The 3rd Party Balance Sheet of Terror

[amirnetz]

whatever said:

amirnetz said:

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 statement makes HUGE assumptions and doesn't consider other factors.  Alot of these titles are shovelware and won't impact someone when looking to buy a console, especially since the Wii will be the king of shovelware for this gen.

Also, there are other reasons to buy a console these days, whether it be BR on PS3 or netflix on 360.  So if this thread is to see which console will go the way of the gamecube, I think it definitely fails. 

Of course there are other factors. The OP explicitely states that there are many factors to the purchasing decisions. See extract:

"This thread does not attempt to evaluate the overall winner between the 360 and the PS3. It does not try to evaluate the quality of their respective lineups. It does not try to predict the success of the titles in the market.

This thread also does not claim that 1st and 2nd party titles are not critical to the success of the platform. Of course they are critical. It would be silly to suggest otherwise.

What this thread IS trying to do is to evaluate only one aspect of the competition between the 360 and the PS3: 3rd party support.

I am not claiming in this thread that 3 party support over-shadows other elements of the competition like 1st and 2nd party titles, price, HW quality, brand name and other goodies. These are all very important in the competitive landscape. But so is 3rd party support. "

So let's understand that we are trying to quantify just one aspect of the competition without excluding others.

As for shovelware - apparently it is a good enough business as it is going on for decades. People are buying this crap often enough to make such titles viable. As much as we hate it, it is a factor in the marketplace.  The PS2 was the king of the shovelware and it was a death by a thousand cuts for the original xbox - there were so many more titles available for the PS2 it was in a major disadvantage. I am not claiming it was THE reason why the PS2 won, but it was part of it.