Why Microsoft is in the position they're in.

MS is in the position they are because they don't have many quality first party studios to makes games like Nintendo or Sony. It wasn't much of an issue for them last gen, because 360 was a better designed system than the PS3. 360 was the standard system games were developed for, then ported over to PS3 and 360 versions were superior. Developers also found better sales numbers on 360 and due to the system being easier to develop for than PS3's cell processor, developers wanted to and preferred to make games first and foremost for 360. (I don't think this happened just because, I did read that in the early days of 360 MS "bribed" devs by cutting them million dollar cheques to make games for 360)

Sony released a better, more affordable, easier to program for system this time and it caught up to Microsoft.

Xbox one x is their attempt to remedy the problem. Instead of investing in first party and original new IP games (which doesn't happen overnight) a new beefed up version of xbox that is easier to develop for was their bet. It's their strategic play and time will tell if it works out.

I think for MS they are banking hard on xbox one x. From what we've heard, developers love the new hardware. It's easy to port games, easy to get games running with nice performance, the dev kit is supposed to be amazing. Basically instead of creating their own studios, they are attempting to woo the developers back! (By giving them a platform that makes it easy for them to create great games that shine)

Developers loved the Wiiu...just saying.

It all started when Microsoft shot the Xbox brand in the foot with the announcement of DRM the E3 they announced it. It pissed off and enraged the gaming community so much, despite scraping the DRM concept completely it left nearly just about everyone so sour that there was a completely shattered trust in anything Xbox produced.

It didn't help the fact that during that same E3 Sony produced the perfect rebuttal for their Playstation brand by outright stating that the PS4 will do absolutely everything opposite of the XB1 proposition that frustrated everyone in the first place. With a betrayed sense of trust for most previous Xbox fans, PS4 was the perfect moment where most EX-Box fans had the opportunity to jump ship, thus why PS4 pivoted to lead this gen.

Sure, DRM is long scraped, but it was too late to keep the damage from happening, and it also does not help that the XB1 has by far the weakest first-party lineup while both Playstation and Nintendo consistently pump out quality games.

If XB1 could have been saved at all, then it would have been within its game library, but it appears their content philosophy just doesn't match with the rest of the industry and the needs of the gamer. Thriving on power alone will not win Xbox a day, and it suffices to say that historically, the lead console most gens end up being the lesser powerful machine and power ultimately won't matter this time either.

Basically Sony offered a better option and Microsoft made mistake after mistake. Let's hope that XBX ain't the next mistake.

Really? I don't recall there being the same kind of conversation around the Wii U. I seem to recall the conversation saying the Wii U was late to the party, that it was the system they SHOULD have released instead of the Wii (which David Jaffe referred to as two gamecubes duck tapped together lol).

The Wii U's approach and conversation around it was probably the exact opposite of the one x when you think about it. Nintendo hid the specs and system it self from view. They focused on screen in the gamepad (which I guess is technically the hardware of the system) and how it would change game play. New kinds of multiplayer, menus, maps and in game keypads displayed there.

On the contrary, it takes a certain sense of pride and accomplishment in your hardware engineering to call up Digital Foundry to come see your hardware and let them do the spec reveal. Which was never even a thing before, a spec reveal. In addition the hardware of the One X was the focus much more than the games in the initial E3 reveal. The video focused on motherboard chips and gave then sense of going inside the console and that sort of stuff. When ever has the type of cooling system (vapor chamber) been mentioned about a console, or things like the Hovis Method.

One thing is for certain, MS is really proud of the box. And it's impressive, it's not just smaller than the PS4 Pro, but also the One S.

@bronxs15: Nope, they said it. Why do you think it had COD, AC and even Batman?

Mandatory kinect for Xbox One

It doesn't matter how proud Microsoft is of their own ambitions, congrats to them. The fact of the matter is: it's still a mid-gen reiteration with a price tag heavy enough more consumers will be turned off by compared to its competition. It does a complete 180 on most mid-gen reiterations before it, which is these new renditions tend to make things cheaper for late consumers to the show. XB1X goes the other way by raising the price tag. So the argument is, for its power its price tag is actually great value?...sure...but how many people in mainstream consumerism know about that, let alone give a shit when they can play those games on cheaper consoles? XB1X might be a superior console in many regards, but it's a superior console that's jumped in a little too soon for it to be relevant by most standards.

I think it's quite telling that they call their pre-order version the "Scorpio Edition", because really, it's for you guys: the internet dwellers. The rest of the world won't know or care about such a thing.

