They need to hire back whoever was in charge during the OG Xbox and 360 days. Balmer and whoever is in charge now is fukking them over.
This move reeks of desperation and it shows they are trying to gain an audience that wont help them this gen or the next. What they need to do is take that 2 billion and try and tempt some of the disgruntled talent at a couple larger studios to come over to MS and head their own shyt. Hear some pitches on a handful of games and let them do their thing, without intrusion. You arent going to win a generation on the back of any single indie title especially one that will be available on PC as well. Indie companies will make games for your system as long as its easy to do and its in their best interest. What you need to do is make sure that next gen you have a solid lineup of 1st party developers that can show early adopters you mean business. Early adopters drum up hype, hype sells consoles to casuals, casuals buy lots of indie bullshyt, and now you dont have to pay them to make games for your system.
Build a videogame system first and foremost then hire intelligent programmers that can figure out how to get that app shyt to work within those confines, dont build an app machine and then expect developers to figure out how to maximize its output, because they wont.