PSEcenter.com Writes
Since the beginning of this generation, the argument of "exclusivity" has been thrown back and forth between PS3 and 360 fanboys alike. The PS3 fanboy argument is that if the same game is available on any other platform, it is not exclusive. The 360 fanboy argues that if a game is available on 360/PC only, it is somehow a 360 exclusive. This sheer stupidity then leads 360 fanboys to argue that a game is "Microsoft" exclusive, so they can feel like they have an exclusive.

Well I thought it was time to show the difference between a Microsoft exclusive and a Sony exclusive. Xbox fanboys always argue that Sony fanboys hide behind the PC argument, and that not everyone has a gaming PC. There is however, a major flaw to this line of argumentation, and that is the fact that a gaming PC is no longer required to play games that are on both the Xbox 360 and PC. Yes, if you want the game to look great you'll need a gaming PC, but now the cheapest PC you can buy is good enough to play all the games that are on both a 360 and PC.

Next we'll look at why PS3 fanboys "hide behind" the PC, and why they are right to do so.

The main reason why PS3 fanboys hide behind the PC is because you don't need to own an Xbox 360 to play the best Xbox 360 exclusives. For example, before I owned an Xbox 360, I had already played Gears of War, Lost Planet and Bioshock on PC. In addition to this, even when I had a 360, I still decided to get Left 4 Dead on the PC. Many will argue that Microsoft makes money from all these purchases, but they'd be wrong, and here's why. Microsoft receive no royalties from PC games, at all, which is one of the main reasons why PC games are so much cheaper than their console counterparts.

"Microsoft also created the Games For Windows branding program — pretty much, it's a logo on the box that lets publishers like Activision and EA sell their PC titles under the "Games For Windows" brand name without paying royalties." Kotaku

"It’s also important to note that Microsoft does not get royalties off of PC game sales. The Games for Windows label doesn’t cost a publisher anything, but Microsoft is pushing it to try and become a singular voice for PC gaming." G4TV

So a Microsoft exclusive is completely useless, because Microsoft make no royalties off of PC games, apart from those that are made by Microsoft Games Studios. I know many of you will now say, "but you have to be using Windows, which means you already paid Microsoft," which again is a useless argument, because you could say the same about owning a Sony Vaio. PC gaming is therefore more important to Microsoft's survival as an operating system provider, rather than a format which they can make money off.

On the other hand a Sony exclusive is available only on a Sony platform; PS3, PS2, or PSP. What this means for Sony is that all sales of games give them royalties, so games like MLB The Show or Singstar are Sony exclusives which make them royalties. In fact, even Sony's exclusive games will make them royalties on PC unlike those third party Microsoft exclusives, which Microsoft is putting all it's hopes on.

You won't see a Sony fanboy saying the Agency or Final Fantasy 14 is a PS3 exclusive, but think about how many Xbox fanboys will say that about every game available for PC as well?

Let me add this from my little Research!

Sony gets royalities and get payed for each and every game sold on the PC because they are the DRM protection for games to run SecureROM. Anyways sony makes good Money. Still i'm experementing when will this PS3 get hacked to boost sales!

Hahaha. The idiot mentions "royalties" a million times, like a gamer gives an orbiting fukc how much sony/ms make from them.

The difference between Halo3/GOW2(the 360's best exclusives which are NOT ON PC) and ps3 exclusives is i play them everyday. . . Mgs4, LBP, Heavenly Sword, Killzone2, Uncharted, etc have been rotting in my cupboard for ages!

ritchboy:

Hahaha. The slowpoke mentions "royalties" a million times, like a gamer gives an orbiting fukc how much sony/ms make from them.

The difference between Halo3/GOW2(the 360's best exclusives which are NOT ON PC) and ps3 exclusives is i play them everyday. . . Mgs4, LBP, Heavenly Sword, Killzone2, Uncharted, etc have been rotting in my cupboard for ages!

don't mind him! What concerns a gamer with stuff like 'royalties'? No wonder kosovo's busy trolling the phones section about Sony Ericsson phones.
Of all the games you mentions, only killzone 2 will be played a month after purchase. At least millions are still duking it out on halo 3 and GOW 2.

texazzpete:

don't mind him! What concerns a gamer with stuff like 'royalties'? No wonder kosovo's busy trolling the phones section about Sony Ericsson phones.
Of all the games you mentions, only killzone 2 will be played a month after purchase. At least millions are still duking it out on halo 3 and GOW 2.

