“In the past, in the eighties and nineties, that was a major issue,” he explains. “I remember the big ‘Mario vs. Sonic’ debates. What we see today is that the influence of exclusive titles on the sales curves becomes ever smaller.”

“Given the production costs of the games, it is hardly possible for developers to commit itself exclusively to someone,” continues Schneider-Johne.  He illustrates how the console developers have a business incentive to limit themselves, but that third-party developers “like Electronic Arts or Activision can have a business model of rarely developing for a console exclusively. Therefore, the exclusive title is a little less important.”

And indeed, this is becoming more and more apparent as big-name titles abandon exclusivity.  Until Grand Theft Auto IV, the GTA series came out on PlayStation consoles first, and was only later ported to the Xbox and Windows PC platforms.  Final Fantasy XIII was set to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, but Square Enix has since decided to “port” the game to the Xbox 360, even delaying the release to do so (although its sister title, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, is still slated as a PS3-exclusive).