They aren't obviously. Theres little difference between buying and owning a studio and buying some exclusives.

Exclusives always tend to be either the most ambitious or the least ambitious of projects (one can see this most clearly on the Wii, i think. Going from heavily ambitious titles like MadWorld and The Conduit down to fanservice like Umbrella Chronicles or Castlevania, and then down again to Ninjabread Man and Anubis II) Its titles of mid-level ambition that seem to go multiplat. The games that are real moneymakers, but also require a lot of input too, like Call of Duty or Rock Band, or even GTA or Resident Evil 5

Exclusives always wind up being those ambitious projects that are really remembered, though. Guitar Hero had its humble beginnings as an exclusive, or the heavily ambitious MGS4. 3rd-party exclusives tend to produce some of the best stuff in this industry. 1st-party exclusives, of course, form the key bullet points between consoles, especially between the PS3 and 360, or between SNES and Genesis, the other competitors that were, sans exclusives, pretty much even. 1st-party exclusives provide the foundation for riskier platforms, too. Like how Halo kicked off the Xbox, or Wii Sports showed the world that Nintendo was relevant again. PlayStation 2 really didn't start with strong 1st-party exclusives because it didn't need to.

In short: exclusives good.

"They aren't obviously. Theres little difference between buying and owning a studio and buying some exclusives."

This is very much false. If you own a studio wholly, you're stuck with them in the short-run no matter what kind of garbage they put out (in the long run you can always close them down or sell them off, but for now you're stuck with what they've got), thus you're financially liable for their screw-ups. Whereas you can choose which 3rd-party exclusives to buy (or which exclusives to sponsor, publish, or distribute), and then guarantee that what you're picking up is the best work possible, and if they turn sour, pull the plug on the whole thing much quicker.

That's exactly the point. It's a cheap, underhanded way to make one version of a game superior to the other.

Here's my point - if you look at the PS2 versions of GTA, Vice City and San Andreas, they completely decimated the Xbox, as well as the NVidia lawsuit. However, even on the Xbox, it didn't sell anywhere near the same amount. Based on that, it's safe to say the exclusive move moved some serious hardware. Why? If you wanted to play GTA, you had to have a PS2. Sure, you could wait, but doggone - why?

That being said, MS knew that killed them and wanted to snap up tons of exclusives. However, R* and a few other devs were like 'Nah, we are going for the PS3 crowd too.' MS flashes some loot and asks for extra content and pays for it. That, in the world of business, is called an investment. It's really a gamble, but in the end, it paid off. It doesn't affect some gamers one way or the other, but it gives other gamers a moment of pause. They are like 'Dang, I can get extra content and keep the experience going.' It doesn't matter what MS does (as long as it's not illegal) to gain an advantage. It's business. And guess what? The moneyhatting is steadily moving consoles.

The Lost and the Damned is a good example. Yes, it takes place in Liberty City, but unlike Niko's tale, the entire island is open from the start of the game.

Last generation, where were the folks screaming unfair with the PS2 got Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories and the Xbox got nada?

I think MS is very sore for how bad they lost last gen, and is really beating Sony with the same stuff they did last gen.

i think exclusives sell consoles and are thus great. If theres m exclusives what will there be to differentiate the consoles

Keep on topic - Torillian

 Nobody was asking you that question, they wanted to know you view on exclusives, not which ones are better than others.