Imagine a world where console and PC games were all on one platform

[Reasonable]

outlawauron said:

Reasonable said:

outlawauron said:

The overall quality of the games would drop as there would be less compeition.

See I don't buy this at all.  It's like expecting the quality of movies to drop because you can play a DVD on any player.

Competition between game developers (and the basic skill of the developer) drives game quality, not exclusives.  3rd party titles can be just as good as exclusives in quality - Portal 2 being an obvious recent example.

Exclusives exist to attract you to a particular console from an availability perspective.  Consoles compete primarily on exclusives not by quality per se but availability.  You want your Mario you have to go Nintendo.  You want your Halo you have to go MS, etc.  The point of exclusives is more for the benefit of the console manufacturer than you.

Invalid comparison. Tons of studios (those owned by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo and those dependant on contracts from console manufacturers, etc.) would suddenly lose of their funding and have to be, either picked up by acquistion or the studio disbands with the employees trying to get jobs at the existing studios. Either way, there's less developers out there with less offerings with less compeition.

Actually I think your point is invalid here.  You're talking about funding/volume of titles, but that doesn't guarantee competition, in fact arguably studios being overly supported negates competition as it potentially allows them to overspend or survive weak titles failing due to the additional support layer.

It's pretty clear that there is plenty of business available making games, and that alone guarantees competition between developers without any need for a support structure per se.

You're talking about an additional support structure which is good for developers but doesn't directly result in good competition or good results for the end consumer.

If you want a competative market then a feature of that will be that some developers will fail - due to failure to deliver good games or an inability to align their title to the market.

Sure, more developers implies more competition, but you don't need the support structure for that to happen.  One look at the number of third party titles vs exclusives shows that.

Note I'm assuming you mean supported third party or maybe second party developers.  First party are simply part of the company and shouldn't be counted.

I don't want to put people out of jobs, but the support structure to mention doesn't really mean normal competition.