Sony's line-up is keeping us from complaining and anything they say off hand, and I'd also like to point out they haven't actually done it yet, so theres nothing really to complain about anyways 

Huh, No More Heroes doesn't exactly come to mind as a PS exclusive.

I'm a fan of the good old complete exclusivity or complete multiplatform though, both timed exclusivity and extra content just seem like tounting the customer.

- What I hate is Microsoft's approach of buying exclusivity for 3rd party titles based on multi-platform engines such as Unreal engine based games. Porting games such as Gears of War to the PS3 would be no problem at all.

- I hate Microsoft's approach of buying exclusivity to a game like Mass Effect which was originally designed for a PS3 release. It's hurting consumer choices.

- I don't mind timed exclusivity, but only if done honestly. For example with regard to Bioshock 1 it was claimed to not release on the PS3 at all. The devs totally lied to potential future consumers about that, personally I think this happened due to Microsoft pressure.

- I hate that popular PC games developed by PC centric companies would be limited to XBox 360 exclusivity. For example Gears of War, Fable series, Alan Wake, Halo series, etc. IMO this Microsoft approach severely hurts consumer choice.

- I love exclusive efforts which try to highlight the special abilities of a console. For example control method (Playstation Move, Wii mote, Kinect) or technical prowness (like the additional Blu-Ray storage capacity/Cell processor in games like the Uncharted/Killzone series or PSN flexibility like with LittleBigPlanet).

I don't mind exclusive content, if there are technical reasons for it. If there are not it's at least not as shameful as Microsoft's approach in the past.

You guys forget that MS usually demands you pay for the exclusive or timed exclusive content, whereas, Sony has their exclusive content for free. I think I choose Sony's method thank you very much.

Doesn't matter to me cus I only own a PS3.

but I agree with carl, this is just really annoying and not good for us gamers.

If SONY does this game they are going to lose as I think exclusive content goes to the highest bidder and MS is going to win that match any day of the week.

Exclusive content is an idea by the major cmpanies in order to have more control over the flow of sales to multiplatform titles. They really could not hold back a title from being released on other consoles (unless the company is first/second party). The timed exclusives thing was on the way there, but eventually that agreement ends and the game makes it's way across to other platforms.

With exclusive content, a company such as Sony or Microsoft pays the developer for the development costs of the exclusive content, which in a lot of cases, that exclusive content remains permanent property of the paying company. No timed expiry date or anything.

Personally, I don't see the big deal with exclusive content in most cases. It generally falls into one of two categories:

1. The exclusive content has no effect on factors such as the storyline. It just can't. At most it can append to a story, but it could never interleave with core storyline. Things such as exclusive items tend to damage gameplay experience rather than add to it, since most times the item is generally higher power then regular items, making the game less challenging.

2. Exclusive content that does in fact affect the main storyline usually means that the version without the exclusive content could be seen as incomplete, and damage the publisher's reputation of a robust system.

@ fordy

Microsoft's tactic of buying exclusivity is usually geared towards paying for lost sales for by not releasing (on time) the PS3 version plus some extras. (such as Mass Effect 1 exclusivity and BioShock timed exclusivity) I think that's a destructive anti-competitive approach.

But Microsoft does not only do this to PS3 gamers, interesting also to Windows gamers. For example Alan Wake wouldn't have been the subHD game it turned out to be on the original PC target platform.

I would wish Microsoft started investing in their own game development capabilities and by that I don't mean taking over successful developers developing for rival systems such as Bungie (Mac developer originally) or Rare (Nintendo developer originally). IMO that's not a market enhancing approach at all.

oh so you have proof of this?

One issue I have with Microsoft buying timed exclusivity is due to their development approach. It leads to the XBox 360 being the lead platform while technically it always makes more sense to have the PS3 as the lead platform for games. PS3 lead development results in more efficient and portable code which benefits any modern platform including the 360 and PC. Using Microsoft's recommended coding techniques lead to more sub-optimal performance and significant porting issues for non-Microsoft platforms.

One of various developer comments regarding this topic:

Bioshock dev team: "So instead of declaring a "lead platform" and porting the game to the others, we’ve instead changed the game engine so that all platforms look (to a programmer) more like a PS3.
This means implementing a task-oriented task processor… that mimics the PPU/SPU split of the PS3. Writing code this way is more difficult for us, but has a key advantage: it’s both optimal for the PS3 *and* gives speed improvements on other platforms."