It is a lie.

How can you straight-faced lie and claim that the market is unable to support 3 competitors when in the 7th gen we had:

1) Wii @ 101.63 million consoles sold.
2) Xbox 360 @ 84 million consoles sold.
3) Playstation 3 @ 87.4 million consoles sold.

Combine that with the:
1) DS @ 154.02 million consoles sold.
2) PSP @ 80/82 million consoles sold.

They are all healthy numbers.

How can you straight-faced lie and claim that the market is unable to support all 3 competitors when they have all been competing since 2001 when the Original Xbox entered the market?

That's literally almost a quarter of a century worth of competition.

8th console generation:
1) Nintendo Switch @ 137.4 million consoles sold.
2) Playstation 4 @ 117.4 million consoles sold.
3) Xbox One @ 58 million consoles sold.

All three platforms were profitable and successful.

So again... How can you blatantly lie that it's unsustainable? Microsoft with the worst selling console still made a profit.

Either way, Microsoft has committed to continue to compete against Sony and Nintendo for at-least another decade and a half... So obviously they see their business as sustainable, which contradicts your position empirically.

Hardware is still their future, go figure.

Seems the only real change to their strategy is that games will start appearing on other consoles. Which, how, when? Who knows right now.
This is obviously to Sony and Nintendo's benefit as well as Microsoft's.

But their GP strategy is going or be the most interesting to see now.

I think I'm at least partially onto something. No?

The two smaller games weren't part of my point but it makes sense why smaller games would go cross platform. Who's really going to be that upset at XB or any company for doing something like that with smaller games? Might as well grow them as much as possible and reap all the benefits that brings, which is mostly benefits.

Now as for the live service games. That's an XB strong suit and a PS weak point. SNY is working on that now however, and everyone knows that PS seems to hit and hit hard way more than they miss with their games. If you're XB, and you see your hardware sales faltering vs last gen, while PS5 has been quickly gaining on last gen sales and recently surpassing, you've got to be worried about what might happen if these PS live service games are solid if not big hits. How many new gamers and casuals will choose PS instead and how many existing XB owners would move to PS?

So why not try and put a few XB live service games on PS and try to build a larger audience to keep XB gamers on XB, while also potentially convincing new gamers, casuals, or even PS gamers to join XB? It's not a bad move. MS even mentioned cross play and how it's not in every game and how they want more of it, so it makes plenty of sense to branch some games out to other platforms while you're waiting and hoping for more cross play to happen. Which might not happen, because PS obviously doesn't get a major benefit from it, and MS even mentioned it's been made clear to them that GP won't be accepted by rival platforms and will only be on XB.

As for the overall messaging, it sounds like these 4 games are just a trial, and depending on how things go, they may or may not further this cross platform idea. If sales are decent, if not good or great, then odds are good that MS will slowly bring more games to other platforms, and likely smaller or live service games before they try big AAA excusive types. If sales are poor, they will probably try some bigger AAA exclusives, after maybe a year on XB/GP, to see how those would sell. The only way I see XB keeping this cross platform idea from growing too much, is if XB hardware sales or GP takes off in the next year or two. Then XB won't have to rely on other platforms.

I don't think XB has thrown in the towel and is going 3rd party, but I do get the feeling after the podcast that they're signaling that's a possible direction if this doesn't work out. Phil made some points that sound like MS has been thinking about shifting which would leave certain XB fans behind so to speak, but is willing to try a few more things before making a shift that you can't come back from. If that's the case, you gotta hand it to them.

Because its a very simple concept to understand. 1 has to hurt out of the 3. Hurt also doesnt mean losing money. It also means growth. You know, pleasing the shareholders.  

Atari hurt when Sega entered. 

Sega hurt when Sony entered.

Nintendo hurt when Xbox entered.

Sony hurt when Xbox competed.

7th Gen, 360 and PS3 lost billions, almost killing them buisness wise.

The next two generations, 8th and 9th Gen, Xbox struggles with growth. if they turn it around and become the market leader, that would hurt Sony.

Do you see the point yet? Instead of flagging lies, how about do some research on the buisness front of these systems. 

All three brands cannot be super successful without one falling. Weather thats sales wise or buisness wise.

As the saying goes, if you're not winning, you're losing. That is the case here with consoles, even if XB profits are growing.

You can only milk the same cow so much. Eventually you need more cows.

This was said over and over tonight in the podcast. XB needs to grow gaming or eventually they're going to 'run out of milk'.

The console pie really hasn't grown much for decades. Continually splitting the pie isn't sustainable, especially if you keep getting a smaller slice.

The problem is it's a shrinking pie too. 

85 million XBox 360

58 million XBox One

Maybe 40 million XBox Series S/X?

That's not moving in the right direction. 

It isn't and I still blame their software.  I beat halo infinite last night, good game but so small and short compared to what it could have been.  MS just isn't impressing on the software side.  

For infinite I thought I was in area 1..... nope, it was the whole game.  I'm glad I only paid $20 via PC.  

That was my last point about the smaller slice. Less and less XB hardware sales mean they need even more growth on top.

XB biggest problem is no doubt the games. Before it was 'no games', and more recently it's just been close to enough but 'just ok games'.

Just ok games is going to get you just ok profits and just ok growth. If you want big growth and big profits, you need steady great games.

This is part of the reason why MS bought Zenimax and ABK, and apparently more to come. Have enough high profile games to bring growth.

Xbox Series will sell more than that, it's already getting close to 30m. Unless they launch the next Xbox early it still has a good shot of crawling to 50m. Just an average of 5m the next four years almost gets there.

Put me in charge. I'll fix them.