Unfortunately, m using an iPHONE

i'm kind of doubting that halo3 or gow2 will even make it to PC

runaway piracy means that developers can barely break even

full article verylooong. . .but quite interesting

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

relevant excerpt

PC Game Piracy Examined
[Page 5] PC vs. Console


In the previous section we managed to establish with a range of publicly available data that piracy is being conducted on a massive scale at the moment - up to half of all Internet traffic is composed of pirated material, there's an average global piracy rate of 38% for all software, and popular PC Games are being downloaded in their hundreds of thousands of pirated copies via torrents. No doubt by now some of you will be shaking your heads, saying that even if all this is true, who's to say that all this piracy is actually having any impact on sales. I encourage you to continue reading as we explore the various implications which the data has opened up.

In this section we look at a rather significant recent change in the gaming industry which some people have attributed to piracy: the way in which most major games developers are shifting focus towards making games designed specifically for the popular gaming consoles. On the surface, the issue seems quite straightforward - console games are selling much more than PC games, probably because of the much higher numbers of console gamers, so developers are simply following the trend, and in the process conveniently scapegoating piracy to cover their greedy motives. But is this really what's occurring?


The Move to Consoles

A noticeable change in PC gaming over the past few years has been the move away from PC exclusives. More and more games are now being developed first and foremost for the popular gaming consoles: the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii. The fundamental reason for this is a large discrepancy in sales figures - console versions of games routinely outsell the PC versions by many times the number of units. Ok, so what does this phenomenon have to do with piracy? Well as it happens, the majority of PC developers are laying at least part of the blame for their decision to move to focusing on console-based development squarely in the lap of piracy:

Cevat Yerli of Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead has publicly stated:

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future.

John Carmack, often called the 'father of PC gaming', and co-founder of id software, makers of the Doom and Quake series, recently stated:

It's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration, but the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles.

Cliffy B, lead creator at Epic Games, makers of the Unreal Tournament and Gears of Wars series, has been quite outspoken on this topic:

Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games, makers of Supreme Commander, also chimes in with his assessment:

, people are going to stop making [games] on the PC because of my earlier point, what's happened on the PC with piracy. The economics are ugly right now on the PC. You're not going to see these gigantic, epic investments of dollars on the PC when it just doesn't work. The economics have to work. You're going to see those investments made on the console side and it's going to become a more console-centric investment. And then you're going to see them ported back over to the PC and that creates a different experience on the PC.

Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward, the makers of games such as Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4, provided a fairly blunt opinion on the issue. He made a blog post entitled 'They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More', the title of his post along with the contents clearly linking the move away from PC game development with piracy:

On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online), the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding.

The people quoted above are some of the most successful and prominent PC developers of our time. Virtually every PC gamer has played one of their games, and all of them have demonstrated a high degree of dedication to PC development over the years. I doubt any of them would suddenly start abandoning PC development based only on flimsy information and false perceptions. The logic of their argument is quite sound: if the same game has the potential to sell many times more copies on a particular platform because sales are not being undermined by piracy, then quite clearly the priority of the developers and publishers should be to focus on that platform in their design, development and marketing decisions. As with any other business, games developers and publishers want to best accommodate the needs of the majority of their paying customers. Unfortunately all of these developers have received public abuse for making the above claims, the problem being that on the surface the disparity between PC and console game sales appears to have nothing to do with piracy. It seems to be a simple case of there being many times more console gamers than there are PC gamers. It's only when we take a closer look at the available data that it becomes apparent that things are not quite that simple.

Xbox vs ps3 graphics

wen it comes to gamin matters,it actually all about graphics wich for me, both microsoft and sony are intensly focus on dat,so d differences are not much