The economics are different: Redfall isn't a huge name, so it's more valuable for MS to get people into the game pass subscription than the comparatively piddly incremental one-time revenue they'd get from releasing it on PS5.

CoD on the other hand is already a huge name, that releases every year (i.e. recurring revenue, even if it's not a subscription per se), and MS is paying a huge premium for it. Forcing people over to game pass in that case isn't worth taking the hit to reliable revenue you're virtually already guaranteed to get from PS owners.

To be clear: I think it's less important to worry about this as less of a PC/Xbox exclusive than a Game Pass exclusive/available. I'd be willing to bet if Sony approached MS to bring Game Pass to PS, MS would be super willing to do it. Not that Sony would given their business model, but that's basically the point. It's not HW platform exclusivity, but store/subscription exclusivity.

There's so much speculation about motives here. Neither you nor I have any idea what Microsoft's business strategy is. All I can judge them on is their actions. And their actions are buying up large publishers and making their most anticipated games exclusive to the Xbox. Sure Redfall was a somewhat minor release (and a mess), but what about Starfield? The game is hyped up to hell and now an Xbox exclusive as well.

Minecraft proves the parent's point. Following your logic, Microsoft should've made Minecraft an exclusive. They didn't. In fact they're expanding the footprint, rolling it out to Chromebooks last month.

Oddly, I feel the writing is on the wall for this one. Minecraft would be a perfect game for the PSVR2, and yet?

People don't want to play Minecraft in VR. Witness Minecraft on Oculus.

It is on the PS VR1. And my family would love to play it on our system. Such that I can't believe it is "nobody."

Fair if you want to posit that VR is a niche market. But.... honestly, so is the entire Xbox market.

Well, the FTC court docs show Phil Spencer wanted to (the spinoff Minecraft Dungeons), but couldn't due to the contract with Notch. He instructed his team to try and find a loophole, and described the contract as something he regrets. When asked about this on the stand, he said "We ended up releasing on PlayStation"

Microsoft themselves said that they had no economic incentive to make Starfield exclusive prior to buying Bethesda then went and did it anyways. They have earned a huge amount of skepticism in any of these matters and are absolutely not trustworthy.

With the enormous size difference in Playstation to XBox markets, it is not a "piddly incremental" to also tap that market. Odds are stacked heavily against them making more by aiming for the subscription uptick they may see. That is, this is almost certainly a "grow the market" move. Hard to see it as anything else.