badgenome on 05 December 2008
I don't think either is clearly better. With first party IPs, they're safe exclusives that will never appear anywhere else (unless the console maker pulls a Sega), but Sony did quite well for two generations relying mostly on third parties. If you manage to secure a lot of third party support, that could equal a lot more exclusives than first party devs could generate, and with considerably less financial risk.
At this point, though, Microsoft isn't really getting all that many third party exclusives, so the first party route Sony is taking seems a better way to differentiate a console from the competition- a pretty important thing when so many people currently find the 360 and PS3 to be basically interchangeable.
