As to exclusives: Do I like them? Hell no. Would I have bought a console without the exclusives as an added incentive? In my case yes because of the lacking controller support for many games on PC. For some gamers that would be a clear no.

So while I hate it when MS or Sony buy up a game and make it exclusive, I have no troubles with some devs not releasing on PC when the game really should be played with a controller and the devs don't want to put up with supporting PC Hardware. And I also have no troubles with the firstparty exclusives... hey, many of these games wouldn't be there if they weren't needed as system sellers. Without an XBox to promote, there might be no Halo. So I don't think hating on firstparty titles for being exclusive is the right thing to do.

I agree with everything else you said.

I would like to see a comparison on the business model of 3rd party games vs 1st party games (i mean the figures/profits and incentives to invest). Supply will meet the demand for great games. Would Halo have been made? Probably not but the developers / creative people behind it would have worked for another studio and something else would have been made. We are not short on 3rd party games or investment.

I would prefer it if consoles producers would focus on great features that the customer wants - keyboard/mouse, custom controller support, mulitple monitors, modability (software), tradable games. I would trade up the slight posbility that we see less flashy inch deep launch title cannon fodder for these features in a heartbeat.

I say -

support great hardware,

support great developer tools,

support a fantastic os and features

don't support corporate sales structures that restricts consumer choice or you'll just see the same crap released year in year out (oh wait...)

But I cannot really fault them. You try to sell a gaming PC with controller and OS for 400$ that can play 1080p/60Hz consistently with modern games, and still make a profit, and then come back to tell us this is not a big undertaking from a technical and business perspective.

You don't try to make a profit. At least, not much of one initially. The console itself is generally a loss leader for the royalties Sony and MS receive on the games (although apparently, that wasn't true of the XBone).

The problem is that hardware doesn't really sell consoles, games do. Look at the new Zelda.

And MS just don't really have any platform exclusives to speak of. Almost every "exclusive" they have is also available on Windows 10 or a timed exclusive.

Also, gaming PC + steam link FTW! :D

Tell that to Sony, MS and ESPECIALLY Nintendo who went out of their way with their last generation to NOT build loss leaders.

AFAIK Neither the PS4 nor the XBox One were much of loss leaders at the start, hence why they use the underpowered AMD SoC back then instead of sticking with IBM PowerPC and Nividia GPUs like the generation before (x86 being easier to port MIGHT have been a factor, but AMD urgently needing money thus most probably making a good offer for an integrated semi-custom SoC most probably was more important).

Nintendo most probably has not built a loss leader Console for quite some time. Might be that all the gimmicks they stacked to their consoles have really driven the price up that much. But the sole console hardware used must have been cheap as chips, so to speak.

Agreed on games selling consoles. Its why Nintendo is still in Business. the Wii might have struck a chord at the time it came out, and the Switch might be a good core Idea. Neither of both would sell as well without people wanting to get access to the highly desirable Firstparty games Nintendo develops.

For Sony, this was a slow start this generation. By now though, they have a solid rooster of Firstparty and exclusive titles that might sell their console to some players. For many, it WAS the fact the PS4 was the most powerful console, and most probably the most powerful gaming device available for udner 400$ at the time, coupled with the "less-nonsense" approach to a gaming device Sony had this generation over MS and Nintendo that sold the original PS4 to them.

While MS might look worse by now on the exclusives front (given the latest Halo didn't quite stir up as much excitement as earlier titles in the series), the fact the new console now has a solid performance advantage MIGHT just make up for some sales for the people looking for the most performance they can get for 500$ and less right now.

I agree with everything else you said.

I would like to see a comparison on the business model of 3rd party games vs 1st party games (i mean the figures/profits and incentives to invest). Supply will meet the demand for great games. Would Halo have been made? Probably not but the developers / creative people behind it would have worked for another studio and something else would have been made. We are not short on 3rd party games or investment.

I would prefer it if consoles producers would focus on great features that the customer wants - keyboard/mouse, custom controller support, mulitple monitors, modability (software), tradable games. I would trade up the slight posbility that we see less flashy inch deep launch title cannon fodder for these features in a heartbeat.

I say -

support great hardware,

support great developer tools,

support a fantastic os and features

don't support corporate sales structures that restricts consumer choice or you'll just see the same crap released year in year out (oh wait...)

Well, those people might have worked at other places. Would they have produced a game of similar quality there? Better? Worse? We will never know.

All we know is that big Brands are ready to dish out money to have exclusive system sellers. And in this case, we have a BIG name pushing the dev in question to produce quality, instead of a shady publisher that just wants to cash in on the release day spike and create a DLC delivery platform. A real system seller has to be good, and desirable, and has to be that long term. On the other hand, it does not need to be ladden with DLC shenigans, because it serves a different purpose than to make money selling DLC.

Given the amount of dissapointing AAA releases in the last few years where a big publisher tried to cash in on hype while saving development money, and at the same time tries to monetize the "meh!" end product as much as they can, Firstparty titles have been a refreshing deviation from the norm in that they usually work at release, are good games, are more often new IPs as there are not so many exclusive IPs in the hands of MS and Sony to begin with, and are not monetized nearly as hard as some publisher garbage like SF5.

Would Guerilla games have been able to craft Horizon Zero Dawn without the help from Sony? Would a prublisher like Ubisoft or EA have tried to DLC-gate part of the expierience, or push the game out 6 months earlier with all the bugs and crap involved?

If less titles being available for my platform of choice is the price I have to pay to get games that are good, working at release and costing me 60$ for the full expierience, I am ready to pay that price. Rather a few really good games I WANT to play on my platform than an onslaught of titles not worth my time and money.

As to what the CONSOLE Customer wants - M/KB? Really? How many console players are that hot about it anyway? I mean, sure, M/KB give you a big advantage in shooters. The combination also totally sucks for racing games or thirdperson adventures (or arcade sims, one reason why World of Warplanes tanked was their lacking Joystick/pad support and horrific M/KB steering). Given there already is a platform optimized for M/KB which more often than not HAS CRAPPY SUPPORT OF GAMEPADs, why should consoles not optimize for the gamepad which is more universally useful for more game genres?

TV Consoles supporting multiple Monitors... why? How many people have multiple TVs next to each other? How many people use consoles as cheap gaming PCs?

Modability... yeah, I can see some people even in the console space being quite keen on that, but really... we are talking about low-end to midrange devices which already struggle to run the games at normal resolution and framerates with middling settings... you really want to tack on a high res texture mod, or SSAA mod to make the console brick and die? Really, there are not much system resources left as these games often are optimized to completly satured the little resources that are there in the first place. And then there is the expectations that consoles "just work"... to make mods work in such an environment, can you imagine the work Sony or MS would have to shoulder to curate the mods that get certified for their platform?

Tradeable games - completly support that, but lets be honest. This ain't the console makers fault alone that tradeability is slowly going away. Steam is a pretty big contributor to that, MS and Sony just follow in the wake of it. And given the backlash MS received on trying to cut down on tradeability of games with the XBox One, I don't think either will try such a move again in the foreseeable future. Instead they hope that people slowly move over to digital downloads, where tradeability has not been a thing from the start. At the moment I'd say consoles are EVEN BETTER than PC when it comes to used games and such as you still can buy a physical copy of almost all games... contrast that to the PC where many games are digital only because of the expense and complexity of selling physical games.

In the end, I really would love to share you viewpoint on Exclusives being corporate scams. They are, in part. But then, many Publisher backed games today are total scams by default, and in contrast the exclusives look almost good again.