This is sort of an ended question. I was thinnking about how EA's lack of Wii U support has been pretty bad news or that platform, and was wondering about the opposite kind of question for the other Gen 8 consoles.

Here's a look at all 11 million-seller games for the PS4 and Xbone combined.

Out of the eleven games for the "8 GB of RAM" consoles that have broken a million, five of them are from just EA, including one of the One's two exclusives. That makes EA the biggest publisher in this market by a huge margin, considering that they are bigger than Microsoft and Sony combined.

Total PS4 & One Game Sales: 26.57 million

Total PS4 & One 1st Party Game Sales: 6.34 million

Total PS4 & One EA Game Sales: 9.1 million

What do you think? Has the general success of the PS4 and Xbox One been largely due to EA's strong support of these platforms? And if so, can the argument be made that 3rd party publishers have the power to choose which hardware succeeds?

I didn't even realize this was still up for debate. Except maybe for the Wii, 3rd parties decide every generation.

It's probably helped Xbox One more thanks to Titanfall. I don't have an idea what the exact percentage would be.

i think alot of people would have bought the new systems anyway. 1st party games sell the consoles at the beginning, and then the 3rd parties sell them as the gen matures.

Of course third party publishers are the reason if a console will fail or succeed. It's been proven time and time again and dates all the way back to Sega's emergence in the industry.

Now not going to get into an argument, the fact of the matter is, Nintendo forced companies that developed games on their consoles to remain exclusive to them if they wanted to continue development. This is the reason Sega had so many first party titles and third party titles that weren't on Nintendo consoles. Sega actually did really well for having none of the really big third parties that Nintendo controlled, but they still had problems because the lack of a lack of third party support.

Sega CD and the 32X were add ons that got no third party support and failed.

The Nintendo 64 got limited third party support and was a major hit to Nintendo, while Sony got massive third party support and sales blew up immediately. Sega Saturn got third party support but not as much in comparison to Sony.

The Gamecube and Xbox got less third party support than the PS2. Despite the console being less powerful and didn't have any sort of gimmick in control like the Wii, the third party support kept Sony dominating against the competition.

The PSPs lack of third party support because of piracy had it struggling to get sales. It still happened to sell fairly well because the mobile games weren't as big as they are now. Oh and Japan.

Vita and Wii U are selling poorly because they're getting almost no third party support in comparison to the competition. The Vita isn't getting first party support either. Sony expects it to sell without any games.

Yeah, EA support is key to a successful homeconsole. I think its fair to say that without the likes of FIFA, Battlefield and Titanfall then we wouldnt have seen sales hitting anywhere near what we are seeing now.

In addition, EA are the number 1 publisher on PS4 (or at least, they were). Quite a big deal if you ask me.

As for the question at the end of your OP, I certainly think that 3rd party publishers have that power but only if they are in agreement on the "cause". One 3rd party abandoning a system would be a huge blow, but as long as support is still hitting the machine from other publishers then it will survive. When almost every 3rd party publisher abandons a platform, then the platform has no chance in hell of being competitive.

The sales difference of FIFA 14 between PS4 and Xbone is huge.

Third party games sell most consoles, any platform that has every single COD, Battlefield, Fifa, Madden, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Fallout etc etc game will sell well. Exclusives and strong indie support are just the icing on the cake.

It is more having them is the standard and not is a big loss. I know many here may not care about FIFA, but hard for me to imagine going a generation without buying at least one entry in the series.

I think a better question would be how do you think an EA console would do against Xbox One and PS4? With EA games exclusive to their system. Are their games good enough for someone to buy an EA console over the other 2? I understand there are FIFA, Madden, and Battlefield fans, but are EA games better than Sony or Microsoft's first party games? In my opinion EA needs these systems more than they need EA.