Exclusives are no panacea for the "COD consoles".
People keep saying Xbox One got destroyed, because PS4 had so many exclusives. But did it really? From launch to middle 2016 both had nothing that even comes close to deserve the name system seller. That changed with Uncharted 4 and many more like Horizon, God of War, TLOU2, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima + PSVR exclusives followed.
You would expect that the ratio increased drastically from 2016-2020.
But it didn't. In 2016 we were already at ~42 million PS4 and ~21 million Xbox One which is ~2:1 and it ended with ~117 million to ~58 million which also also ~2:1
Yes it was destroyed, here are 3 facts on why that happe, and the most important is 3
1-They start selling games on PC because they need to recover money on AAA games FAST, no matter if in the end could Hurt the brand (people started question why buy an xbox)
2-Gamepass, this stupid idea in the Long run Hurt xbox alot, it started like EA VAULT, people pay to play games who sell declined, so xbox can have sub income every month, now people dont buy games day 1 and wait for gamepass
If you use gamepass you notice games dont have DLC, that's because gamepass was supposed to be the hook, and games pay the DLC, like a suscrpition MMO
3-the whole console buisiness work like this, you sell console at loss, you make AAA games to hook people to your ecosystem, all the publisher pay you a royalty of 30% on all their games and the DLC
Thats why Sony was against cross play, they lose the royalty of DLC if it was buyed in another ecosystem
And xbox fucked the royalty like no other
PC games =Steam get the royalty
Gamepass =People dont buy games, they hope recover money vía microtransactions
If xbox one sold 85 millions and xbox one 52, without counting the other factors i mention, its alredy a flop
Each console generation you need to hire more people, and Each year you need to give a raise and a bonus to your staff
And Im not counting all the money they trow OK stupid shit compared to Sony, Im sure many on this forum still play gamepass by 1 dollar