they just dont seem that interested in taking risks anymore. their second party offerings this gen have pretty much failed for the most part (excluding Forza Horizon). Sunset overdrive, Ryse, Quantum break, Scalebound and Phantum dust have all been failed projects financially. their big second party efforts have been a bust this gen. and it seems Microsoft isnt tolerating huge losses anymore. not after 15 years in the market where they should already be established within the market.

their focus seems on the big hits, Halo, Forza, Gears and Minecraft. those are what make them money, those are what they will keep producing. we will see what happens to Rare after sea of theives releases. if it flops, i fully expect MS to close Rare. 

in all honesty, MS just doesnt seem to have the talent or ability to make a huge new AAA exclusive, and its really showing now. and with playstation 4 being such a huge success, its hard for devs to ignore that massive install base, so they go multiplate or make deals with sony. 

I agree with part of your post. However its all about the profits. We dont know whos making more money. If its costing MS more money to hold Remedy as 2nd party than theres no point. Sony hold 18 studios however how many of those studios make profit? 

It seems MS is focusing on pure profit and less expenses. XB1 doesnt have to outsell the PS4 to achieve profits. Aslong as Xbox makes money i dont think MS really care otherwise.

Well, MS has proven to be very incompetent when it comes to 2nd party studios so it doesn't surprise me they're letting another slip through their hands. 

They werent second party........they published 2 other games at the same time. MS doesnt even own the Alan Wake ip.....in order to be full second party MS would have to own the ip at least 

Looking forward to their new projects, one of my fav studios. Just really hope they plan on making Alan Wake 2 someday!

I've always seen them as third party.

To say that would be to imply that sony's studios are not making a profit. I think thats a completely baseless assumption to make being that sony has also shown they have no qualms shutting studios down. So  they cut off the slack so to speak, but still have a LOT of studios 

On another note, try looking at it from a platform holder publisher perspective. For sony, its not even about individual studios making money but instead about thesony world wide studios (SWWS)  group making money at the end of every fiscal year. The reason why an approach like that is better is because its ensures a very well fleshed out portfolio and allows sony take all manner of risks with  whatever games they are publishing and seeing to completion. 

That way not every game has to sell 3-5M copies to be a success. Cause the more successful games will pick up the slack. All the other games have to do is just break even. And when looking at horizon that had a budget of around $48M, I think its safe to say that games like Gravity rush/Until dawn/Bloodborne has a significantly lower production budget. And all those games have or would sell more than a1M in their lifetime.

And again, this isn't evn about making a profit, this is about giving "value" to your brand as a whole. thats the big picture that I think MS is missing here. Cause the very same place MS seems focused on making money from (3rd parties) sony has got those too and thanks to their larger install base is making almost twice as much on those games than MS is making.

Sony's way of doing things is why studios like media molecule could have been making dreams for the past 4 years and when that game comes out it may not even sell that well. They may "lose" money on media molecule in this case.... but in the grand scheme of things SWWS would have overall made a profit. Thats a far better business strategy than seemingly only investing in things that are sure to be a gaurnateed hit. 

And why this surprises me is that when the 360 came along, MS proved emphatically that games sell hardware and not brand loyalty or power. All of a sudden that narrative seems to have been lost to them completely this gen. Its mind boggling to me. 

I enjoyed Max Payne 2 all those years ago. I will try Quantum Break at some point.

I'm not really sure about the quality of the studio presently. Seems like they are struggling to move past making games that are above average into truly great games.

Remedy is the same as a studio like Insomiac, they generally make games for everything unless someone hires them to do something else, like sony is always hired insomiac (and once microsoft) remedy has been on microsofts payroll for Alan wake and Quantum break, but games before that like max payne where also released on Playstation.

I am sure if Microsoft or Sony wanted to work with Remedy they would, since its a guaranteed profit over a risk. Because if this game doesn't sell well they will take the his instead of working as a second party, either way their last games where all excellent so I cannot wait.

Technically, there is first party or third party. Second party is just short-hand for "third party studio that works on first party games".

This is interesting, though. Either Remedy is branching out with new teams and a more aggressive plan for the future or they're not currently working on a major project for Microsoft. The latter is kind of hard to believe given the lack of big exclusives on Xbox. Is it possible that they don't consider Remedy games to be worthwhile investments? I admit I have no idea how that last game performed against its budget.