Well of course at every hardware reveal companies like EA and Ubisoft will be there praising the hardware as they hope it will be successful to better their own business. What I'm referring to more is that there seems to be the same narrative and excitement coming from smaller indie and lesser known developers as well. Even from developers who it would not be ideal to have more systems to support. I've seen devs talking about being excited for scorpio and the improvements to their game the additional power allows. For example, getting their game to 1080 60fps vs 1080 30fps.

Maybe I just wasn't paying as much attention to smaller sites around the time of Wii U's launch to have noticed the same thing. (But now that I think about it there was one smaller dev praising wii u, i forget their name but they went to to make some impressive wii u exclusives on the eShop, I think Neo Racing or something like that.) But even more recently, I don't seem to recall the PS4 Pro garnering as much praise. My anecdotal sense of this could probably be born out by the fact of how many more games are already confirmed to have a one x patch than games receiving the same treatment on the PS4 Pro side of things.

I think MS's decision to up the RAM to 12 GBs on the one x helped to enticed developers.

They had from May 21st 2013, the Xbox One reveal show to June 11th to read the warning signs and fix their problems but their E3 2013 conference on the 11th showed that they didn't. 21 days...and all they did was make it worse! They completely ignored the massive hate the Kinect Xbox One news as it came out from Xbox fans. That should have been a massive red flag for Microsoft that they needed to go back to the drawing board. MS didn't learned there Xbox 360 success why it was a good console at all, and to this day, they still don't get it, exclusive games is what really lacking on there part and still is.

In my opinion it's simple. MS thought they were going in the right direction after seeing their die hard fan base defending every move they make, no matter how stupid or anti gaming. This is why it is okay to point out MS wrongs as well as their rights, so they know what they need to fix and improve. If certain people just blindly defend everything MS does, then it just confuses things for MS who don't really know what their vision should be at this point.

Xbox One X is just them making up there past mistakes after all this time and if it had been on the same spec levels of PS4 from the start, it wouldn't be bad for them but that price $500 vs $400 was a big deal during Xbox One & PS4 launch back in late 2013. I really hope MS turns it around next year, with there Xbox One X, they need to get on the exclusive games and exclusive still matters because it helps the console and why are we buying your consoles for.

lol, i didn't think of it like that. Oh that makes it even worse.

I think the 360 was the odd ball ... it wasn't different from the Xbox or X1.

But the 360 was the first of its gen, which always drive some interest and it had a solid online play and I feel like people wanted to play online more than anything else because it had all the same crappy 1srt party game than right now.

Sony did the late bloomer strategy they did with the PS2 and it paid off since they had an amazing last few years while the 360 ate dust. They saw exclusive game while the 360 had only 3rd party game to show.

On top of the stupidly high failiure rate of the early 360, I still can't beleive people still continued to use that system ... I also feel like it may have boosted sale for 360.

Then, only digital game is a big no, no matter how many digital game you sold. Many flops in the past including the PSP Go from Sony.

The Kinect that no one wanted was mandatory and drove the price up quite a lot.

I remember back when the Wii came out, I was very tempted to sharpie "Revolution" on it. It wouldn't have been the same, though, if Nintendo just released an official "Nintendo Revolution Edition" of it. I guess coining in on code names that only the internet will know was quite relevant to its own success.

@jaydan: All my casual gaming friends have no clue a new Xbox is coming out. They didn't even know about the Pro before it came out.

No argument here. And I'm not much concerned whether One X is a sales success story or not or if consumers care about the difference. As those kind of conversations quickly devolve into fanboy rants. And I'm no analyst and not privy to whatever market/consumer stats they used to make these things, so your guess about how many mainstream consumers will know about or "let alone" care is as good as mine!

It's interesting you say it's for the internet dwellers though. There have also been many websites running articles on "who is the one x for?". I don't think it's too complicated, with the amount of focus they put on 4K and the "true 4k" marketing term they came up with, i think it's pretty clear they are just targeting a higher end xbox for 4K TV owners. That doesn't seem to be a big market right now, but whether or not it succeeds isn't a care or concern of mine. I'm not routing for them, nor do I carry a disdain for them like some here. Nevertheless as a 4k TV owner, I guess I'm their target, but I'm content with my PS4 Pro at the moment. But MS and their retail partners always tend to get me with trade in deals. I came into an xbox one s and 5 free AAA games for $99 CDN after trading in my old 360 Elite, and with backward compatibility and 4k UHD on the One S it was a no brainer!

