larch
Banned
There's an interesting section discussing that in the piracy article linked elsewhere around here.
If we think about this logically, firstly it is impossible to believe that even if MS and Sony decided to undermine PC gaming, that they could remotely afford to pay every single major games developer large sums of money each and every year to lock in exclusivity for each and every major game title to be released. By definition they would have to pay more to the games developers than the developers would expect to make if they released the game as a PC exclusive. If the potential sales of the PC market were as high as armchair experts and piracy advocates claim, then this would run into the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars for each and every gaming title!
Secondly, even if MS and Sony could somehow manage to bribe all of the major games company in this way, even if a games company agrees to an exclusivity contract, once that contract period expires, they should then have every reason to invest an additional sum of money into properly porting and optimizing their game title for the PC platform and then releasing it to an eager PC market, to reap the allegedly high profits which PC gaming would also bring.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_6.html