely because of the pre-launch bad press?