1. The money has never been the problem for Microsoft. Their problem is talent, at the first party level.
2. Sony has been making mind melting first party content, and has the talent in spades at a number of studios under their umbrella, and MS just doesn't have this.
3. They also just didn't work hard enough to nurture other genres- adventure or rpgs (they had something with Fable, but they let that fizzle- and this is where Sony is just absolutely eating their lunch). There are no exclusive sports under their banner (unless you count Forza, but they can't live on just that). They picked up Rare and did NOTHING with it (Perfect Dark Zero was too little too late, where is a true Banjo sequel or a new Conker game). They probably had the opportunity to invest in Bioware (after KOTOR/Jade Empire/Mass Effect were all exclusive and well received) and passed it up (and let them go to EA for their eventual ruin, another company I say would have been much better had they been with MS)
4. But anyway, just a lot of opportunity squandered. Now they want to do better. And hopefully they do (they still got the money), but they got a tall mountain to climb if they want to match what Sony is doing (and what Nintnedo has done for a long time) at the first party level.
Microsoft has talent..plenty of it..but talent means nothing if you have poor leadership, direction, allocation, management etc. Halo 5 was apparently a cluster fuck when it was in development having to be scrapped and redone during the dev cycle, and Sea of Thieves was apparently so bad that half of the team didn't even know what they were making.
I give Rod Fergusson credit, dude is an awesome studio lead, Gears 4 was steller and the amount of content they throw at it is crazy, I think the Coalition can do great things if given the opportunity to. But Bonnie Ross needs to fuck right off, she's nothing but a fem nazi, wish Josh Holmes could of been studio head instead of her.
Remember that Guerrilla games made an above average shooter but when given the change they made a banger that was critical and commercial hit.
2. Contrary to popular belief, Sony's own studios (not third party but ones they actually own) range from mediocre - God tier. Santa Monica, Naughty Dog and Guerrilla have all succeeded this gen, Sucker Punch put out a decent Infamous Second Son, PolyPhony put out an extremely underwhelming Gran Turismo ..then there's Knack..
Lets not pretend that Sony has 10 studios that constantly put out GOTY caliber games. They have better management and leadership, they've done a better job of cultivating their studios but they also have a ton of 3rd party support and exclusives that Microsoft needs to get a hold of. Sony has tons of Japanese support as well that MS lacks.
3. Lionhead wanted to make a grittier Fable 4, but this was when Phil Harrison was around and wanted every Xbox game to be online and multiplayer focused probably so they can get that sweet microtransaction money
4. Right, I agree but this was a different Xbox and different Microsoft...not saying everything is going to be roses and sunshine but at the very least we can't apply what happened 5-10 years ago to Microsoft's current vision for Xbox....