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Soundwave on 06 March 2014
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NewGuy said:
Soundwave said:

I think the importance of exclusives honestly is a bit overrated. You need to have *variety* and developer support. People buy a console to invest in the ecosystem, not just for 1 or 2 games. 

It's why the Playstation beat the N64, even though the N64 had arguably 3 of the 4 "landmark" exclusives of the gen (Mario 64, GoldenEye, and Zelda: OoT).

People by and large want to pick and choose what they want to play, not to be told "hey play this 1 game for the next two months".

PS1 beat the N64 for a variety of reasons. Price, CD, and, as you metioned, variety of dev support. Make no mistake about it though, the PS1 had plenty of landmark exclusives. There were more than just 4 exclusive landmarks that you mentioned, off the top of my head, FFVII, DQVII, RE, GT, Tekken, Crash, Tomb Raider, MGS, etc


I'm just saying generally speaking most people agree that Nintendo probably had 3 of the 4 or 5 "big" exclusives that generation -- Final Fantasy VII and probably MGS being the other two ... and yet the PSOne outsold the N64 by 3x. 

People buy a platform for the overall ecosystem that it provides, a hardware platform has to be well rounded by and large to surpass 35 million hardware units sold. Nintendo keeps insiting on following the formula of relying on 1-2 "miracle exclusives" every year to make up for various other short comings though ... it just doesn't work.