And I think you're avoiding the wisest decision of them all: release the game when there is not such stiff competition.  I mean, did they really think they would hurt Killzone more than Killzone would hurt them.

If they weren't so dumb they could have released at a less crowded time and had relatively equal sales between the platforms (which is expected as it usually happens). 

They could have had more money, but they threw it away.

There is no way the PS3 version would have ever sold on par with the 360 version, even without KZ3.  First of all the Gears beta was a big draw not to mention Epic has a far larger fanbase on 360 than they do on PS3.

And I don't understand why people are trying to turn this into a "Why did Bulletstorm flop on PS3" thread.  That isn't the question. The question is whether it would have been a better business decision to have had Bulletstorm be a 360 exclusive and in this case I really do think it was the better choice.  And I almost always say 3rd party games should pretty much always be multi-plat but in this case I think Epic and MS would have both seen gains if they had formed a partnership on the game.

I think that Bulletstorm would've done much better if it was released without any major releases before and after it. ( LBP2, Dead Space 2, KZ3, Marvel vs Capcom, Homefront, etc ) But on a buisness PoV then I think it would've been a smart move.

Really you can not answer this question until after about six months of the game being out. With that much time we could then read the data and see if it was worth being multiplat or not. But I would give it at least til this holiday (christmas) season passes before judging whether or not it was a better business decision.

if they had made it a timed exclusive, it would have been the first one nobody complained about...or noticed

It would have sold much closer to 50-50 than this debacle.  I believe it would have been the BEST business decision to release at another time rather than be exclusive.  This game was never going to be huge, you don't see Halo being packaged with a Gears of War beta.  I just don't think being exclusive would have given that many more sales, I think a release date change would have been more effective.  Simple as that.

Yah, more like Epic had a brain explosion wanting to release opposite KZ3 and EA didn't have the stones to pull them into line. No doubt BS would still have done lower numbers on PS3, including across EMEAA were it released with no quality, exclusive PS3 competition, but it would have sold well enough that this thread would never have existed.

BS will no doubt leg it out to a few hundred K on PS3, but because of Epic's arrogant timing decision it could be that a PC/360 exclusive might have sold slightly more.

Another Gears it aint and that's top do with the game itself, not that it is multiplat.

Not sure why you think Epic's deciding when the game is released. EA's the publisher and it's their decision in the end.

Hmmm.  These are the factors I'd consider:

1)  Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm have very similar review scores, as evidenced by thier metascores.  The 'quality' of the games appears even and preference would then be a matter of opinion, not fact.

2)  Killzone 3 is an established franchise with a fair amount of hype; Bulletstorm is a brand new IP, that sold, comparitively well.

So the op's question is valid; given the small initial sales of Bulletstorm on the PS3, and the launch of a competing established IP, would the game have been better served launched as a 360 console exclusive?

While I'm not claiming to know the answer I would guess, that launched as an exclusive, it would have sold similarly to the combined sales across platforms at launch.  The question is, how will the legs on the PS3 affect the long-term sales.

yeah like cura said...the sales are like this becasue of Killzone 3...i mean like every Xbox owner who bought a FPS on that day bought Bulletstorm and a PS3 owner of course prefered a Killzone 3...