Yeah, but it's absurd to think that MS will just be satisfied with their current output with a new console launch
They're plenty satisfied with it at the moment! And with all honesty, who can blame them? They're sell more than fine with the 2-3 exclusive franchises they have and multiplatform games. MS' new strategy clearly screams "as long as we can give a comparable experience to the opposition in terms of being able to offer the same multiplatform titles that sell really well, we are doing fine. No need to waste money on exclusive games."
And honestly, it works. That's why I'm skeptical as to why they would bother to push again next generation, seeing that it didn't do much this generation. It wasn't the Blue Dragons or the 1st Mass Effect that got the 360 to where it is now. It's the fact that it has Halo, Gears and all of the big multiplatform titles like CoD, RE5, etc. that did it. And it is the nature of that success that will guarantee they'll get continued multiplatform support next generation from 3rd parties.
But whether MS will moneyhat awesome exclusives or 3rd parties go out of their way to become exclusive to the platform again like they did at the beginning of the generation? Highly unlikely.
hey might as well not even bother making a new console if they just want to milk their current franchises. You can bet they'll have tons of studios working on a wide variety of exclusive games for the launch and the first few years
Definitely, if they are the only next gen console on the market, we'll probably see some new, low budget exclusive properties for a while until the next Playstation releases. But exclusive games from established series, or new high-profile series that could continue on the next Xbox and motivate people to stay once Sony's console is out? Probably not.
And of course 3rd parties are going to want to get on the ground floor, including the Japanese ones. They won't want to give up the chance to make a name for themselves from the beginning of a new generation.
That's the thing, I don't think they'll bother this time around, seeing as how horrible it ended up for them this generation. Pretty much all of them had to come crawling back to the PS3, or become multiplatform to survive.
If Sony launched 2 years later, the fanbase for all of the games will already exist on Xbox3 and that will be the main platform yet again.
That's what was supposed to happen with a lot of the Japanese exclusives this generation, but as can be seen now, they've all ditched the 360 for good and have moved on to the PS3, and the fanbase followed.