Because as time goes on, the parameters and financial realities are not conducive to these kind of deals specially not 4 years in when your ww install base is at best half your competition.
It is just unrealistic to fully fund a massive AAA from a third party to only do a PC/ XB1 release.
Also, MS isn't in the biz of losing money, and I suspect that Xbox is costing a pretty penny (or has until now - in particular I do not see Forza being profitable given the size of the studio), which explains the refocus on GaaS and the unwillingness to leverage Minecraft as an exclusive (though I suspect some shenanigans in the X platform thing).
Oh no. I completely and totally agree with you.
I think the reality is Sony has all of their eggs in the Playstation basket. Their existence as a company is basically 1) Insurance 2) Playstation.
As a result of this the upper brass are 1) Extremely invested in the brand 2) Willing to throw money around to build mindshare. 3) Even if 2 doesn't net results, they don't care because they can't risk the division falling behind competition.
I think for Microsoft they have this weird division that exists that is tethered to a Television. They only ever created Xbox in order to prevent Sony from owning the living room and replacing Windows as the way people get their content. Then mobile happened and Apple and Google stole Microsofts wallet out from under them. Sony is a much smaller company than they were in 2000 and consumer electronics is not a great market to be in any longer. The reason for Xbox's creation no longer exists 17 years later, but Phil and Co smartly pivoted the system towards a content platform that fits within the current MS framework as a company.
Microsoft now views software as a service that they can continue to monitize and Xbox now fits well into the mold as a service provider that can rent movies to people, sell them ads and get them licensing fees for games.
So, it's not a bad place for Microsoft to be, and to have 50 million active users out there renting movies, buying TV shows, buying 3rd party games is fantastic.
But, upper brass at Microsoft are not willing to throw money at Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, Tomb Raider or these other *very* high profile money pits. And those three games were pretty much designed to be major hits that should have sold extremely well to a modern console userbase. If games with that pedigree aren't succesfull than MS has a compelling reason to not throw money at niche games to make a bunch of people on Neogaf squeel on a random Sunday in June.
So, I think Microsoft is snakebit and learned some lessons over the last few years that are probably true, but painful for us hardcore gamers.
1) Playstation 4 is a success because it launched with better hardware at a lower price.
2) Xbox One is making money.
3) Every time they go out and try and buy marketshare with new games aimed at a core audience, it's an abysmal failure. The 3rd party marketing deals are likely not why games sold better on the 360. The 360 was a success for reasons unrelated to niche and/or exclusive games (see number 1) and buying those games now is doing nothing to change the sales dynamic.
4) Xbox is being marketed as a platform not a console now. Which means, focusing on getting Xbox 360 games and Xbox games on the platform is more important than getting new exclusive games because they want you to view Xbox and Xbox Live as a platform that has existed since 2001.
5) We will continue to see Microsoft continue to treat the console space as an investment, and divisions (first party developers and IPs) that do not make money are going to be cut. Video games are a well-established market and Xbox is a very well established brand and no longer needs help to establish itself in the eyes of gamers as viable.
6) They are probably going to move to iterative consoles. Even if there is a "next gen" console, it will likely be backwards compatible day 1 with Xbox, 360 and One.
7) Phil and the Xbox team are working towards turning a profit and growing the profit base of the platform. They have likely realized after the last 24 months that there is *nothing* they can do with software to move people to Xbox One. And the Xbox One X is a hardcore enthusiast machine that exists primarily to keep their biggest spending customers from moving to the PS4 Pro. Not necessarily to attract new gamers, though they probably are aware that there are people on the PS4 now who will jump over to get the best version of 3rd party games.
8) You can likely expect to see Xbox maintain a hardware edge moving forward even if it puts them above competitors on price, as MS will maintain a sub 300 dollar SKU and a plus 400 dollar SKU at all times.
I think Microsoft is probably making the correct long-term decision, because there have been a shitload of companies that have gone out of business trying to "gain marketshare" and failed.
