One thing that they have mentioned on the podcast is that through their acquisitions they have now many more (than 4 games) on competing platforms. You add to this things like Ori, Minecraft etc. and that list of now MS owned IPs/games on other platforms is quite long. If you buy/spend money on dlc, in game items etc. In games like dishonored, doom, quake, wolfenstein. Diablo, ori, minecraft, Skyrim, CoD, crash, Spyro etc. the money goes to MS.
as I have said multiple times before, for biggest chance of success, any new GaaS game should be on all platforms day 1 (regardless if it is published by Sony or MS, or any other publisher) - that’s what logic dictates. Even more important for F2P gaas games. Same applies to smaller, almost experimental games - these should also try to leverage gamepass or/and playstation plus and/or epic game store exclusive to try get in front biggest audience possible and get some money upfront from platform holders. If that smaller game is great it will gain following and there is a chance for a sequel, if it bombs (because of the lack of exposure and therefore not sell well/not generating enough engagement) there will be no sequel, and as a industry we need more of these unique games, experiments like pentiment, hifi rush etc.or we will end up all playing open or semi-open world TPP cinematic experience games - as this what sales.
I want more new FPSes with interesting new concepts, I want more RTSes in epic universes, proper platformers 2d and 3d, something that hasn’t be done in long time and things that are completely new. That’s how we push gaming forward. That’s what Phil was saying about empowering creators - Sony would never greenlight project like pentiment.
one more observation, over the years, the narratives change in funny way; xbox has no games, when the games started releasing on pc, it changed to Xbox has no real exclusives, and now (After Sony started to release games on pc) it is Xbox have no console exclusives (which is no true), but it is about narrative.