Exclusive were and always have been important.  Without exclusives the WiiU would have been worse off, and it helps Nintendo overall as a console maker.  It's not just about separate console generations.  It's about the image of the console company as a whole and the expectancy of the consumer.

Important for the hardcore gamer, sure. For the mass market, no, not nearly as much. And certainly not to the extent people make it out to be on message boards and (I assume) YouTube videos. Again, not saying they have zero impact, but it's wildly exaggerated. We can agree to disagree, I'll admit I'm wrong once sales charts ever resemble the narrative being thrown around in here :)

This wasn't even a discussion until this year, because after years of dominating Xbone even with the same exclusive output as Microsoft, Sony finally had a strong, even dominant year in terms of exclusive games. Just so happened to coincide with a year where most of MS's games were delayed into 2018, made it a very easy narrative to spin.

Important for the hardcore gamer, sure. For the mass market, no, not nearly as much. And certainly not to the extent people make it out to be on message boards and (I assume) YouTube videos. Again, not saying they have zero impact, but it's wildly exaggerated. We can agree to disagree, I'll admit I'm wrong once sales charts ever resemble the narrative being thrown around in here :)

This wasn't even a discussion until this year, because after years of dominating Xbone even with the same exclusive output as Microsoft, Sony finally had a strong, even dominant year in terms of exclusive games. Just so happened to coincide with a year where most of MS's games were delayed into 2018, made it a very easy narrative to spin.

And the narrative that WiiU would have sold 0 without exclusives and that Switch would probably be selling very low if dependant only on 3rd party?

So are you implying that the Xbox isn't for the hardcore gamer...?

As the console market grows (which is has), your audience of varied preferences grows.  Therefore, both your masses and hardcore gamers will grow as well.  So naturally, exclusives have and always will be important.  It's that simple.

But if dominance is your primary focus, then you're out of focus.

Ummmm....  Those are not exclusives...  All are on PC.

Important for the hardcore gamer, sure. For the mass market, no, not nearly as much. And certainly not to the extent people make it out to be on message boards and (I assume) YouTube videos. Again, not saying they have zero impact, but it's wildly exaggerated. We can agree to disagree, I'll admit I'm wrong once sales charts ever resemble the narrative being thrown around in here :)

This wasn't even a discussion until this year, because after years of dominating Xbone even with the same exclusive output as Microsoft, Sony finally had a strong, even dominant year in terms of exclusive games. Just so happened to coincide with a year where most of MS's games were delayed into 2018, made it a very easy narrative to spin.

Xbox has has plenty of gamers who buy exclusives, but they just have fewer beloved franchises than other platforms because Microsoft lack of development skill created a culture where exclusives are less valuable and thus less viable to consumers. It's the polar opposite of what nintnedo did with third party. They make game so so high in quality that third party can barely survive when their games are dumbed down for their tech. Now that ea has slightly threatened (with their decisions) the future of single player games people are giving their respect to Sony and nintnedo because when it is all said and done they are where the traditional exclusive culture is on consoles. The last bastion of quality exclusive  single player gaming.

lol why would MS have as many beloved franchises as Nintendo, who was in the console business for literally decades before them, or Sony, who when MS entered the industry, was just coming off one megaton successful console and was a year into an even bigger one? Also, beloved franchises is an extremely subjective label. Also, if MS is creating a culture where exclusives matter less, then why do you make a big deal about them? Microsoft obviously doesn't care if they are creating that culture. Xbox fans certainly must not care if they're buying into that culture. Like I said, it's for nothing more than list warz.

Also people have been doomsday predicting the death of single player games for years now. It's no different than when EA Access launched and suddenly it needed to fail because then every single publisher was going to launch their own service and then you'd need to subscribe to 10 different services just to get full access to your games. Games as a service is a thing, publishers are embracing it. Sony has embraced it. Nintendo to a lesser extent with something like Splatoon has embraced it. Single player games aren't going anywhere on any platform, they'll always be around. Microsoft has brought us plenty of them this gen already.

It has nothing to do with knowing whether you're buying into a culture. A culture becomes a constant based on how a company produces games or acquires them and how the fans respond. Micorsoft could've had good single player games but never made single player games that hit the mark. However they took the next step where Nintendo opened up the console realm to fps games after goldeneye with halo. There's no doomsday prediction but people have spoken out about working with Microsoft and honestly the company is just not creative. Nintnedo created a culture of gaining bad third party sales because they made their platforms in a way that endorses only first party to make use of their platforms best and third parties refuse do to adapt to their unique hardware with their sought after multiplatform games. (Back to microsoft though micoroft  think like EA businesswise. Micorsoft has brought us some games that did not guarantee sequels because the culture of the core Xbox gamer said the demand for single player games is not there. Sometimes I wish black tusk has kept making that rumored new ip so Xbox gamers could at least say they got a hot new shooter.