I just had a interesting thought. What if the difference isn't the advertising, the volume, or the quality. What if the big difference is in the packaging. Microsoft is prodigious about value adding when it comes to their first party offerings. Hell it almost qualifies as bundling. Maybe the real difference is that Microsoft is selling a game and a half for the same price that Sony charges for a single game.

Look at Halo for example. What is included with Halo that has almost nothing to do with the main game. You have the Theater feature which is just a spruced up developer tool. You have the Forge which is the same. Hell the new game is coming with a movie attached. So which is it am I buying a game, or am I buying a movie. This series isn't the only example.

Look at Fable it isn't just a role playing game. It has a social simulator, and a financial simulator jammed in right along side the role playing game. They have absolutely nothing to do with the main game. They are there for people to tool around with. They aren't really games in themselves. Just a bunch of sandbox elements.

Forza isn't exempt either. Do you really need to take a virtual tour of a vehicle to race cars on a track. So why is it even there at all. Well it is just bonus material to make the game look even bigger.

Crackdown came with a beta invite which let you play half of another game called Halo 3 which lasted for the better part of a month. Plus it came with free downloadable content to boot. Even the Kinect came with a host of bonus shit. In the form of Fun labs. Which were probably some development tools that Microsoft found just lying around the office.

Microsoft isn't just selling consumers on the quality, but on the quantity they are willing to offer up as well. How hard is it to sell people on the best when your also making it into a real bargain. Maybe that is what Sony needs to be doing. They need to be making bundled experiences rather then just making games. The bells and whistles probably do make Microsoft's games just that much more shiny in the eyes of consumers. Maybe Sony should just convert a studio into a bonus content generator for their first party games. It certainly couldn't hurt.

Any thoughts?

That's definitely a factor as well. The modes in a game like Halo are extremely deep and gives the game insane longevity. And games with longevity are a lot less likely to be sold and re-bought as used. I think that's the reason why a lot of the top selling games on the PS3/360 offers a lot of hours in gameplay (either through multiplayer or single-player)

Dude, not to get caught up in a petty argument, but you said "Sony exclusives in general" followed up by "that people rave about and ultimately never seem to buy".  Now, as I'm sure you know, "in general" means a majority, one large enough to draw a conclusion from.  If you did not mean that, then how is that line supposed to be read?   Taken literally, it says that people hype the majority of Sony exclusives but they never buy them.  Intentional or not, that is what you said, so it's kind of rude for you puff up over it.

Whatever, though.

It seems like a lot of your argument has to do with the amount of hype you see on forums or gaming sites, which is pretty much meaningless.  A few dozen, or even a few hundred people talking on the internet can hardly be considered to represent the consumer base at large.  

X360 sells the bulk of its sales in NA.
PS3 sells the bulk of its sales in Europe and Japan.
The games on the PS3 and X360 are tailored to appeal for their intended markets.

Dude.....that was brilliant! I am saving this! So true!

This is because every game mentioned are for mostly the american market, and xbox is the dominant gamer console in NA.
racing games are mostly for EU, and as you can see where PS3 has more dominance it's exclusive racer is higher up then the xbox equivalent.