The latest spark to ignite the 360 versus PS3 war was the major announcement at Microsoft's E3 2008 press conference Monday that Final Fantasy XIII is no longer a Sony exclusive. This is huge news for Xbox 360 RPG fans and quite a blow to Sony's shrinking list of exclusive 3rd party franchises.
What I don't get is why everybody is so shocked? The days of system exclusive 3rd party titles are seemingly all but over. Production costs for higher quality big name titles are in the millions - doesn't it make perfect sense for a developers to release their games on every possible platform they can generate profits on? This same uproar happened when it was announced that Grand Theft Auto 4 was no longer a Sony exclusive. And you have to admit that Microsoft's 360 is edging out the PS3 at this point and has been since day one of this generation of consoles, so why would a developer who spends four years of hard work on a game only release it on the least popular console?
We've all seen this before. It happened with Resident Evil. With Assassins Creed. We've seen Bioshock announced for the PS3 (it happens both ways, PS3 fan boys). Final Fantasy is just the next in line. And it won't be the last. It wouldn't surprise me if a Metal Gear Solid 4 Xbox 360 port gets announced sometime in the next year. Why should Konami be loyal to just Sony? Why would Konami opt out of millions of dollars of additional profit by only offering Metal Gear Solid 4, a highly desired game no matter what system you own, on Sony's console?
Sure we'll probably never see Halo on a Sony console, and God of War on a Microsoft console as those franchises are owned by Microsoft and Sony (Microsoft Game Studios and Sony Computer Entertainment respectively) and are 1st party franchises, but I don't expect to see many 3rd party franchises have anything but limited exclusivity on any one console. Limited exclusivity means one console gets a game for a period of time before the game gets released for other platforms. For example, Rock Band 2 will come out on Xbox 360 before it comes out for other platforms a couple months later. I think we all know how these kinds of limited exclusivity deals work (in this case it involves Microsoft throwing some of its unlimited supply of money at a developer). Money drives the video games business. Accept that for what it is. So to all the PS3 fans despairing over the fact that Final Fantasy XIII is no longer exclusive to Sony, realize you still get to play it. Square Enix makes more money, end of story. Think about it from Square Enix's position. You would do the exact same thing.
Finally, please stop the console bashing guys. Nobody will ever convince the other guy that his console is inferior. Ever. It's a huge waste of time and it's beyond boring at this point. Do what I do: Eventually buy all the consoles and play all the games that interest you . Once you do that the word 'exclusive' becomes irrelevant. Come to think of it, there was a price drop just announced for the 360 and Fable II is looking really good...
