- day and date releases

- genres that are more appealing to PC (Age of Empires, Flight Simulator have been PC classics for decades at this point)

- multiplayer games making for longer tails

- better prices probably plays a factor (TLOU Part 1 is a 10 year old game, 1 year old remake and the lowest price has been $60 on Steam.) Compare that to Halo Master Chief Collection, which comes with multiple games is regularly available for $16. Which sure TLOU is a new remake, but still there's a value difference between those two.  

- Could also be demographic differences, where people that have a PC might already have had a PS4/PS5, and don't feel the need to double dip, whereas likely fewer people had a PC and XSX.  

Of course it was going to be detrimental to Xbox hardware sales to forfeit having exclusives on console. This was never going to be something where the benefit of hindsight was needed.

Similarily, it's going to hurt PS hardware sales in the long run to make first party games available on the PC. But this will be to a much lesser extent than on the Xbox side for two reasons:

1. There won't be day and date releases.

2. One part of Xbox's original strategy in the console space was to move PC players to console by making most Microsoft games outright exclusive to Xbox or at least timed exclusives. The day and date releases are moving the PC-first audience back to PCs altogether, because the Xbox becomes a redundant device. On the other hand, Sony does not have this kind of history for its first party games and by the time their ports appear on the PC, the games in question are usually already to be had for a discounted price on their console.

Pulling a ratio out of thin air, I'd say Microsoft's approach will hurt Xbox sales ten times more than Sony's approach will hurt PS sales. So if it costs Microsoft ten million units in Xbox sales, then it's only one million for Sony. When you then consider the total volume of what these consoles can sell in their lifetime, then it gets even more damning for Microsoft percentage-wise.

But Microsoft is not in this to sell the most consoles according to Papa Phil. On the other hand, we know from last year's January to March quarter that sales immediately matter and need to be announced when Xbox beats PS on a single continent. Yeah... Microsoft is very two-faced in all of this, just like Spencer in that podcast that VGC wrote about earlier this week; that was about exclusives selling consoles and how that isn't really true and stuff like that.

Microsoft is a software company first and hardware second.

Microsoft was making games on PC long before they had XBOX. Most those fans buying them grew up with Microsoft on PC, they probably would not invest in the console hardware anyway so it doesn't hurt them to sell on PC.

Sony gamers grew up on console gaming so they prefer consoles.

Xbox started life by taking PC games and putting them on console.

Elder Scrolls/Morrowind, Half Life, Doom, Unreal Tournament, Fable, Halo and more.

So when you already have a basis of great PC games that appeals to PC gamers, then you are always going to have better success.

You have a point there. They seem to have their eyes on games that do well on PC. They recently went after Naraka Bladepoint, Valheim, Football Manager, and Ark.

I wouldn't think they are trying to respect our time, but I expect them to, under the notion "time is money". 

Like I get what you're trying to say, but I don't agree. I don't see there being more sense in Sony's strat than MS, which is why I see day and date a important to me, and going by data, it's working, it's not a minority thing, where absolutely everyone and their dog can wait (there definitely are some impatient folks out there, and others who will simply be put off the wait and go buy something else instead). 

I know the corps are not our friends, but I can still call them out on not acting more consumer friendly.

You'd be surprised about some fighting games coming out a year or two later on PC, especially when one in recent years was an EGS exclusive, and even when it hit Steam it still didn't feature rollback, and basically suffered for both of those issues. 

The bad ports part is definitely a case of not taking proper care for sure, and even when TLOU, a lauded IP on Sony's side comes out in the state it did, it kinda puts that spent time for PC to wait not kinda worth the wait in gold (and it also destroyed the cream of the crop image of releasing polished games, but I'd argue HZD did that when it was ported to PC, and then Days Gone). Like if you are wanting to delay another group getting the chance to buy your product on their plat of choice, you'd best make up the time with quality goods instead (or don't, charge the same price, if not higher and pray it isn't broken, like a bit of a cheapskate would do, so yeah, I'm going to call out that train of thought).

I did emphasize that people should do what feels right for them regarding delayed releases. So calling them out on that is fine.
It's just that I don't imagine these decisions have anything to do with the amount of respect they have for us.
They would all spit on my time for a nickel.

Which strategy makes more sense would depend on the company, as they are in different situations.

As Phil Spencer said the other day, Microsoft are not trying to outconsole Sony or Nintendo. At this point, there's no realistic scenario where they'd take a major chunk of the console marketshare any more. So they have less to lose from day and date releases of their games on other platforms, because they no longer aspire to sell as many consoles as possible, unlike Sony and Nintendo. (Because selling a game on your own platform gives you a higher % than selling it on Steam. And you can offer your own subscription services, etc.)
Nintendo are still avoiding putting their games on PC completely, and it's not because they have even less respect for players than Sony does. It's just what their board thinks will appease the shareholders more.

But it's totally fair to feel disappointed that you have to wait a long time to play a game.

With fighting games, since it's a relatively niche genre, cross-play is also very important as that increases the player pool dramatically. But that's still not always available day one. KOF 15 just had a cross play Beta last week, which is over a year after the game released. And Guilty Gear Strive added it two months ago. Which is close to 2 years after release.

As for bad PC ports, there's been a lot of that recently, even with games that released on all platforms simultaneously. So waiting to pick up even multiplats may be a better idea in some cases.

Maybe SteamSpy?

Well their range is very big.

The only difference that you sort of showed was that Sony mainly pushes single player narrative games whereas Microsoft's games tend to be multiplayer. Multiplayer gamers are better for long term and monetization. That's why they do better in the long run.