Right, for whatever reason, I guess that didn't focus test well or something. Someone who most likely makes more money than they need to probably said "duration" sounds better, so they agreed that that's the message they're going with. But what I'm getting at is that if we stop trying to psychoanalzye what they're doing over there, I feel like we all understand what either phrase means, right?
Let's for the sake of argument just assume that we are all intelligent adults here. I don't mean in any sort of sense where we brag about being geniuses, because I'm certainly not, but I just mean smart enough interpret the gist of messages without needing everything explicitly explained. Aside from that bit of confusion about whether MS was publishing the game or Square Enix, I felt like "Exclusive to Xbox One Holiday 2015" told me everything I needed to know. I mean, I'm no insider. I could be wrong. But I didn't feel like I needed Polygon's hard-hitting investigative journalism or posts from cboat to clarify what I already knew: it's a timed exclusive. Probably 3 - 6 months based just on that language alone.
Again, I have no source on that. I just guessed 3 - 6 months. But either way, I think it's clear that Microsoft isn't going to explicitly explain what the time frame is. It's just not going to happen. If the end game here is to hound them for clarification so as to attain transparency that will make timed exclusives less desirable in the first place, then I understand. And while it is interesting to note that they changed language in such a fashion, I don't think that what it conveys to us is any more consuming.
It's interesting to watch. But I don't feel like with any twist or turn that has occurred in this story that my understanding of the situation has changed. As when I first heard about it, it's pretty obvious that this is a standard timed exclusive. Using "duration" instead doesn't obfuscate that to me.
