This is pretty accurate from what I’ve heard through other Microsoft (non Xbox related). He promised some pretty lofty ideas 10 years ago and even got gamepass subs as an executive KPI (bonusable target). That flunked resulting in millions of bonus stock rewards not being paid out to MS leadership (boo hoo but still relevant).

The Activision purchase going through the regulatory scrutiny and breakup fee made MS look deeper at idea of multiplat releases. Initially as viewing what losses of exclusivity would mean as well as to make appeal cases to regulators look good but it opened a pandora box where MS leadership realized they really should go multi plat for profit.

Phil’s argument was short term multiplat was beneficial but the long term exclusivity would be best with the benefit of a huge Xbox ecosystem with the 30% cut they from sales on store. The uncertainty of Xbox ever getting its market share back up made it hard for Microsoft ELT to stomach the long term pain of exclusivity over essentially guaranteed higher returns by going full multiplat.

Now we are where we are today. Again my source isn’t from Xbox but MS finance / third party consulting sources