I find that the importance placed on exclusives is kind of not seeing the forest for the trees, that in focusing so intently on exclusives, the bigger picture and the more integral element to a console's success is missed.
Looking back at the race between Xbox 360 and PS3, X360 began earlier and had more exclusives in its first 3 years, but Sony kept closing the gap. Overall PS3 had more exclusives, yet 360 managed to keep a lead (however narrow it became), as the two platforms battled it out in a neck and neck race during the whole second half of that generation. And as it's been pointed out, PS4 just fired right out of the gate with a very slim lineup of exclusives, where even now MS and Nintendo (even with it's strong exclusives lineup) are having a hard time catching up.
Nintendo has a pretty spotty track record, at least after the Super Nintendo when it once held dominance in the industry. But beginning with Nintendo 64 we saw the company, even with it's reliable stable of first party exclusives, fall behind the competition where they hit an all time low in the Gamecube. There was that rise with the Wii, but that seems to have more to do with the new demographic it brought in with it's new style of interface, a trend that didn't carry over to Wii-U as by then the novelty of motion controls has worn off. And once again from there, despite the regular exclusives lineup, Wii-U was a sinking ship. Nintendo just hasn't been the same since SNES, when the name was synonymous with video games.
So in all the platforms and what turned out to be their most sought after consoles, Super Nintendo, PS2, PS4, X360, is it exclusives that made them the system to have? If you think that's the definitive answer, you're missing what they all had in common... missing the forest for the trees. Because while exclusives are to some extent a selling point, what really brings the consumers in by the masses - is the third party support. Sure that can cover exclusives but for the most part, 3rd party studios and their stable of popular properties are what gamers want to have. It really comes down to a well rounded library that has gamers choosing one system over the others, and from that principle I would argue that 3rd party has far more priority over exclusives.
When Nintendo had a strong offering of both exclusives and 3rd party (SNES) is when they were at the height of their glory. But later on as 3rd party support became more and more scarce, it's no coincidence we saw Nintendo lose it's market leadership. PS2 was also the monster that it is, as being the system to have for such a robust 3rd party selection in its library in addition to its exclusives. And Xbox 360, a platform that had a smaller exclusive selection showed that a platform can still take a strong market position from a robust 3rd party support, having all those sought after titles like GTA, COD, RainbowSix, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Dark Souls, Mortal Kombat, Farcry's, Crysis, Street Fighter, RDR, Bioshock, Skyrim, Fallout, Batman Arkham... the list goes on.
Of course there are other factors like price (look at what $600 did to PS3), specs, features and options (online infrastructure was great for Xbox, Kinect not so much), but when it comes to library, never underestimate the value and importance of 3rd party support, and how much weight it has to exclusives.
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