You know the funniest thing about this thread? It misses the point entirely. Why on earth would Microsoft devote a ton of resources to exclusives all over again when they've already made it clear as day they are getting out of that business?
Halo has been the defining exclusive franchise on the Xbox since the day the original debuted, and Phil Spencer himself announced that the next Halo will release on both Xbox One and PC:
Halo 6 will release on Windows 10
It begins with "first-party" titles, but one can reasonably expect it is within their plans to extend this to second-party games they also publish themselves. That accounts for virtually every exclusive IP worth a shit on the Xbox One:
Halo, Gears of War, Titanfall, Forza, Rare Replay (and the rest of Rare IP)
, Quantum Break, Dead Rising, Ori & the Blind Forest, etc.
Don't you guys see the writing on the wall? Microsoft doesn't see the Xbox as a discrete system, anymore. They see it simply as a hardware product that fills a niche, but runs on the same OS (or a fork of it) as their other devices; almost virtually no different than the Apple TV for Apple. We're talking about a simplified interface version for a simplified input (i.e. dual-analog controller) controlling a cookie-cutter plug-n-play Windows PC. Last summer they began rolling out their Windows 10 apps to the Xbox One. At the same time, they're making Xbox games compatible with Windows 10.
Complete list of Universal Windows apps and games
Microsoft remembered that-- first and foremost-- it's a
software company.
They're thinking about three products, not just one. They're thinking about DirectX (gaming), the Xbox (entertainment), and Windows itself (the heart of their business). Unlike Sony, they aren't that threatened by the PC gaming market for the simple reason that they manufacture an integral part of that pipeline: Windows. Why worry about competing with gaming PCs anymore? They're not a competitor. They're disappearing, and they're too expensive. Nobody else can afford to build a set-top box with the Scorpio's power (including a controller) for $400 while also paying licensing for Windows 10. Not a fucking chance. These are different markets, and Microsoft has realized it makes more sense for their interests to establish a common denominator between them.
The whole point of the Xbox, originally, was to wall off Valve & OpenGL from muddying the office PC market while simultaneously giving themselves a foothold in the console market as they developed DirectX for a more robust and flexible PC gaming future. They didn't just want to build the operating system platform for other guys to use to make & sell games without cutting them in for a slice. Fast forward, and DirectX won, but OpenGL is making a comeback; everything is moving towards compatible PC hardware; Microsoft got clobbered by Sony at the launch of the 8th generation of consoles; they then wasted $1bn developing exclusives in 2014 to try to win market share back, and they got almost nothing back for the investment. Meanwhile, as I pointed out on the first page of this thread, all of the blockbuster grossing franchises are PvP-based: on
any platform. In the desktop/console world, those are the multiplat titles, but the real elephant in the room are smartphones, and Microsoft is still trying to figure out their road to relevance in that future world.
They have to collapse the space between desktops and phones. The Xbox One forms a bridge, so they're collapsing the space between the PC and the Xbox One first. Ultimately, they want to make it easier for developers to use DirectX, and then market it on every platform: PC, console, and phone/tablet. The great irony is that while Microsoft started this whole thing to shut Gabe Newell up and figure out how to make a profit off a closed-sourced ecosystem...in reality they appear determined to deliver the first truly viable Steambox ever made.
They should call it the SteamXbox.