Of more interest to me is if the development landscape will change to favor xbox more, or if as usual larger market share will determine the lead platform.

I'm telling you right now, from a marketing and business standpoint: it's not going to fucking matter that Microsoft is releasing a more powerful mid-gen version of their already failing system. What Microsoft should have done, is: save the XB1X concept as something for next-gen, not mid-gen. What Microsoft should have done: instead embolden that exclusive content library that consumers have been demanding for so long now. Microsoft has gone against so many things consumers actually want, because: praise their ambitions.

Historically speaking the more powerful system does not win the console wars but the ones that catch the trends, so what's going to make this powerful one - with the heftiest price tag and most lackluster game library - suddenly catch onto such a trend? It's not even powerful enough to appeal to PC gamers.

Haha yeah. I wonder if the it was the kinect so much as the extra $100. I mean what if MS bit the bullet and took a loss. So the Xbox one and PS4 launched at the same price. Would we still think of Kinect as forced accessory or a free extra included with the xbox??

@davillain-: Very true. That's a good point, there were very tone def in the time between the initial reveal and E3.

I think it's because of the horrendous PR in regard to the lead up of the Xbox One launch. However I also think that they have been doing a great job in trying to get things back on track again. As a consumer I feel that I have benefited quite nicely from them trying to right the ship.

@clefdefa: Good points. I hadn't thought about the late life of the systems. Sony was bringing us the fresh new last of us and ms was drying up with gears of war judgement.

the RROD was bad too, but at least they made good on fixing and replacing them. If they didn't own it and instead had denied or try to cover it up, that would of surely had a worse impact. In my mind, probably even worse than the DRM fiasco.

@jaydan: I always liked the dreamcast code name KATANA.

Anyways, wii's launch was a different time. Today's social media age, it isn't hard to imagine that if the wii was launching now nintendo's twitter and it's followers would be hash tagging #revolution all over the place.

even some of my core gamer friends that game every night don't know the difference between the pro and ps4 or the old and new xbox ones. guess it comes down to marketing. if they plan to run many commercials and all that.

As of now, i haven't seen any Xbox X ads at all.

They could very well be doing that. But isn't that on a timescale where it would be ready for next gen anyways? If ms is serious i can see the next gen xbox launching with exclusives, and the 6 teraflops on a console is nothing to scoff at so the one x could well be running impressive versions of the same games, not as good as the xbox two tho.

I did read somewhere than Microsoft has a impressive vision where starting with the one x, and going forward any xbox will be able to play any xbox game. that whole forward compatibility thing, like the pc. in contrast to the hints sony has dropped about maintaining clear generational divides so probably ps5 while being amazing will leave behind your ps4 collection. Sucks for people amassing huge libraries of games with all the free ps plus games.

We definitely got some nice features as a result.

Let me tell you what happened, said that years ago.

MS with X1 felt into motion controls fiasco Wii introduced last generation. What Wii was lacking was power so MS thought that by providing what Wii did = motion controls PLUS enough power for system to play all multiplatforms plus having everything else Wii lacked would be a sure success. Therefore the name Xbox ONE ... One system for everyone , either casual or hardcore etc.

And thats where things got nasty. Because not only people didnt give a shit anymore about motion controls who made Wii a best seller but X1 ended up being the most expensive console providing the worse hardware vs PS4 at the same time.

And thats when things went downhill big time. They had to cut Kinect from original system after a year or so to compete with price but still hardware was lacking hard even in same price as PS4. At the same time PS4 was gaining momentum. MS made everything humanly possible like super deals, coupons , cut prices , bundles , free games ... you name it in its very first year. Damage though was done already ... PS4 gained momentum beyond repair and right there MS decided to go PC way.

So in short , X1 was a really bad decision from MS. They thought going motion controls would work and will lure in all those Wii casual fans plus Xbox fans but it didnt. Even if system had slightly better or more exclusives the outcome would have been the same.

@AzatiS: interesting. why do u think they went to pc, or what did they hope to gain by doing that?

They still haven't recovered from the Xbone reveal. Until they release an Xbox without a "One" in it the stigma from that trainwreck reveal will always be there.

Oh my god. It all makes sense now.

Well my opinion on this is that they already had a huge amount of PC fans that wanted their IPs on PC platform all along since X360 era. Since then we heard MS saying over and over " We gonna support PC " but of course that was never the case since X360 was doing great.

So when X1 was starting to seriously lagging with the wrong decisions i mentioned, they understood very early on that war is over ( thru pre-orders pre-release and first years sales ) and with the release of Windows 10 not far away at the time they decided to go PC way as well to boost their profits as much as possible.

