Quote Originally Posted by Groundbeef
No, but by gaining far more acceptance from developers the 360 is making several inroads that it didn't have w/ original Xbox. Word is that MS is doing backflips to get developers to make games for it. Wheras Sony is resting a bit on its laurels. This is going to hurt them in the future. Without exclusives, where is the need for the extra $200. If you can get the same game w/same graphics why pay the extra dough?

As HD penetrates the market further I see the demand for next gen increasing exponentially. That is where MS is looking. If Sony is content to lose developers so be it.
Sony was going to lose exclusives regardless of what Microsoft is doing simply because the Xbox 360 made it to market first, and now has an installed user base in place. That's why just about every market analyst I've read has been projecting that the market share for the different console platforms will be much more evenly split this time around.

Major games for the PS3 that will supposedly better exploit the system's more powerful processors are still in development. I actually think that in the end the better graphical capability on the PS3 will start showing up with latter games. But, whether consumers are willing to pay the extra $100 for more powerful hardware and whether that translates into market share is a totally different question. After all, the original Xbox had a clear technical advantage over the PS2, but that did not translate into better sales. At this point, I'm not even sure if the HD resolution is all that big a selling point just yet. If anything, the PS3's backwards compatibility with the PS2 might be a stronger selling point at the moment.

Quote Originally Posted by Groundbeef
Although MS has not made any more XBOX consoles I would hesitate to say they have been left out in the cold. Games are still being developed for it. AT&T wasn't run out on a rail after they stopped making the rotary dial phone right? I mean comon, MS is wanting consumers to buy the 360 so be it.
Games are still being developed, but I don't think that developers are too keen on continuing to support a platform with zero growth prospects on the hardware side. Microsoft has purportedly stopped all game development for the original Xbox, and stopping hardware production means no further growth in the installed user base. They're basically trying to force consumers to upgrade by taking their choices away (pretty much the same thing that they do on the PC side), and they've obviously taken the presumption that their Xbox users will follow through and upgrade to the 360. But, they also leave the door wide open for those users to migrate over to a different platform, since the Xbox 360 doesn't have strong backwards compatibility as one of its selling points.

Say what you will about Sony, but as Kex pointed out they will doggedly support their formats to the bitter end, so long as there are still consumers out there that will buy them. They only stopped making the original Playstation console last March, and obviously they plan to continue making and supporting the PS2 for at least the foreseeable future. The PS2 installed user base is still growing, and the backwards compatibility built into the PS3 means that developers can continue to support the platform until the market naturally transitions into the next gen consoles. If Sony had stopped production on the original Playstation and only offered limited backwards compatibility with the PS2, I think game development on the original Playstation would have ended much sooner and the PS2 would not have caught on with casual gamers as quickly as it did.

BTW, AT&T kept offering rotary phones all the way until the old Bell system was broken up, and to this day, you can still make an outgoing call using a rotary phone.