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LudicrousSpeed on 25 August 2014
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There are mitigating circumstances to almost every one of those examples used in terms of timed exclusive games hurting the sales.

1. Titanfall - data on this is nowhere near reliable due to lack of digital sales. PC will be a lot higher than it is, Xbone adds a ton, too. It's also online only, so comparing it to the typical shooters is a waste of time.

2. Mass Effect 2 sold less on PS3 because it was a sequel to a game PS3 owners could not play at the time. Tomb Raider fans can play the reboot on their PS3 or PS4 already. Personally I think it makes sense for the game to sell less considering.

3. Bioshock launched in August on 360 IIRC and had virtually no competition whether it was exclusive game or 3rd party until Halo 3 a month later. It racked up more than 1/3 of its sales in that time. Bioshock on PS3 launched a week before games like LBP, Resistance 2, Fallout 3, and Motorstorm launched.

4. Skyrim maybe sold less on PS3 because of the overblown hardware issues concerning the game. It was a huge deal when the game was releasing, news stories about how buggy the game was and all the game killing glitches. Then when DLC came around there was no word on when or if they'd be able to get it on PS3. There was talk that DLC would actually never be able to make it onto PS3. Yeah that killed sales more than a year long delay on a game that was out years before that. If the game is big enough, previous exclusive factors don't mean anything. Look at the CoD game mentioned. CoD2 never even saw a release at all on PS3.

And the biggest thing here is in all of the cases where money changed hands, we have no idea what amount of sales were made up via cold hard cash. Does 2k care if Bioshock sold a million less or whatever, if the money MS gave them made up for it? No.

Somehow I think if these big publishers that have been smart enough to survive in a very risky business thought these deals were killing not just their timed exclusive games but the entire franchises, they wouldn't do them. Other times you have to make deals like this or the game wouldn't be made, at least not in the form the developer intends. Without knowing the full details of the monetary side it's nothing but guessing to say either way if its good or bad.