And yes if you ask me i think that was the outcome of X1s "failure" and not that MS planned this PC support waaay before that. Was something that MS decided after they understood things are not going smooth this generation as intended

Many guys asking me what i think MS should do with X1. I mentioned in SWs as well few times. I really think that now they cant just cut PC support all of a sudden after they build the Windows 10 store service already but at the same time they cant let X1X compete with PRO and Switch just with " The most powerful console " motto, aka specs. Except if they dont really care about the outcome of this and X1X is just a grab money machine and nothing else.

The solution i personally have in mind that would benefit MS and X1X is for MS to release their 1st parties FIRST on X1X so has them as time exclusives for few months. That way X1X can gain some momentum that really needs in exclusives area, even as time exclusives is better than no exclusives at all even from marketing standpoint alone, when at the same time MS can continue support their PC platform with those 1st parties just at a later date.. 3-6-9-12 months will do depends the game.

If MS insist to go into a war with PRO just with power alone might work the first year or so but then .. the moment PRO or Switch bomb the market with any of their popular AAA IPs any hype and momentum X1X might have at that point will be crashed imho. Because games you cant play elsewhere >> Raw specs, thats a given.

MS is in a tough position this generation and i think X1X is not out there to compete rather than make some extra money to MS before next-gen system arrives. I might be wrong on that, at this point only MS knows.

I told SecretPolice he needed a meme of an Xbox teab@gging a cow.

@AzatiS: makes sense. Thanks for the reply!

Well said. Instead of bringing more exclusives games like consumers have always wanted they've now doubled down on the whole Xbone concept like their forum dwelling fanboys want. The XboneX mostly appeals to people already invested in the Xbox platform and it does almost nothing to bring in new customers. I give it a few months before sales flatline again and MS is back to their shitty position with sales.

Np man ! My pleasure to have soomething serious to talk in SW. Its somewhat rare !! lol

I don't get this, its not like 1st party games sprout out of nothing, its going to take YEARS for them to develop software. Its not like they can pull games out of their ass. What they did have in the pipe fell over to some extent and they have a pretty good lineup with Sea Of Thieves / Crackdown. We'll just have have to wait to see what they have in the pipeline since we know Phil changed to policy to try to avoid announcing games in early development.

I also like M$'s trend to break down the "gen" barrier. I'm hoping they keep 2 systems tiered always so there will be a xbox one x two that the x will be forwards compatible with but the OG one won' be supported, but it will play all games that one supports.

And even then I think xbox one x is the more interesting buy at this point. As a PC gamer I plan to buy as many games I can on play anywhere. I like having a console, but I'd prefer to be able to play the games I buy anywhere without as much worry so I'd like them to invest more in that program... ALOT more. And as a PC gamer I don't see Ps4 doing any better for me. The vast majority of its library is similar to xbox, the difference mostly being in more indie content to bolster the game number and a few exclusives a year.

MS's downfall was trying to get mass casuals a la the Wii with Kinect and focusing on motion controls and gimmicks. They could have worked on new IP's solidified the 360 instead it fell apart towards the end. Then Xbox One happened with the Kinect and people bailed on it.

@waahahah: I totally understand and agree that games aren't just made overnight, although that's a bad excuse to make for XB1's exclusive support compared to the amount that PS4's been pumping out and even Switch's impressive launch so far that's only building momentum. Why couldn't Microsoft have started development on many of these exclusives well in advance to the console's release? It seems like they only placed their bets on an ample few that turned out to deliver lesser than expectations (Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break) and showcased their disputes that exclusives don't actually matter when sales have turned to show otherwise. When Sony and Nintendo both have such a wealth of both 1st and 2nd-party studios developing their exclusives on the regular, Microsoft really just has a terrible time keeping up with what the competition is doing.

They could have probably gotten away with such an excuse for lesser exclusive content had the 2013 E3 announcement not felt like such a betrayal to the overall gaming community making them turn into a most blatantly disingenuous money-making sham. Microsoft simply shot the Xbox brand in the foot one too many times, mistake after mistake.

Perhaps Crackdown and Sea of Thieves will be a positive turning-point, but it's hardly going to mean a thing after the holidays if they don't have anything major set afterwards, because they have a long road to recovery.

I think MS's position was cemented near the end of last gen when they backed right off releasing new exclusives while Sony ramped up. They came into this gen with a vision that was seriously out of step with what the gaming community wanted and have paid the price.

