Looking forward the Xbox 360 strategy is a lot clearer than looking backwards because you see the effect of the timed exclusives. Microsofts initial strategy looks like it was to get as much compelling unique content onto the console as quickly as possible to drive adoption. To this end they performed really well in the key areas of shooters (Live adoption) and WRPGs on their console. It doesn't matter that the content eventually ended up on the PS3 because if they sold systems they sold Xbox 360 systems and prevented the PS3 from walking away from the Xbox 360 by denying the PS3 some of its footing and momentum and taking it for their own system. We can see the benefits of this because Microsoft now gets for free exclusive games which are as good if not better than anything Sony can produce themselves in this area. Left 4 Dead, Bioshock for example.
Their business plan really did revolve around both their overall userbase and the connected userbase (Live users). The exclusive shooter content and other such content was to drive Live adoption amongst core gamers and to get a winning lead in the area of multiplayer gaming. That way they had the opportunity to keep a hold of a specific group of people and take advantage of the social networking aspects of gaming to drive the friends of Live Gold subscribers to become subscribers themselves. This is why they can perform so much better than the PS3 in the U.S. because of this effect. The other side was the low entry price to get people on board cheaply so they can then migrate the Arcade users over time to become Live Gold subscribers with features like 100 vs 1, Netflix and the Xbox Live Arcade, features which drive people to upgrade to a HDD model and connect to the internet.
Tease.
