Which sucks because that is another advantage he allows Sony to have. Sony has never been afraid to moneyhat exclusive or timed exclusive DLC on their 3rd party marketing deals, I remember AC games that had like an hour of PS exclusive missions, I remember CoD games with 1 month timed DLC exclusivity on PS4 (CoD also used to have 1 month timed DLC on 360, but MS abandoned it once Phil came along).

Phil's nice guy routine may earn him some goodwill, but goodwill doesn't sell many consoles frankly. Nice guys get used as a doormat in the business world, and Phil has been allowing Sony to walk right over him and Xbox for long enough now. Phil needs to start playing hardball, he gave Sony an opportunity to take part in a gaming utopia with no moneyhatted exclusives and crossplay and the like, and Sony has largely turned that opportunity down by avoiding crossplay as much as possible, and by continuing to moneyhat games like the 1 month deal on Modern Warfare 2 Remaster and the 1 year deal on FF7 Remake, and now we have these rumors that they moneyhatted timed or full exclusivity on games like FF16, Resident Evil 8, Street Fighter 6, Silent Hill, and maybe even a Rockstar game. Now is the time for Phil to take a hardline stance before the nice guy routine loses him another generation. He has about a month to try and make some 3rd party deals happen before their July show, if Sony makes a fool out of them today by announcing multiple 3rd party moneyhats. 

You could be right. But it is worth noting that 343 certainly has the resources and time to have done separate current and next gen builds of the game if they wanted to. I mean they have 500+ devs and will have been working on Halo Infinite for more than 4 and a half years when it releases this Holiday. If any MS studio could pull off separate current and next gen builds, it is 343. 

I think MS will disappoint alot of people if all of their 2020 and 2021 1st/2nd party games are cross-gen using scaling engines, instead of having separately developed current and next gen builds. Let's face it, base Xbox One is a 1.3 tflop, archaic Jaguar CPU, 5400 RPM hard drive anchor that would hold back XSX development if they utilize scaling instead of having separate builds. While GPU stuff can be scaled quite easily, there is no doubt that the the Jaguar CPU and 5400 RPM hard drives of Xbox One and XB1 X would prevent 1st/2nd party devs from taking full advantage of XSX's Zen 3 CPU and SSD. Sony's 1st/2nd parties have no such limitation, as they have abandoned PS4 to fully support PS5 from Holiday 2020 onward, which will make for some very bad 1st/2nd party comparisons between MS and Sony if MS are weighing themselves down with the Xbox One anchor, instead of building their games with separate current and next-gen builds. 

You could be right. But it is worth noting that 343 certainly has the resources and time to have done separate current and next gen builds of the game if they wanted to. I mean they have 500+ devs and will have been working on Halo Infinite for more than 4 and a half years when it releases this Holiday. If any MS studio could pull off separate current and next gen builds, it is 343. 

I think MS will disappoint alot of people if all of their 2020 and 2021 1st/2nd party games are cross-gen using scaling engines, instead of having separately developed current and next gen builds. Let's face it, base Xbox One is a 1.3 tflop, archaic Jaguar CPU, 5400 RPM hard drive anchor that would hold back XSX development if they utilize scaling instead of having separate builds. While GPU stuff can be scaled quite easily, there is no doubt that the the Jaguar CPU and 5400 RPM hard drives of Xbox One and XB1 X would prevent 1st/2nd party devs from taking full advantage of XSX's Zen 3 CPU and SSD. Sony's 1st/2nd parties have no such limitation, as they have abandoned PS4 to fully support PS5 from Holiday 2020 onward, which will make for some very bad 1st/2nd party comparisons between MS and Sony if MS are weighing themselves down with the Xbox One anchor, instead of building their games with separate current and next-gen builds. 

I still think that Peter Moore was the best Xbox head. I will die on this hill.

Peter Moore did a lot of things right. Even though he was only head of Xbox for 4 or 5 years, he managed to lay the ground work for 360's success. Peter Moore hyped up crowds at E3 in away that few gaming executives have ever been able to do, he made deals with Japanese devs that allowed 360 to make far more ground in Japan than OG Xbox or Xbox One did (as well as locked down good JP 3rd party support for most of the gen). He managed to bring GTA 4 to Xbox at launch, which was perhaps the single biggest mic drop moment in Xbox history. And then he left MS in 2007, because they wouldn't allow him to run Xbox from California, where his family was, and Mattrick took over. Under Mattrick's leadership, Xbox's direction shifted from being focused at core gamers to casual gamers, with the number of core exclusives on 360 dwindling considerably in 360's later years. The casual friendly Kinect became the focus, and while Kinect was successful for a time, it rapidly proved to be just another gaming gimmick, and Mattrick foolishly tried to keep Kinect going into this gen. Mattrick was technically responsible for the downfall of both Ensemble and Lionhead, two of Xbox's best studios. His leadership was truly disastrous.

I'll admit that Phil did a good job saving the sinking ship that Mattrick left him with. But now that the ship is no longer taking on water, it often feels like Phil has no clue how best to go about getting the ship caught back up to Sony's ship in the race, if you pardon the metaphor. Many of his policy decisions are baffling to me. Playing the nice guy doesn't get you very far in the cutthroat world of business. Phil simply doesn't seem to have what it takes to be an executive in my opinion, he feels out of his element alot of the time.

I would agree with that, except for one small problem. That future beyond consoles is probably at least 5-10 years away, due to problems with internet infrastructure holding back streaming for the time being. MS needs to remain competitive this gen, so that they will have a large fanbase to convert over to streaming once it becomes an actual viable gaming platform for the masses. But if he just stands by and let's Sony run away with this generation right from the get-go, which I really worry that he is doing, given all of the rumors about what Sony is going to announce today, Xbox won't be able to gain, or even maintain the marketshare this gen that they'll need have a chance of being the market leader in the eventual streaming wars. Afterall, Sony will have streaming as well once the streaming war properly begins, and they'll have the larger marketshare to convert over to their streaming service thanks to PS5 dominating this gen. MS is even giving Sony a leg up there by letting Sony use their streaming infrastructure, sure they'll make money from that, but it'll be MS as a whole making the money from it, not Xbox as a separate entity, Xbox will be 2nd place to Sony's service. 

Microsoft seems to be treating xCloud has an extra perk for Xbox owners, as a way to play your Xbox games when you aren't home. I think they know it will be several years before game streaming is good enough to be a replacement for consoles and PC.

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