I like my Xbox One but know it could've been so much more if they made it more of a 360 2 rather than the all in one entertainment box that we got. Kinect was a huge waste of money that could've gone into better RAM etc.

The money spent on the controller was money well spent though as its still the best in the business.

1S & 1X are definitely much better products that will lead to a change in fortunes come next gen (or whatever the MS equivalent of next gen is).

And on the whole "no more generations" talk, F that!! Make a hard stop at the next console, allow it to play previous gen games but don't force developers to make games that must run on the previous system. Carry your games forward, not back.

Hopefully Sony do this with PS5 and force MS to follow.

On another note, all this focus on power is great but even after all that, the GOTY is most likely going to be Mario or Zelda which both run on the weakest hardware.

Neither sunset overdrive or quantum break are purely M$'s projects, but M$ invested in them. Not to mention a good chunk of Sony's exclusives aren't even sony's projects or anything that sony invested in. Secondy I mentioned PHIL SPENSER. There was totally different leadership in xbox one's early years and it was entirely focused on kinect... and we are starting to see some of the changes come to light, sea of thieves is one of Rare's first non kinect games in quite some time.

Also your correlating sales with exclusives... can you show me the causation? A lot of poor sales has been from poor PR and M$ not being a very popular company any way. Not to mention Sony's getting a lot of free Japanese support (ie not their doing but the benefactor). There will also definitly be quiet periods for both companies. Not every year or Christmas is all that amazing.

Also Nintendo switch isn't having that impressive of a launch lineup, they have what like 3 games apart from 3rd party support? What matters is its nintendo, and its handheld, its going to sell.

As far as I'm concerned xbox one x is them starting fresh again, and its leading with first party games (sea of thieves/crackdown/forza) not to mention plenty of third party exclusives which isn't bad at all. Granted exclusives at this point are Microsoft exclusives.

Sony still has A LOT more first party studios than Microsoft. Sony has Naughty Dog, Guerilla Games, Santa Monica, Team Ico, Sucker Punch, Bend Studio, Polyphony Digital, Media Molecule, SIE San Diego Studio, Project Siren and etc. This isn't even counting the studios that closed down last gen and at the beginning of this gen. Microsoft seems to only have 343 industries, Turn 10 Studios, Rare, and The Coalition and two of those studios are just their to make up for Bungie and Epic Games leaving and aren't nearly as talented as them.

Even without first part titles Sony has shown to have more and better relationships with 2nd and 3rd party developers even if you exclude Japanese devs.

Microsoft always had little to no actual 1st party developers, they mostly just hired PC developers on a timed contract to make games for them. Sure Microsoft has huge franchises like Halo and Gears but while they own the IPs they don't own the talent behind the IPs which I can see as a big problem if you don't own the developers of your biggest exclusive games that would be like Sony not owning Naughty Dog but bragging about owning the rights to Uncharted when any other developer that works on the game won't make it as nearly as good as them. Because without the talent behind those games they'll just drop in quality and sales and you can already see it. Halo and Gears are already losing relevance and gamer are becoming bored with them. Forza will lose relevance too if Microsoft keeps on making yearly releases because each Forza game won't be much different from the last. The talented game developers can help create new IPs to keep interest while all you can do with owning an IP is just spit out more sequels and spin offs. Xbox is still trying to tout Halo and Gears (franchises that are 1 - 2 gens old with not much other than graphics updates new to them) while Sony is moving on with The Last Of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn. Also the enemy can end snatching up your talent, we already see Bungie giving PS4 Destiny DLC first and Epic Games isn't porting Paragon to Xbox One.

Exclusives do correlate with sales as they play a major factor in which platform a person buys. One of the main reasons why Nintendo handhelds do so well is because they have tons of good games. If that weren't the case handhelds would of lost to mobile by now. Playstation handhelds can't compete because all it takes is a single pokemon game for whatever Nintendo handheld is out to crush the competition. Nintendo may not have as many games as Xbox or Playstation but they make sure they're damn good games. TLOZ:BOTW and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe both have already sold near 4 million copies on the Switch. Also keep in mind that the Switch launched in Spring which is pretty rare considering most consoles launch in or near the the holiday season and for the holiday season it will get Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Pokken Tournament and a 3D Mario platformer which will undoubtedly boost the sales of the platform.

