Phil Spencer knows the moral answer....but when you run a company that has the worst first party in the console maker competition the truth about your options becomes clear.

XB1 has had Halo 5 and mastercheif collection. Gow Ultimate edition and GOW4 and still baseline sales are dead. They need new things. 

Of course, but its why they keep bringing up those franchises. They have nothing else. They bought Gears from Epic because of that this gen. The only thing ive learned from MS this gen is that they want to make Xbox a application service rather than just a console and didnt have enough games to cloud or distract from the merger.

Shh, stop exposing contradictions in what Microsoft is doing!

this is a great move. Don't know why people are needlessly taking shots at Microsoft.

Let's open with this: yes, buying exclusivity is bad, and both Microsoft and Sony have done, and continue to do it.
They should, in my opinion, invest their money in projects that need actual investement.

If you want to know however why Microsoft is much more the subject of attention on this (beside the fact that they actually do it more often) it has everything to do with how they've handled things.
They are far less popular than any of their competition, and have sold far less, making bought exclusivity a terribly unwise decision.
If you look at games like RotTR or PUBG the story is: "Microsoft has paid a studio money so that most people won't get to play it". 
This is compounded by their own lineup being very barren and by a series of high profile cases where this has happened.
Sony and Nintendo (to a point) don't have this problem, because you are far more likely to own or be thinking about buying their systems. Plus they both have a very healthy line-up of first party exclusives, avoiding the need to rely on this.

Add that this is also detrimental to the developers themselves. If your game is an XBox "exclusive" in many regions of the world it means it won't get discussed or advertised, creating problems for future projects as well.
While on other systems the exclusive funding and marketing usually makes up for lost sales elsewhere, if you launch on XBox you might as well not be out in Europe, Japan, Asia etc.


At this point in the generation it has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that "bought exclusivity" is a bad idea. I hope Bluehole does the right thing.

Let's open with this: yes, buying exclusivity is bad, and both Microsoft and Sony have done, and continue to do it.
They should, in my opinion, invest their money in projects that need actual investement.

If you want to know however why Microsoft is much more the subject of attention on this (beside the fact that they actually do it more often) it has everything to do with how they've handled things.
They are far less popular than any of their competition, and have sold far less, making bought exclusivity a terribly unwise decision.
If you look at games like RotTR or PUBG the story is: "Microsoft has paid a studio money so that most people won't get to play it". 
This is compounded by their own lineup being very barren and by a series of high profile cases where this has happened.
Sony and Nintendo (to a point) don't have this problem, because you are far more likely to own or be thinking about buying their systems. Plus they both have a very healthy line-up of first party exclusives, avoiding the need to rely on this.

Add that this is also detrimental to the developers themselves. If your game is an XBox "exclusive" in many regions of the world it means it won't get discussed or advertised, creating problems for future projects as well.
While on other systems the exclusive funding and marketing usually makes up for lost sales elsewhere, if you launch on XBox you might as well not be out in Europe, Japan, Asia etc.


At this point in the generation it has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that "bought exclusivity" is a bad idea. I hope Bluehole does the right thing.

I hear Phil checks under his bed for me, before going to sleep.

If true, makes good business sense. For MS anyway.

People keep quoting that Papa Phil tweet, it would be applicable if PUBG were launching same day on both platforms but Xbone owners got exclusive access to maps or weapons for a year.

Xbox can have PUBG. All the little quality niche Japanese titles that come to PS4, and PC make those platforms infinitely superior to Xbox 1 IMO.