Exclusitiviness

I fear for the future of the Xbox.

As it stands now, they are, in my eyes, the top of the gaming mountain. Yes, the Wii is surpassing their sale numbers, but the Microsoft Machine has a slew of great games available and a bunch of them are exclusives. And therein lies the problem: their Exclusive franchises appear to have dried up.

For the past few months, there have been endless whining from Sony lovers about many of their games jumping ship to release simultaneously on the 360 (Devil May Cry, Resident Evil & Grand Theft Auto being the most discussed), but while the Xbox will be sharing many of these lucrative properties, there are few titles coming out that require anyone to own the 360.

Halo has ended (Halo Wars is coming, but with the genre switch, it will see a fraction of the hype and sales). Saints Row, Mercenaries & Lost Planet will have dual consoles sequels. And with Bioware being sucked up by EA, their RPGs will likely be spread around to any and every system that will have them.

Sony, despite the fanboy whinings, still has a closet full of personal properties. Ratchet & Clank, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Turismo, Tekken & Final Fantasy... as well as promising upcoming titles such as Littlebigplanet and Infamous.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has a wazoo-full of exclusives, but mostly out of necessity. 85% of the third-party Wii games just wouldn't work without the gimmicky controls.

Ninja Gaiden 2 may be the last chance for Microsoft to demand an audience. And that's if a PS3 port hasn't been announced by the time of the game's release. With Ninja Gaiden Sigma already on the PS3, it's hard to imagine the sequel not following eventually.

But perhaps a little reverse psychology might help out. If only Microsoft could convince Sony to take Fuzion Frenzy 3 as an exclusive, that would even the playing field.