Can the 360 hit the "Exclusivity line"?

[Lord N]

mrstickball said:

Lord N said:

mrstickball said:

Whereas, we're likely to see the Playstation 3 get 0 3rd party exclusive support outside of the relationships Sony pays for.

 

Microsoft doesn't really get exclusive third-party support unless it pays for it, either. The 360 simply doesn't have the market share.

I'd imagine, though, that whatever Microsoft has to do to secure exclusivity is far less than what Sony is going to have to do in the coming months.

 

What matters more is the coming years, not the coming months.

Due to rising development costs, they're both going to have to do a lot more to secure any kind of third-party exclusives. We might even see third parties start to shift more of their resources away from the big-budget titles that appeal to their userbases and more towards Nintendo's platforms as they have much higher profit margins. Despite the 360's recent success, it hasn't scored a decisive victory in any way, shape, or form. It's still going to lag in a second place far behind the Wii, and its market share is never going to get to the point that developers will ignore the PS3 install base. Add in those development costs again, and devs are going to need their games to be on both platforms in order to reap the most profits. You don't get that kind of exclusive third-party support by paying for it, you get it by having the largest install base. That being said, both Microsoft and Sony need to find ways to make their platforms more accessible and appealing to people other than core and hardcore gamers.

MS should be more worried about its first party, a department in which they are very weak. If some of their exclusives like Gears Of War, etc start going multi-plat, they'll be in serious trouble.