Exclusives are typically at the forefront of promotional efforts during gaming conferences such as E3, in order to help drive sales of hardware, as a consumer choosing between options may be swayed by the different range of games available on each different console.

There are already plenty of PS5 exclusives that are defining the first few years of the PS5's existence. We've had a number of excellent titles like God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West already debut on Sony's latest console, with plenty more confirmed for the coming months.

Most notably, those who want to play Final Fantasy 16, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and Silent Hill 2 Remake in the near future will likely need to own a PS5 sooner rather than later.

An exclusive video game is a game only released on one platform. Often these are First Party games directly from the hardware manufacturer. A new term, the so called "console-exclusive" games, was introduced mainly because many Xbox and Xbox 360 products are also (often later) releaed on the PC.

Phil Spencer claimed PlayStation plans to continue growing by making Xbox smaller, and Smith noted in the meeting that PlayStation currently has 286 exclusive games compared to only 59 exclusives available for Xbox hardware.

In total, of all KNOWN and released games, the PS4 has/will have 49 exclusives, and the X1 has/will have 37.

Exclusive parameters If you take “exclusive” to mean “available on one, and only one, console,” then the current console generation has precisely five exclusive games, all of which are on PS5. That wouldn't make for a particularly interesting or insightful comparison.

The overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 games are playable on PS5 consoles. Select PS4 games will benefit from the PS5 console's Game Boost, which may make PS4 games run with a higher or smoother frame rate.

Some titles are also available on PC, but this article will count a game as an "exclusive" if it's available on PlayStation 5 but not PS4, Xbox Series X/S or Nintendo Switch.

The fact of the matter is that exclusives can be good. This is currently an uncommon opinion among many gamers, but while cross-platform games have plenty of merits, exclusivity is often a driver of quality and, ironically, gives developers more breathing room in developing for target consoles.

Sony consoles have set hardware that is the same, so developing games is easier (more money goes into development and not opimizing for multiple systems with different hardware. Sony and its studios work on memorable experiences that stay. (Microsoft has just starte to invest in their own gaming studios.

Exclusive parameters If you take “exclusive” to mean “available on one, and only one, console,” then the current console generation has precisely five exclusive games, all of which are on PS5. That wouldn't make for a particularly interesting or insightful comparison.