Written by John Scalzo  on November 30, 2007

Special: We continue our regular look at the exclusive titles on each of the next-generation consoles.

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PlayStation 3 (52 [+2])
*Also On PC (3 [1%])
Games with a Metascore of 75 or Better
+ Proven Franchises (21 [40%])

Released (16)
Games with a Metascore of 75 or Better (7 [44%])

Title	Publisher	Metascore
Eye of Judgment	SCEA	74
Folklore	SCEA	74
Fomula One: Championship Edition	SCEA	74
Full Auto 2: Battlelines	Sega	67
Genji: Days of the Blade	SCEA	55
Heavenly Sword	SCEA	79
Lair	SCEA	54
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire	Namco Bandai	34
MotorStorm	SCEA	82
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction	SCEA	89
Resistance: Fall of Man	SCEA	86
Ridge Racer 7	Namco Bandai	78
Time Crisis 4	Namco Bandai	61
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune	SCEA	88
Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom	SOE	58
Warhawk	SCEA	84

Unreleased (36)
Proven Franchises (14 [39%])

Title	Publisher	Release Date
Afrika	SCEA	TBA
Angel Rings	SCEA	TBA
Buzz! PS3 *NEW*	SCEA	2008
Coded Arms: Assault	Konami	TBA 2007
DC Universe*	SCEA	TBA
Disgaea 3 *NEW*	Nippon Ichi	2008
Driver 5	Ubisoft	TBA
Eight Days	SCEA	TBA
Eyedentify	SCEA	TBA
Final Fantasy XIII	Square-Enix	2008
Final Fantasy Versus XIII	Square-Enix	2008
Free Realms *NEW*	SOE	TBA
God of War III	SCEA	TBA
Gradius 6	Konami	TBA
Gran Turismo 5	SCEA	2008
Haze *NEW*	Ubisoft	Q1 2008
Heavy Rain	SCEA	TBA
Hot Shots Golf 5	SCEA	2008
Infamous	SCEA	TBA
Killzone 2	SCEA	2008
L.A. Noire	2K Games	TBA
LittleBigPlanet	SCEA	2008
Metal Gear Online *NEW*	Konami	2008
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots	Konami	2008
MotorStorm 2 *NEW*	SCEA	2008
Ni-Oh	Koei	TBA
Redwood Falls	TBA	TBA
SingStar	SCEA	2008
Sly Cooper 4	SCEA	TBA
SOCOM 5	SCEA	TBA
Tekken 6	Namco Bandai	TBA
The Agency*	SOE	2008
The Getaway 3	SCEA	TBA
WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within	Ignition	TBA
White Knight Story	Square-Enix	TBA
WipeOut	SCEA	TBA

Looking over the lists, several obvious things immediately jump off the screen:

The Wii continues to chug along, with 17 more exclusives since our last report.

The Xbox 360 has the best reviewed exclusives.

The number of exclusive titles currently announced for 2008 is a considerable dropoff from 2007 (or publishers are keeping their 2008 cards much closer to the chest than ever before).

It's the last item in that list that prompted Reuters to crown Metal Gear Solid 4 as the last great exclusive in an article yesterday. While it's an interesting take on the subject of exclusivity, the article makes an assumption that I don't believe many game developers are focusing on, "Top next-generation video games cost between $10 million and $50 million, according to IDC videogame analyst Billy Pidgeon. That means publishers must hedge their bets by going onto as many platforms as possible."

If that's what publishers are doing, Metal Gear Solid 4 (and other major PS3-only games like Final Fantasy XIII and Tekken 6) would also be in development for the Xbox 360. But they're not because, in light of the latest exclusive lists, ease of development and console power are the prime reasons why a game is exclusive to one platform or the other.

The Wii has as many exclusives as it does because it doesn't cost $10-50 million to develop a good Wii game. But most of these companies are not interested in creating good Wii games. They're interesting in creating any Wii games they can because it has the highest install base and lowest barrier to entry. So that's why the system has been flooded with such stellar titles as Balls of Fury (which scored a 14 on Metacritic) and Anubis II (which scored a 19). But this flood of titles is also producing a mountain of titles that many people find pretty good and a mountain more in development which show some promise. And this was the secret to the PS2's success. It had a lot of games, of which many were terrible, but it also had a mountain of classics and a bigger mountain of games that were just OK. And their ridiculous number fueled system sales. But completely aside from this, other developer are interested in using the tools of the Wii to create some truly unique games (for example, Will Wright's Spore). The Wii is clearly carving its own niche.

Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 continues to get exclusives because, one, Microsoft pays for them, and two, because the Xbox 360 is a breeze to develop for. The horror stories of the PS3 and the Unreal Engine are legion, which Microsoft can point to a neverending chain of UE3-powered titles that look amazing and play great. Not only that, but the tools Microsoft provides (simpler online play through Xbox Live and Achievements) are incentives many gamers look for in their game purchase. It is for these reasons that a developer like Tecmo has kept Ninja Gaiden 2 only on the Xbox 360.

This kind of added functionality will eventually spill over into non-exclusive games as well. It is the rare game that sells better on the PS3 than the Xbox 360. And with intangibles like exclusive downloadable content (example: Guitar Hero III's Halo theme download) coming into vogue, the system with the head start and the company with their eye on exclusives will win out.

While some gamers have disdain for the "moneyhats" Microsoft gives to third-party developers to create games exclusively for the Xbox 360, it's plain to see that it's working. Especially when the competition takes the position that exclusives don't matter. As Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony (and Exclusive Arms Race favorite) said in the Reuters article, "We understand publishers are needing to recoup their investment. From our perspective, as long as the games aren't going exclusive to other platforms, PS3 gamers are not actually losing anything."

But as we can all see from the Ninja Gaiden 2 example (and to a lesser extent when Capcom moved Monster Hunter 3 to the Wii), games are going exclusive to other platforms. And it's creating a new class of exclusives (beyond MGS4) that look like they will keep the Exclusive Arms Race interesting for years to come.

Excluisve Arms Race Housecleaning
Several titles were removed from this update to the Exclusive Arms Race because they continue to be nothing more than a name on a piece of paper. We have removed Tecmo's Project Progressive from the Xbox 360 list. Sega's Fifth Phantom Saga was removed from the PS3 list. And Crossbeam's Orb and Thorn have been removed from the Wii list. If these titles ever resurface, we will of course readd them to the list.