I think the sony gamer doesn't have a clue when it talks about the xbox gamer because they asking xbox to be like Playstation

example of an xbox gamer ... Halo: MCC ... perfectly working single player ... wonky MP

Xbox Gamer: The Game Is Broken

hope that helps the sony fanboys understand ... cuz they like do lists of games hahaha xbox got shit for exclusives no games hahaha ... xbox gamer looks at these fanboys list n goes ... no mp ... no mp ... no mp ... wtf these sony fanboys going on about oh the 6hr story mode ... carry on lol

Right it doesn't have as many studios... and you expect them to pop games out their ass? Its a stupid expectation especially considering the former leadership didn't focus on it at all. So did you answer your own question yet? Getting a good dev studio is actually really hard, and getting ones that last are even harder.

And M$ I don't mind what they are doing. Naughty dog has been stuck on the same formula for quite some time, sea of thieves on the other hand seems like it came out of no where and can be amazing. And the full destruction of crack down 3 also looks like it will be amazing. Nothing that sony had done has really interested me. I like how M$'s dev's still focus on gameplay usually. Horizon/Uncharted/killzone all tend to suffer the movie blended game where its intended to be more cinematic than anything. Granted its great fodder for critics since they are all homogenized opinions these days.

Exclusives do correlate with sales as they play a major factor in which platform a person buys. One of the main reasons why Nintendo handhelds do so well is because they have tons of good games. If that weren't the case handhelds would of lost to mobile by now. Playstation handhelds can't compete because all it takes is a single pokemon game for whatever Nintendo handheld is out to crush the competition. Nintendo may not have as many games as Xbox or Playstation but they make sure they're damn good games. TLOZ:BOTW and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe both have already sold near 4 million copies on the Switch. Also keep in mind that the Switch launched in Spring which is pretty rare considering most consoles launch in or near the the holiday season and for the holiday season it will get Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Pokken Tournament and a 3D Mario platformer which will undoubtedly boost the sales of the platform.

I never said there wasn't a correlation between exclusives. But there still are other reasons for xbox's failure other than exclusives. Xbox had pretty decent launch lineups and has kept a lot of non ps4 games coming out, so between the two systems, they are still both good buys.

And Nintendo is Nintendo, Mario kart 8 isn't really an exclusive, but again the form factor makes a huge difference since you can Mario kart 8 any where you'd like now.

MS is in the cat bird seat looking down on fools like yourself and just laughing, laughing, laughing all the way to the bank baby!! lolol

Mighty X1X MonsterBox sure has'em shook to the core. Good stuff. :P

Sunset over drive is not a MS game is owned by Insomniac games,Quantum Break is owned by MS it is a MS game outsource to a 3rd party Remedy,many of the games you are seeing now were the vision when Kinect was still on,in fact back then the xbox one did have true exclusives.

No the XBO X is not a fresh start is an upgrade xbox one with the same games and same lack of games,those games you mention are not something that will pull people over to the xbox side.

Its a fresh start, I don't think M$ is doing "generations" so it will be upgrades from here on out and devs will likely have to support at least 1 older model.

Also we know your factually wrong about the effects of kinect support. We are starting to see a new vision because when kinect was still important, M$'s first party worked on kinect games, specifically rare. Which is why they outsourced other projects. Sea of thieves is proof you are incorrect.

For Sony, the PS is everything, they spend big.

For MS, Xbox isn't, they put in less money.

But has Microsoft at least tried to have acquire any of these devs they have worked with over the generations? That is the answer we need to know. And they had at least two console generations for them to try and build up a series of first and second party studios. Sea Of Thieves looks interesting but Crackdown 3 not so much. The first two Crackdown games may have been considered special for their time but not so much now and the games didn't sell anywhere near as much as Halo or Gears so Crackdown 3 likely won't be a killer exclusive for the Xbox One X.

Crackdown 3 just looks "meh" it just looks like a tech demo instead of a game and it doesn't help that Microsoft does nothing but talk about the physics and destruction in this game, I have yet to see them talk about the story, multiplayer, and other game mechanics, all I see is just people walking around in a bland and empty open world map just shooting and blowing stuff up. Crackdown seems like the wrong game for Microsoft to boast about as their flagship game to show off the Xbox One X power. Scalebound would have made a way better flagship title for the Xbox One X, it was an actually compelling and interesting game. Crackdown 3 will probably flop hard since the open world gimmick isn't as innovating as it was last gen and with so many open world games out now all that will do is make Crackdown 3 look very mediocre since it hardly appears to be a step up from the last gen versions aside from destruction.

Say what you want about Sony exclusives but at least they're delivering games. What wrong with the movie blended games? I thought console gamers loved those, they still seem to be selling tons on both platforms.

Buts it's just a Xone.