Which home console has the strongest library for the rest of the year?

[Arkaign]

I think to judge the larger market (average buyer) you have to judge the entire library, not just exclusives. Nintendo imho has by FAR the best lineup of exclusives on 8g consoles so far, and that looks likely to continue through at least this year.

However, their 3rd party support is virtually dead.

PS4 I think easily has the best lineup of titles UNLESS you are a huge Halo fan that wants to replay old games in HD. I sort of don't get it. I'm a PC gamer, so I'm used to being able to replay old titles at stupidly high resolutions and with texture mods/etc. It's kind of neat as a novelty, but retreading ancient titles doesn't do a lot for me in the end (though it IS nice to go back and play something I missed, like say System Shock 2, and play it for the first time with reasonably updated graphics).

Don't think I'm merely picking on Halo here either, as for most regular gamers who already played TLOU, replaying it a year later with slightly higher resolution and improved framerate doesn't make it a new game. And yes, I understand that it's not really intended to be a re-buy, it's for the people who missed it on PS3 (there were scads of 360-only gamers that missed it for example). But how many people are buying X1s that never had 360s? Not a lot I'd imagine. Hell, given that the 2014 numbers are so horrible so far and the extreme front-loaded launch numbers for the X1, I'd hazard that they represent the core Xbox fanbase, many/most of which probably had an OG Xbox for Halo 1/2 as well.

Will Halo MCC boost things for X1 vs. PS4? I'm doubtful. I think Destiny will prove to be a juggernaut that completely overshadows Microsoft AND Sony's exclusives this fall. At this point, I think even COD will be a bit outshined. It all depends on the scale and reception of the final game. From what we know, the Beta was based on a pretty old build, and a tiny fraction of the actual game. With the full piece of pie launched, and many tweaks to the deathmatch/PVP stuff, combine that with the frankly ludicrous preorders, and I think we're in for one of those titanic shift moments in gaming. It's a little bittersweet to me, because although I think it looks pretty decent, I'm far from a huge fan of it overall (what I've seen). But to the gaming market at large, I think it's going to be stupid big. It also looks a bit weak when comparing the past (Halo 1-4) to the future (Destiny) in the same timeframe. Old games with old mechanics (no game persistence, no player leveling/true customization/etc) vs. new game from the same devs, I dunno. I just don't see it ending well from Microsoft's perspective.

What I predict for Halo MCC : very strong sales to existing X1 owners. Decent sales to new X1 owners (it's not like zero X1s will be sold, or that X1 won't have better sales in the holidays vs. summer/fall lol). But not very many people at all outright going to buy an X1 just to play old Halo games.

Inertia also is a very real thing in the industry historically, and that's true even all through this year. If sales are strong for a single week, that doesn't say a ton. But if sales are strong week after week after week, month after month, that's a groundswell and social-networking metric that's hard to stop or even slow down. And we're going to see absolute pandemonium when the Destiny bundle drops.

Boom : Fire and Brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanos .. The Dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together .. MASS HYSTERIA!

/Venkman

Anyway, that momentum will mean a holy CRAPTON of new PS4 owners will be networking with friends, talking about how much fun they're having with Destiny/etc, and that will influence a lot of people in choosing their console this holiday season.

All I can hope, is that a lot of people who already own a PS4, to pick up a U (please N, give us a $199 bundle!!) as a companion console. It's a great piece of work, and the library is solid imho.