I’m not sure if it’s a comprehension issue, but the discussion was whether Xbox had any killer exclusives. Not whether or not these games had the mass appeal of Ragnarok.
The article cited games like Rift Apart and Returnal that are significantly less popular than even FH5. An even if Flight SIM is relatively niche, it’s an extremely high quality game that’s easily worth buying the console for.
They didn’t ‘buy exclusivity rights’ for Starfield. They own Starfield. It’s a first party game. Surely even you should not get that wrong?
MS first party now boasts a deep talent pool, with some of the best devs in the business. and there’s certainly no indication that ‘poor leadership’ is a major issue at XGS. This just reads like standard issue console wars talking points.
No comprehension issue, except maybe a reading one on your end cause I was originally responding to some saying that because FH5 has high scores Xbox essentially has games as big as GoW:R. I was just speaking to the obvious, or obvious to most at least that the market for these games are entirely different and sales speak to that. This is coming from someone who plays the hell out of the Horizon series, currently going through the Hotwheels expansion at the moment.
You positioning MSFS as a system seller is only confirming the questionable reasoning Xbox fans have that I was speaking to. I literally said people are not lining up for MSFS like they did in the past for Halo or Gears. Not sure if you recall how massive those launches were and how much Xbox did to ensure their launches were as extravagant as possible.
Regarding Starfield you're just playing word games. Okay fine they purchased Bethesda outright and Starfield is a 1st party game. A game that Xbox itself literally had fuck all to do with. They bought it, plain and simple, their own 1st party developers did not have the talent apparently as proven over these last console cycles to produce a game of Starfields scale. Again a game I'll be playing but on PC.
Regarding talent their newest talent pool is literally just publishers they outright purchased. It's not homegrown or established Xbox developers that found their footing with great leadership and went on to make games outside their bubble. Hence why they have a Halo developer, a Forza developer, and a Gears developer. None of these were pushed to create an entirely new ip and take risk, it was always the safest path forward that they've taken.
Which is now why they're buying as many publishers as possible cause again it's the safest path forward cause they didn't internally foster a creative environment. I'm only saying this based on what I can see, I'm not sure what else you need than to look at the output and see they haven't developed a major AAA game from within their own studios that is now an established ip. It's factory assemble line output year after year. The only one spouting console war nonsense are those who can't see and understand this.
Remember Bungie wanted to develop Destiny while still being a Xbox exclusive developer. At the time they said "fuck that make more Halo!". Now look at the current model and see how perfect Destiny would be for the platform while Halo is floundering. They even tried to do Destiny like things in Halo and nobody gave a shit.
I'm not saying this is entirely Phil Spencer's fault either. This is a systemic issue regarding Xbox as a whole . They rode success with the og Xbox and 360 and fell off after that when comparing current output to what was once available.