Is it a case of Phil Spencer, lie dispenser?
Multiple times he has said he doesn't like them or in one case in 2015 'isn't their long term strategy' yet here we are in 2020 yet another conference "console world exclusive". We see it every E3 and this years conference.
Here are some links
Not ‘core’ to Xbox strategy Paying for third-party exclusives isn’t part of Microsoft’s long-term strategy, says Xbox boss Phil Spencer. ...
www.destructoid.com
Many have pointed out Xbox's history, however.
www.gamereactor.eu
What exactly is going on here. He hates them, but realises yet again they have no FP games coming, so they throw money at 3rd parties for a timed deal?
Some of these games really did not need MS funding at all to come out, so its obvious they are literally paying them to not be on other platforms.
Firstly, how do you know they are throwing money at them? I don't think they are. I don't think they'd be paying for a bunch of indie games and F2P games when they could be getting bigger franchises like Sony does now or Xbox has done in the past.
There's other ways that these deals can happen. An indie developer can go to Microsoft and say that they'll release on Xbox only for a period of time if they get exposure. Microsoft includes their trailer in a promotional event and the developer gets exposure and releases on PlayStation later.
Lets look at what Phil actually says from both articles:
"My strategy is more around our own first-party franchises, and investing in franchises that we own. I want to have strong third-party relations, but paying for many third-party exclusives isn't our long-term strategy"
"Paying marketing funds so another consoles base can't play a piece of content doesn't feel like growth"
The common thing between the two is that, they don't want to just spend money for exclusivity. We don't know if they gave these random devs random amounts of money. I don't think they did, why would they want to play random devs like bloober team and others money when they could get something bigger?
The first quote is that long-term they don't want to get timed-exclusives when basically talking about Tomb Raider. Which basically saying they rather put money in the future in their own studios rather then put money into buying timed exclusives. They did put a bunch of money into their first party which fits what was said.
The second, is that going to some random company and throwing a bunch of your
finite cash doesn't feel like growth. It's a bit ambiguous if he means growth for the game, industry or Xbox. But either way, an exposure deal leads to potential growth for the game because you would otherwise not spotlight a game that's not scratching your back which would in turn possible grow the industry. And to the Xbox platform that will also lead to potential growth without actually spending money because they are giving you a benefit.
I don't know exactly what happens behind closed doors, But I doubt that Microsoft is throwing cash at small devs when they could be combining it to throw at big devs. During the 360 days, Microsoft got a bunch of indie devs to make games for them with just promises of promoting them (which the indie devs criticized how they did it).
I don't think he's lying, I think people just misinterpret what he says. It's like the whole thing about the whole cross-gen thing. He said he didn't believe in arbitrarily making a game exclusive because they wanted to sell consoles and that the first two years of games would be cross-gen. Then people got mad when games that are likely not coming within 2 years were announced as Series X only and they said the decisions was up to the developers on what they plan to support. Microsoft should have a rough idea of when their games are coming out so they should be able to say that all the XGS games are going to be cross-gen for the next 2 years. So just because it's upto the developers, it doesn't mean it goes against the 2 year thing as he never said it was a mandate.
