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I've noticed that third party developers seem to have been slipping away from exclusivity with Sony, and hopefully most people have seen this to at least some extent. Look at the market right now. I think that we have three consoles that may not have exclusive hardware or games, but very exclusive features.

Nintendo has been pushing a free-form user interface since the DS, giving the opportunity for developers to choose what controls to use for their game on Wii, and overall making a new type of experience.

PS3 has Blu-Ray, which is pretty trivial currently, but let's say Sony does start getting massive games. Not massive in a huge-idea-Shadow of the Colossus or God of War sense, but a long game or huge world that comes together seamlessly. (Grad Theft Auto might benefit from this).

360 has something that Nintendo and Sony have not been able tap into, even by making it FREE! Of course, I'm talking about Xbox Live. $50 a year and people eat it up. Microsoft has gained its edge by making the online portions of games not only massive, but nearly a standard. It's shocking when some games that seem like they SHOULD have Xbox Live play, come up without -- like Bioshock.

And now for the point of the exercise...discuss. Do you think that each company has planned this? Or if so, do you think this is a defining feature of the console wars?

and then a Sony fan would counter and say Home is just as good. Is it just as good? I don't know....

Well I will have a PS3 soon, so I will see if the two are that much different. Or the PS3's free internet service is worse then Xbox live.

I didn't glorify it...I pointed out -- as I usually do -- that it is the only service you have to pay for out of these three consoles, and people eat that s**t up like it's candy. They also put a lot of good stuff for Silver people, too.

No one can doubt the success of Xbox Live when the competition is free.

Well, of course the big three intended it. Would anyone have bought a PS3 if it was just like the 360, only $200 costlier and with fewer games? Obviously not. Would anyone have bought a Wii if Nintendo didn't include motion controls? Even at only $250, the graphical capabilities and overall hardware improvement alone would have made it a difficult pill to swallow, even for die-hard Nintendo fans.

Now as for it being a defining feature of the console war, it definitely is. Obviously, these improvements are how each respective company believes they can best penetrate the market and will have to play on these gambles for the next 5-10 years.

However, I don't think that XBL gives MS as much of a boost as you might think, I'd agree if it meant that ALL downloads were free because of it, but on top of that $50 a year, depending on the DLC, it may be free, but more often then not, costs more.

So in the end, I'd say that the PSN and the Wii's service has the edge.

Not really with the PS2, because while Sony did publish some exclusives, the bulk of them were third party completely independent of Sony... I'm not really sure about the PSone though, my memory isn't that great from that time.

Microsoft hypes XBL because it draws a lot of attention to them, it certainly is their strong point in the gaming industry, downside is that many games seems to take a single player hit in favor of supplying a semi-decent online community, Gears is a prime example of that.

But hey, it makes them money, and gets them support, so who am I to butch about it?

Aw yes, Well they all need to draw developers somehow, Nintendo by being the only real successful name in the late 80's early 90's, Sony by offering creative freedom, and Microsoft by throwing a lot of money to the companies, which means that there is little chance of the developers going multiconsole unless if they wanted to face a nasty lawsuit from Microsoft.

Sony has a pretty solid first and second party base though, they've developed their developers well.