| crumas2 said: I'm not sure I understand why 3rd party support to make a console successful requires the titles to be exclusive. Perhaps I missed a post. |
Excellent question and a good source of confusion.
The question is not really which platform has more exclusives, but which platform is denied titles. Another way to rephrase it is: "Our goal is not to determine a winner, but to identify a loser".
An exclusivity for one of the HD consoles means that the other one does not get the title. If this denial happens often enough to the same platform it will start to become apparent in the marketplace that "that platform doesn't get many of the titles that are out there".
When such a perception is propagated in the market, then "that platform with the fewer titles" becomes a risky purchase to new buyers because the buyers will lack the confidence that all of the future titles will be available on the console. This lack of confidence will cause changes in buying decisions and the platform with the fewer titles will lose share. This lose of share in turn will accelerate the 3rd parties decision to drop support for the platform. And this vicious cycle is called "the death spiral".
Prediction made on 11/1/2008:
Q4 2008: 27M xbox LTD, 20M PS3 LTD . 2009 sales: 11M xbox, 9M PS3
