There's a fundamental problem MS has had all along. Way back in the original Xbox days, they bought up prolific and highly acclaimed third-party Nintendo developers, Rare. Their intention was obviously to have some of the very best games designers working in-house for Microsoft Studios... but then they strangled out all the creativity that made Rare a household name, and put them to work developing Kinnect Sports. I mean, FFS, talk about not recognising the full value of your assets.
Yeah, what happened to Rare is a travesty. They went from one of the greatest developers of all time to a factory pumping out crappy Kinect games. I don't know what Microsoft was thinking when they stripped Rare of its soul.
But I still stand by the idea that Microsoft needs stronger first party games. Microsoft can't rely on inferior third party ports to sell the Xbone. They need their own games and franchises.
Yeah I totally agree, Microsoft did (still do) have a good range of in-house properties, but seem to have next to know idea how to exploit them effeciently.
The thing about them IMO is they had true cross-market appeal. They had the interesting gimmick of basing various types of gameplay challenge around real-world locations, but were perhaps more "family friendly" than some other similar open world games that have done the same sorts of thing since, like your GTAs and so forth.
