But most games sold tend to be barring the Nintendo stuff, multiformat.

I'm pretty certain most Xbox and PlayStation owners buy the systems for 3rd party releases which are available on other systems. Exclusives may help steer which way someone leans if they're only going to buy 1 format, but if you want GTA, either price or best version is going to be the factor, rather than the fact that ICO is on one of the systems.

Gaming discussion is mostly pointless. Not just because it's highly subjective, but even moreso because most people around here already know what any specific poster is going to say. Still though, when it comes to which platform people prefer, it usually comes down to exclusives (even if it's just one or two games).

When it comes to sales, multiplatform games don't tip the scale in favor of one or the other console, so they are of lower value than exclusives in such discussions and rightly so. Price of the system itself and its general perception play a bigger role than multiplatform games themselves; unsurprisingly, because if the game is the same, it has to be another factor that makes the difference. Digital-only can be safely disregarded, because the average console buyer is hardly aware of those games' existences.

However, if the sales discussion concerns the overall performance of a console (instead of the tipping the scale context), then multiplatform games obviously do matter. Especially because they move more Sony and Microsoft consoles than exclusives do. The reality is that the PS vs. Xbox context is much more popular than anything else, so that's why the vast majority of discussions drift into that direction (if it wasn't already the initial context to begin with).

I mentioned timed exclusivity in the second sentence. I also mentioned others games broadly as in ps2s  success is not owed to the one game gta.

True. But based on the logic of this forum, even if a game is exclusive to a console for 6 months, it's irrelivant because everyone will know to wait for the game to come out on the format of their choice. :p

The PS2 was a glory period of "seemingly exclusive" releases though. However that was 10+ years ago. The market is very different now. Which is why I find the focus on exclusives interesting. Because these games used to be seen as exclusives, but they're now multiformat, but still sell in similar quantities meaning that the audiences wanted that software.

Both really. I mean as a general point of discussion in a thread. When listing games someone says they like on a format, it's instantly jumped on as "not exclusive" or "only a download game".

In sales, that game is still on that format, so therefore counts towards it's overall lineup. For gaming in general, a lot of people actually only play multiformat games. There are people who's staple gaming diet is FIFA, Call of Duty and then something else to fill in the gap.

So do most gamers (beyond forums such as this) actually give a damn whether a game is on another format, or is a port of a game from a system 2 generations ago that they never owned? (If someone never had an original Xbox, the Master Chief Collection is actually introducing them to a completely new game in Halo 2 remastered).

There just seems to be too much focus on the exclusive/physical aspect, as opposed to the actual quality of the game itself.

A high quality exclusive is great, but it just seems some people don't want to even consider multi format and digital part of a system's lineup.

This, essentially people will buy an xbox one over ps4 for Titan Fall and plants vs zombies even if it isn't exclusive.