Can Microsoft continue to buy it's way to victory?

[badgenome]

Chromium24 said:

Skeeuk said:

    

    Microsoft keeps buying exclusives from third party, but how much longer can they go on doing this? Third parties will gladly accept the money to make a game exclusive to the 360, but it doesn’t come cheap, and doesn’t always pay off. If Microsoft were smart they would put the money  they are wasting on third party, and get some first party started. These days a console can’t live on just third party, especially with Sony going all out on their first party. Modern games are so expensive to make these days, that a third party would need a really good reason to make their game exclusive. 

    

This paragraph is very true. Microsofts 1st parties are almost non-existant. They have a few good exclusives, but if you look at their top games on IGN or Metacritic they're mostly multiplats like GTA, Bioshock, etc. That is excluding games like Mass Effect, Gears of War and Halo which are great.

 

I don't agree with it, really. There's something to be said for having a strong first party, sure, but it's not necessarily more expensive to outsource to third parties for exclusives. Could be cheaper than keeping up your own studios, in fact. Gears of War is by no means a "waste of money" for Microsoft, and there's certainly nothing that precludes third parties from making games that can rival or surpass those of first parties. After all, a lot of people never cared about Sony's first party until they really started to ramp it up after losing so many third party exclusives. The difference in Microsoft's situation is that, instead of just assuming they'll get third party support as Sony did, they seem to be building a strategy around it. And I think that as the generation wears on and their system sells more, it should be easier - not harder - to convince third parties to make an exclusive for them.