Can the 360 hit the "Exclusivity line"?

[Lord N]

The 360 will never see that kind of exclusive support. It simply doesn't have the install base, market share, or sales strength outside of the holiday season. When you add in rising development costs, this scenario becomes even more unlikely.

Another thing that's not being considered is the fact that the Wii is still annihilating the 360 and PS3 collectively even more so than it was before. For some reason, people still believe that the outcome of the "war" between the PS3 and 360 is at all meaningful, when in reality, it's not even worth fighting. Even with the 360's strong showing this holiday season, it's still being outsold 2-1 by the Wii, the combined sales of the 360 and PS3 are less than that of the Wii, and it will be a matter of weeks before the Wii has an install base that's larger than that of the the 360 and PS3 combined.

Let's go back to those development costs and combine that factor with the above. The big budget titles that are necessary to appeal to the demographics that largely compose the PS3 and 360 userbases(core and hardcore gamers) aren't getting any less expensive to make. This is why we've seen so many mergers, acquisitions, and closings as of late. The 360's userbase isn't large enough to maintain consistent profits through exclusivity, so developers have no choice but to keep developing multi-platform HD titles. As development costs conintue to rise and the Wii install base increases, we'll probably see developers shift resources away from these expensive titles and towards budget titles on the Wii in order to make the most profits.

Microsoft's moneyhatting won't make any difference either, as you don't capture exclusive support by paying for it, you do it by having the largest install base.