http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8608-DC-PS3-Examiner~y2009m4d18-The-Best-Exclusive-Titles-are-on-the-Playstation-3
The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 each have important titles, but which one has better exclusives? Both can lay claim to a fair share of AAA games, but one definitely has the edge over the other. So which lineup is stronger? Which one will give you more bang for your hard earned dollar? Let’s start by taking a look at the biggest exclusives for each console.
Xbox 360 exclusives:
Halo 3
Gears of War 1 & 2
Left 4 Dead
Mass Effect
Fable 2
Crackdown
Playstation 3 exclusives:
Metal Gear Solid 4
Killzone 2
Little Big Planet
Valkyria Chronicles
Uncharted
Ratchet and Clank
If you look at all of the best games that are exclusive to each system, there’s one thing that really sticks out. The Xbox 360 games are mostly similar. They are either first or third person shooters. Sure, there are exceptions to that rule, such as Fable, but even then, Fable is just a third person action game with role playing elements. The 360 lineup really lacks variety, and that hurts. After all, we as gamers demand a robust library full of unique titles, and so far, many of the exclusive games for the Xbox 360 retread the same gameplay motifs over and over again.
On the other hand, there is nothing but variety when it comes to the Playstation 3. Sure, it has Killzone 2, the token first person shooter with a great online element and stunning graphics. And then you have something like Metal Gear Solid 4, which is a third person shooter at heart. But the two are very different, and the gap that separates them is bigger than the one that separates the Microsoft’s two biggest franchises, Halo and Gears of War.
But the differences grow even more when you really look at the rest of the games for the Playstation 3. Little Big Planet is a side scrolling platformer where you can create and download new levels. Ratchet and Clank is a 3D platformer with a heavy emphasis on action and weapon upgrading. And Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy game with lots of Japanese flavor and some role playing elements thrown in for good measure. No two games will give you a similar experience and they are all universally excellent.
Where I think the Playstation 3 really separates itself, however, is with its exclusive games that no one ever talks about. Singstar allows you to become the lead singer for your favorite music videos and has such a great formula that Microsoft directly copied it when they introduced Lips for the 360. Then there's Buzz, the pinnacle of quiz games. What makes Buzz so much fun is the fast paced formula, which has a lot of variety (in both question categories and the actual method in which points are won). I have actually hosted parties with Buzz as the centerpiece, and when my friends and I parted ways, they went straight to Best Buy just to pick up a Playstation 3 and Buzz. I cannot think of a single “casual” game that the 360 offers with the same kind of appeal (while Scene It is close, it gets old but Buzz, for whatever reason, remains fresh and enjoyable).
The point should be made that Playstation 3 exclusives have a distinct advantage over Xbox 360 exclusives. The Playstation 3 is the more powerful device. It can render graphics that are not possible on the 360, and a dual layered Blu-ray disk can hold up to 50 gigabytes of information compared to approximately 9 gigabytes on the 360’s DVD. When a game is developed from the ground up for Sony’s console, there are natural advantages that developers can take advantage of. In other words, they don’t have to dumb their games down to have two equal submissions for each system.
While the Xbox 360 has a lot of great games, it just doesn’t have the variety and quality of titles offered on the Playstation 3. Both have their fare share of games, but unless you want to be playing what is essentially the same type of game repackaged as something new, the Playstation 3 is the way to go. Each title is not only unique, but the fact that they are exclusives directly effects and enhances their quality.
