This gen, we've seen both the PS3 and 360 lose exclusives (more prominently, the PS3). And everytime it happens, proponents (or trolls, whichever) always will say something along the lines of "Developers need to recoup costs" or "More people get to enjoy it" or "3rd parties need to get as much profit as possible".

So I was looking through the sales of big games like DMC4 and GTA4 and I came to a realization:

These games that are supposed to be "making the developer more profit"...it's just splitting sales. The average for DMC on the PS2 was about 1.5-3 million. And now, looking at both the PS3 and 360, where do their combined numbers sit? In actuality, the games didn't generate anymore sales than what the norm was exclusively.

Another look: GTA4. The average on the the PS2 was about 10-15 million (San Andreas threw off the curve). Now look at where 4 stands. Right in line with that, with combined sales.

Now let's look at exclusive games. MGS4 sold 3.46 million and is still showing strong legs. Metal Gears on the PS2 sold about 4.5 million.

Tales of Vesperia is selling right on track with the other Tales of games that were on the PS2s mega userbase.

I'm just making the observation that a game being "exclusive" may have more impact than one would think. If a game is only on one console, and you want to play that game, you will buy the appropriate system. This happens with "niche" games. Say a game has a fanbase of 4 million. If it's exclusive to console A or console B, then those 4 million will flock to the respective console and buy it for said game. It seems that if the game is multiplatform, the fanbase stays the same instead of the proposed "more people get to play". I see it as "the same amount of people want to play, now they just have options" and at the end of the day, the total sales are unaffected, meaning "more people get to play" or "the developer makes more profit" becomes moot.

Discuss.

In the last gen, PS2 was the go to system. Fans are now splintered between 360/PS3, so companies must sell to both or they will get fewer sales. This results in higher costs for the developer, usually an inferior version because there is often a lead platform, and delays because both must be developed simultaneously/ must be ported over. Its sort of a lose-lose all around.

I guess technically I didn't have a question lol

That's what I was trying to point out, though, when I brought up Tales and MGS. They're selling right on track with previous iterations, despite being exclusive with the apparent splintering between the 360 and PS3

CoD4 (PS3/360/PC) vastly outsold Halo3 (360 exclusive).

If CoD4 was a 360 exclusive, what would you expect sales to be? More that just the 360 version alone? Sure. More than Halo 3? Not likely.

You can't compare COD4 to Halo, because COD is NOT Halo. I'm talking about games in the same series, that went mutliplatform this generation under the pretenses of "making the devs more profit" yet the amount of combined sales are the same as exclusive sales from last gen. And then, games that still have the luxury of being exclusive are selling the same as they did exclusively last gen

Bump.

I honestly believe that this is a legitimate observation, so even though it seems to have died off quickly, I would like to see some more opinions