Here's a scenario: If you had to choose to play ONLY 1st party software of all three manufacturers or ONLY 3rd party software on any platform, which would you choose and why?

Assume PC and mobile games don't exist.

1st party software in this case means any game made by studios owned by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

3rd party software in this case means any game made by 3rd party studios which are not directly owned by the above 3 console manufacturers. This means even 3rd party exclusives fall under the 3rd party software category.

For me personally this would be an EXTREMELY difficult choice because I love many 1st and 3rd party games. But at the end of the day I'd have to go with 1st party simply because of Pokemon. I couldn't give that up, EVER!

What about you?

Too difficult a question for me, as I love games from a lot of different developers. I like Super Mario Galaxy, Gears of War, Demon's Souls, Dragon Age, Fable, Xenoblade Chronicles, and on and on. Some people can easily stick to one platform, genre, or developer, I unfortunately can't.

It depends on the company. For example if I was a Nintendo gamer I would go for 3rd party.

Depending on the console, if talking about this gen:

Sony - 1st party (but very difficult!!!!!)
Xbox - 3rd party (easily)
Nintendo - 1st party (easily)

So overall: I'd go with 1st party

3rd party. Nintendo/Sony/MS 1st party stuff is massively overhyped and overrated imho.

For my money almost all the greatest games of this gen have been 2nd/3rd party titles.

Where exactly is the line? Is monolith soft first party? retro? If so I would definitely choose first party.

Most of the games I have paid for this gen were first party, so...

First party, although I'd be depriving myself of some great games. Mario, Metroid, and Zelda together make the choice an easy one for me, but I'd also get Halo, Killzone, and whatever JAPAN Studio can dream up.

Monolith Soft is 96% owned by Nintendo and Retro is 100%. Yeah they're 1st party.

As far as I now Monolith is a 1st party studio. I guess you could count Retro as 1st party since they are pretty much always making Nintendo games and are like a 1st party studio since they don't make games for any other platform.

But yeah, any game made by a studio not owned by Nintendo/Sony/MS falls under the 3rd party category, even if the game is a 3rd party exclusive to the platform.

This question is more about just the divide between 1st and 3rd party, not about specific platforms.