No, you misunderstood. That single store sells as much software for each console. And it's no game or electronics shop, it's just a store. So it's no telltale sign or anything. A singular store doesn't make any difference.

Looking across the country, Sony is doing much better. There's no arguing that. I don't know where you got the idea that I'm insinuating that they give more space because it sells less.  The market is much bigger for PS, so it makes sense to give more space for PS.

Man it isn't a minority or majority of the exclusives that matter or push sales is the library they make. You may not like 90% of PS exclusives, but since there is a lot of them those 10% will be enough to bring you over even if no particular title made it.

You want evidence?

Making it very simple... PS2 had most exclusives and most sales, PS3 and X360 had equilibrium in exclusives and sales were close, PS4 have more exclusives and sell 2:1.

That is because of the way you put the anedocte.

The better way would be "even though on the store near my house sell about equal SW for PS and Xbox, PS have 3 times more shelf space because countrywide that store chain sell a lot more of PS content". The way you initially put sounded like the store was just dumb and giving space outside of the proportion of sales.

Yep, even though I buy PS for their exclusives I wouldn't define it as the biggest reason for success... but considering even when they fumbled and had all against they outsold X360 and when having similar they doubled X1 the exclusives have played a good chunk.

Yeah but when people say exclusives don’t matter, they’re not stating it as a factual reality for every single gamer. They’re talking in general. In general, exclusives are not nearly as important as they are made out to be on, for example, this forum. Now, on this forum, they’re more important, because we’re pretty much all hardcore gamers. But that isn’t the case for a majority of people. Software charts prove this. A vast majority on both consoles buy mostly multiplats. Nintendo is the exception to the rule.

So when people here are saying exclusives are why PS4 dominates Xbox One, it just isn’t reality. It’s part of the equation, but a smaller piece. Speaking of concepts that even kids can understand, try to use perspective when talking about this and reading about this. For you, exclusives might be 90% of the pie. Hell, the main reason I went Xbone over PS4 first this gen is because Xbone had DR3, Ryse, and right around he corner Titanfall, and PS4 had uh.... Resogun? Knack? However, for the majority of people, price, power, and the shitty Xbone reveal were more important.

Again, just use perspective. It’s not hard. This is “PS4 has no games” all over again LOL.

Except that they do matter. Exclusives serve many purposes one of the most important being mind share.

For example look at 2017, PS4 had games coming out on like a bi-weekly basis, many of which were for hardcore gamers and wouldn't appeal to the CoD/Madden/FIFA crowd, but all the gaming sites and youtube channels were still talking about them throughout the the year and by extension they were talking about PS4 week in and week out while there was no discussion to be had around XB1. The result of which was that PS4 had it's best year yet while XB1 fell into obscurity until the last couple months, but with the lineup of games we have in 2018 for each console I see a similar thing happening.

Exclusives don't need to directly sell a console to be important. You're missing the bigger picture by focusing on just the individual sales of a game like Nioh and drawing the conclusion that exclusives don't matter cause this game only sold like a million or so copies and CoD sells 15-20 million.

Nioh on a side note is very fun. Even if I do die so many times I don't feel like I haven't accomplished anything. The drops especially when you do the final attack when enemies are weak can be very rewarding.

No one said they don’t matter, lol.

Also, PS4 was already dominating the Xbone well before 2017, which is when the PS4 really distanced itself in the exclusives department. PS4 already had the mind share :)

Mind share isn't a constant, it fluctuates day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year (or it can atleat).

For instance last gen Xbox had the mindshare (and millions of consoles sold) before PS3 even launched, but PS3 eventually too the mindshare and the sales war with better and more exclusives that gamers wanted to play and talk about. 

You're right that PS4 already had the mindshare before 2017, but let's not pretend the gap didn't widen even more due to nothing worth talking about on XB side. Do you really think that say if PS4 had no exclusives in 2018, and MS dropped a bunch of exclusives including a couple new IPs that it wouldn't create a shift in mind share, and narrative and then that shift wouldn't affect sales?

The irony of the whole situation is that people with a huge project Scorpio signature in a forum most likely bought their console of preference because of its exclusives.

I'm not even debating on that fact anymore. More exclusives means more reasons for different people to decide in favour of one console. No one is debating there are other factors, like image, what your friends play on and to a small extent power etc.

The number of exclusives to a huge amount influences those above mentioned factors btw. If there are close to no special games released during the whole year, this changes the public perception of a brand, what your friends want to play etc.. Same as stores, where one side of the shelves is much bigger with 30 to 50% more games on display, how it is here in Germany.

Exactly...you know why? Because Sony kept supporting the PS3 with big games until the very end, when every 360 owner was complaining about a drought for the whole last 2 years, prior to X1 release. This, plus the disastrous hardware failure rate were reasons, among others like lower price, more power and MS's collosal DRM always online, TV for America fuckup, why people flocked to PS4 right away. Don't forget many of those probably had already owned a PS2 before.

So to conclude, image, or as you call it mind share, is probably the most important factor....if you'd take Sony and MS and both released the same console with the same specs and same games, Sony would sell more consoles, for sure!

But image is, to a huge amount, built by how the company support its console over time and exclusives are a big part of that support...as long as they are great and desirable games of course.