E3 marked the passage of one of the biggest, if not the biggest reasons to buy a PS3 in most people's minds, and that was the passage of a very huge title, Final Fantasy XIII, with it going over to the side of XBOX360...
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Many a Sony Fanboy were shaken to their very core that afternoon(Myself Included, although most likely not as much as most) when they saw their beloved franchise "betray" the Playstation purists. It has been well documented that the idea of an exclusive has been becoming more and more difficult, but no one would have thought something as huge as FFXIII would take what I consider to be the(at least financially) the easy way out...

This most certainly has not been the first game to switch sides, even during this generation, but it is without a doubt the biggest game to do so thus far. FFXIII was a reason for many people to buy a PS3, but now with Square seeming to go the way of the 360 more and more lately, the choice is not as clear cut. The actually effects of this surprise announcement will not be known until 2009/10/11...??? when the game actually comes out. Last year the big announcement that DMC was no longer a PS3 exclusive had a similar effect but in a smaller fashion with many people choosing to pick up the identical 360 version instead of buying the PS3 to play it. The same can be said about GTA 4 but for the most part it was always known to be a multiplatform game. As this generation goes on I expect very little in the way of 3rd party exclusives(which is a point I failed to mention but very important because there will still be 1st party exclusives of course)

It's strange that it seems like at least in my opinion the big three have kind of blown their load a little too early in the life cycle or presumed life cycle of the games. I'm very interested to see where 3rd party companies go along with how well the 1st party games can pick up the slack, and provide great exclusives. New IP's are getting more risky as games become pricier so it will also be interesting to see if we get a barrage of sequels like usual or something new.

My prediction is that the PSN and XBOX Live marketplace will be the biggest distributors of exclusives which should be the best option given that it balances risk and reward the best out of all ways. To say the least it will be a fun year and I'm almost sold on buying a 360 on the basis of the few exclusives out there alone.

Gaming is getting bigger and this brings good(more games, bigger budgets, more people to play with) but also many bad things(less exclusives, in game advertising, the wii(but I'll get into that another time).

This should be a great year for all systems and E3 is far from over...