I think if a dev focuses solely on one version of the game when making it, It will be a better polished game. Also i dont like dividing a already small online player base. Look at what happened to BF4 5 different platforms shrinking the online community on each one and the game lacks the polish and quality of previous titles.
I can still enjoy a game if someone else is playing it on another platform of course but wished we could all play together online as one. MS has 1 billion dollars to spend on games instead of making mediocre games from microsoft studios why not buy great games like Titanfall ect and if you want to play it buy a Xbox.
I admit i'm biased towards xbox i love my Xbox 360 and want the X1 to do really well but it looks like they have fucked everything up. Its still quite shocking to me actually almost everyone online seems to hate Xbox/MS i hope Phil can win hearts and minds at E3.
I love the controller and Xbox Live its perfect to me all they need is to lower the price of the system and focus on getting the games.
While I appreciate you've made the commitment to Microsoft. Blind fanboy loyalty in this industry is toxic. If a company fucks up, it's up to them to earn their reputation back. Not us to prove they deserve it.
In terms of future bought exclusives there are some very crucial facts you are missing out here.
1. Console architecture. Both Xbox One and Playstation 4 run identical hardware architectures, x86 8 core, coupled on die with a GPU, APU processors, with a pooled access to 8GB RAM. Games can run the same with through roughly the same hardware. The differences between the two are heavily in the favour of the PS4. Faster RAM, no ESRAM bottlenecks and varying overheads.
What does this mean? Game engine porting is going to be a hell of a lot easier than last generation. Before we saw separate teams all devoted to porting their engines to each console. Xbox 360 was a big 3 core unified PowerPC processor with pool RAM, where as the PS3 had the cell processor (1 big core, lots of little spu's) with divided access to CPU and GPU ram.
To make a multiplatform game was expensive. To make a PS3 game was really expensive.
This generation, porting a game over between consoles is going to be easy as pie.
2. Install base. PS4 is beating out the Xbox One. Long gone is the Xbox lead from last generation. PS4 has a more consoles out there in more countries.
While money's great, at the end of the day these developers want more people playing their games. Getting a good following like Halo, COD, GT etc have is much better than a one off pay cheque from Microsoft.
Last gen paying them to limit their install base to more than half of the consoles, not a terrible business plan. Trying to pay them to limit their game to less than half the install base this generation ... that's not going to go down very well.
3.
Epic: About 1/3rd as many AAA games in dev this gen, but each with 3 times the budget
We have far less AAA games, with far higher budgets. Games of this scale need to sell well. They won't sell well limited to less than half the install base. Microsoft would have to cough up a lot of money to convince the developers to exclusivity.
I find it incredibly difficult to see Microsoft buying exclusives this generation. Everything is stacked against them, power and ease of development, install base and the general direction the industry is moving in.
Look at Titanfall, probably one of this gens most highly advertised game. It's was all anyone talked about and guess what. It tanked. It failed to push the Xbox One, it failed to sell the numbers. Sure it sold ok, and it was well received. However it's exclusivity has drastically tainted it's potential.
You can bet your ass both EA and Respawn are not happy. It was meant to be EA's COD, instead it's sold more akin to Resistance: Fall of Man, well received ... but not a console mover.
The best I can see you're going to get with Microsoft is some timed exclusive DLC crap, for an uglier game. Really worth it? Nope.