HappySqurriel said:
Somewhere in the range of 90% to 95% of all third party games released on the PS3 or XBox 360 are multiplatform games. If you take out the exclusive games where there was some-sort of monetary benefit given by the console manufacturer to develop the game exclusive for their system, it is quite accurate to claim that neither platform can justify much exclusive third party support based on its sales alone. Certainly, both platforms have big selling games, but when your average game costs $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 to develop and it receives sales in the 333,000 to 666,000 on each platform it is difficult to justify putting it on one platform exclusively. Just because the XBox 360 is replaced by Microsoft doesn’t mean that third party publishers will be able to justify exclusive PS3 support, which means that it is unlikely that support would dry up after Microsoft replaces the XBox 360. The Wii is in a different boat all together where its low development costs and high userbase really does justify a lot of exclusive and pseudo-exclusive (built from the ground up ports) games; and even if sales begin to decline, it will take years for the entire userbase to move onto something new, which means that it will justify exclusive and pseudo-exclusive games for years after a new generation begins. When you add this all together, if Microsoft begins a new generation by releasing an advanced system the XBox 360 and PS3 will continue to exist and will (likely) continue to have almost identical game libraries. As the generation goes on the PS3 will be facing competition from new hardware which takes away the selling features that are driving the PS3 today (powerful and advanced hardware), it will face very similar competition at a lower price point (the XBox 360), and it will face competition which has always been more popular and can justify greater residual development based on sales alone (Wii). In other words, as soon as the next generation begins the PS3 will face competiton in all directions which has noticeable advantages over it. It could quite easily become the "Middle Child" who is easily ignored because it isn't powerful enough, inexpensive enough or popular enough to get the attention of consumers. |
Best post of the thread. I tried to say something similiar to this a week or so back. The wall the PS3 faces is the annoucement of the NextBox. When that happens and the subsequent release will end a great deal of the PS3 competitive edges.
Its libraries that sell systems not a single game.
