Can the 360 hit the "Exclusivity line"?

[amirnetz]

CrazzyMan said:

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There is more chance, that Japanese developers will support more PS3/Wii, since x360 just FAIL to have good sales in Japan.

 

True, but only for games that have no prospects of releasing in the west (and there are many of those, though most of us here don't care about those). For most games that get to be released in the west, no sane developer will use the PS3 as a lead platform.

Here is why: The 360 and PC have almost identical architectures. The Wii has a failrly traditional architecture as well - not too far from that of a low powered PC.  In contrast - the PS3 is a very strange beast that need very special skills and very different approch to software developement.

For a studio to take on the PS3 as a leading platform means that they are going to run into trouble with all of the rest of the systems. In contrast, taking the 360, PC or even Wii as the lead platform makes the code reasonably portable to the other "tranditional" platforms and you limit your risk to the platform that is less than 10% of the market (including PCs).

Two more points:

1. Japan is not what it used to be. It is only 5% of the HW console sales WW.

2. I would take Sony's statement that "developers are starting to use the PS3 as the leading platform" with a very big grain of salt and focus on the word "starting" - 1 studio doing it is a start.