The Nature of Exclusivity, Preface

Just how relevant are video game exclusives today?

Fire up the topic in any one of your favorite local search engines and you are sure to come across hundreds upon hundreds of pages worth of articles and comments alike. From passionate debates about evaluating the current console wars, to hearing the cries of thousands of fanboys as news break of a title or company switching console allegiances, exclusive games are obviously a hot topic for the hardcore gamer. This point is only emphasized by the large price differences in gaming today - will you purchase the $500 Playstation 3, the $400 XBox 360 (excluding its "core" packs) or opt for accessible gaming with the hard-to-find $250 Wii? With such discrepancies, more and more people are relying on console-specific games to define these systems and ultimately decide which to spend their hard-earned money on.

After all, there's a reason why Halo 3 became one of the biggest video game releases that the industry has ever seen: since the original title in the series put Microsoft's rookie XBox system on the map, it has become synonymous with the brand and has undoubtedly helped propel the console to the #2 spot in the console wars (alas, Nintendo's mighty dominance with the Wii is for another day). If we can take away anything from this recent phenomenon, it's that console-exclusive titles hold incredibly powerful influences among the gaming masses; indeed, as in previous console generations, exclusives are seen as essentially "defining" the systems they are built for.

However, with the extremely high costs of development for the current console generation, are exclusive game titles even a viable business option for game developers anymore? Is it fair and accurate to define a console simply through its exclusive games alone?

In an effort to come to terms with those questions - as I'm sure many others wish to do, too - this three part feature will focus on the strengths of the upcoming console exclusives, or at least, those that have been announced as of their posting. Each week, starting with the Playstation 3, I will focus on major console exclusive titles and evaluate the games based on a certain set of criteria (outlined below) to see if they have the potential to strengthen their system lineup or merely fall by the wayside in the process. The purpose is not to find the next "killer app" for each system insomuch as it is used to gain insight on what these exclusive games tell us about a particular console, and whether or not they should be worth your precious time and gaming dollars.


Criteria
Hype: What type of prerelease attention has it been getting from the press and message boards?

Developers: Have they had prior success on the console before? Is a well-known game designer attached to the project?

Potential: Is the game part of an already-established franchise? Does it intend to introduce anything "innovative" to the genre? Pushes the technological envelope? Does it add or detract from the existing library of exclusive games to that console?