Do Exclusive Titles Hurt the Competition? EEDAR Say "Yes."

Interesting article up today over at Gamasutra which quotes EEDAR expert Jessee Divinich. Read it HERE.

Divinich looked at several exclusive high-profile/AAA titles and compared hardware results across all systems in months that they launched. It is unclear what exactly made a title "high profile" or "AAA." Whether it was total development and marketing budget, total sales in a previous iteration, or just standard gamer lexicon is never stated.

Analysis
While the conclusion seems obvious, AAA titles that cannot be purhased on a particular system hurt that system, the data used for making that conclusion seems to overlook numerous other factors, or at least those factors aren't stated or implicitly understood.

First and already noted is the issue with the definition of "AAA exclusive." I realize that, like porn, you know it when you see it, but it still needs to be defined to make proper conclusions.

Second is the issue with the same-month comparison of hardware sales in the month of the exclusive title. By the included chart (source: Gamasutra), we cannot tell without research exactly which month the game in question was released, whether the systems on which it was not released were in a current monthly decline, and whether or not the sales bump from the exclusive lasted past the month in view.

This is an interesting idea and one that clearly has merit on its face alone. Nothing is more important to hardcore gamers than games they can only play on one system; exclusive titles with huge followings can have a measurable impact on buying decisions. Every gamer in his or her heart would readily conclude that exclusive titles absolutely hurt other system's sales. This just isn't proof of that.