Exclusives, exclusives, exclusives
One of Peter Moore's biggest boasts for the Xbox 360 was that it was the only console on which you'd be able to playHalo 3and theGTAdownloadable mission packs. Well, if you'd just spent an alleged $50 million on the exclusive rights for some downloadable content (imagine if it turned out it was just different cars and radio stations! Oh the hilarity...) you'd want to make sure people knew about it, right?Splinter Cell Conviction andVirtua Fighter 5's online component are also exclusive Peter Moore reminded us, as EA dollar signs flashed across his eyes.
But this year Sony had it's own victories: Free Radical Design'sHaze (originally announced as multiplatform) is now out only on PS3 in November, followed by a gap of six months in which the 360 version sits on a hard drive somewhere at the developer until the exclusive period ends.
Perhaps more pertinent is the gossip surroundingMetal Gear Solid 4 coming to 360 (teased, deliberately, by Kojima in the last trailer) which has since been proved false - it is, as most always suspected only on PS3. Then there was the surprise exclusive,Unreal Tournament 3, like Haze, simply a timed exclusive - the 360 version featured on the Official Xbox 360 Magazine cover just days before the announcement.
Do we really care about what console what game comes out on? If we are a single console owner, we'll just wait until the exclusive period ends and buy it later - if we own all the consoles, it's irrelevant. Surely it's just the publishers who gain from the arrangement, gaining big budget marketing support in return for only developing one version of the game (while keeping the other versions on the back burner ready for later).
In our view despite all the willy waving over exclusives at E3 this year the only exclusives that actually matter to console sales are the first-party ones. If you want to play Halo 3,Mass Effect orProject Gotham 4, you've got to buy a 360, no question. If you want to playKillzone 2,Heavenly Sword orSingStar, it's a PS3 for you. The rest are pretty much inconsequential.
Of course you could do a Nintendo and invent a madcap controller that means every game by nature has to be exclusive.
