Since Shipwrecks argument is strictly financial, i would like to add to the conversation. This is not about what consoles sell but as to why actually sells consoles
Shipwreck keeps telling us that none of the console exclusives are system sellers, which is true, but that is because most console exclusives, on any console, just by themselves aren't system sellers. looking through the NPD numbers for the past few years, there are only a handful of games that they themselves have caused a spike in system sales for that month, even less of those games are exclusives.
North American Console sales typically follow the same trend year after year, January and February starts off a bit higher than the following months, this is because after christmas, many video game buyers didnt get the console they wanted and instead have money, giftcards, etc. so they spend it on Video Games and consoles they didn't get during the holidays, this is the same for both consoles
Then after March the numbers shrink significantly until about September or October. Then the sales rise up again in Novermber and in December the sales Spike even more. Here we should note that many of the triple a titles come out during the last 3 or 4 months of the year and that also influences the spike, but since it is a bunch of games, no one game can really be statistically considered a system seller unless there is no doubt that one game caused the jump, not just the holiday season or motivation to buy.
Now to find what are real system sellers we need to see what bucks the trend and causes a significant spike where there should not be one. If it is a Console exclusive one would expect a jump in the sales of just one console and not both the 360 and the ps3.
At this point i would like to point out 2 titles that on a yearly basis can be considered somewhat system sellers because every year that month sees a sales jump for consoles. Those 2 games are Madden in the USA and Fifa Internationally.
OK so now lets examine the chart and see which games are system sellers
2007 September there is 527k xbox360s sold, double the previous months total, the reason is Halo 3, the first true system seller of the high def generation. PS3 in 2007 has no anomalies
2008 - Xbox follows the standard trend, June PS3 sells 405k becuase of MGS4, the second game to be a system seller. In April GTA4 comes out, but even though it is a huge hit it doesnt move consoles becuase April and May consoles sales dont spike, not a system seller. November GearsoW2 comes out, 360 sales do a bit more than double from the previous month, but ps3 sales almost double too with no real exclusive so Gears is a semi system seller, but i would attribute the holiday season being the reason why gears and consoles sold so well not that gears significantly drove up the sales of the console.
2009- September sony sells half a million, but that is due to no game, but rather the price cut. Same month ODST spikes 360 sales, November Modern warfare 2 comes out, and is 3rd and 4th legitimate system seller.
2010 - Febuary sells 100k more xboxs that January, is it becuase of ME2? no, because the Ps3 also sells 100k more than the previous month with no ME2 type release for it. March God of War 3 is the number 1 selling game but does not effect system sales. Red Dead drives sales for both consoles, 5th system seller. Halo reach is the 6th, And Black Ops is the 7th system seller. One might argue the kinect being a system seller but that would be a product of stellar marketing.
so to sum it up, with so many games coming out if we crunch the numbers, there are only 7 games that by themselves, without holidays and a season to buy can be considered system sellers. Of those there are 2 franchises that hold much of it and only one franchise is an exclusive system seller.
Halo - 3 Call of duty - 2 Red Dead 1 Mgs4 1
So out of the hundreds of games and the dozens of exclusives we can see that not that many games can move systems. So What does. 1 peers, 2 marketing. Think back to middle school or elementary. Why did you play whatever you played, genesis or SNes, ps1 or n64, etc. Mainly becuase your friends played them, that way your could identify with a group and feel good, an added plus was that you could borrow games or play each other at the house. some of you might remember that sick to the gut feeling when you got the wrong console, when all your freinds has the SNES and your mom got you a Genesis for your birthday, so you when you went to school and were ostrisized by your friends. Those same dynamics are what causes the sales of a certain console in a certain region, its why in japan nintendo and ps3 are on top, because everyone has it you need to have that too. Its the reason why Cheapy tells Wombat or Shipwreck to but the 360 version, so they can play online. If Live was 100 times better than the PSN but all of cheapy's friends were on the PSN for the majority of the time, cheapy would buy every online multiplat on the ps3. The same dynamic is why the iphone/ipod touch became so popular, first cheapy had one, then shipwreck, then they made fun of wombat's cheap verizon phone so much that he kinda got one when he got his wife an ipod touch.
My first point leads to my second. Marketing, you need good marketing to be able to get those first few million early adopters so they can tell their friends and their friends and so on. Microsoft did that great, first they got a year head start, and they knew how to cater to Americans, so until the dreamcast, they took advantage of the early lead. And now you see how after a video game commercial most of the time you see that white screen and then an animation that turns into the xbox logo, thats marketing. Its not just one game or two but seeing that animation during game commercials after game commercial builds brand recognition. Its like the SATs dog is to bark as video game is to xbox. That along with enhanced content in the games. Only recently has sony caught on, most notably with the AA joker add on, and the AC2 commercial with the PS3 logo at the end.
Lastly i would like to speak on behalf of the value of releasing these exclusives, Sony is not in dire needs to significantly ramp up ps3 sales to make money, but they are trying to sell the software, software sales are where the bulk of the profit is in the Video Game industry. Using a worldwide scope and the same VGchartz we can see that Marketshare worldwide between the xbox and ps3 hardware wise for the last couple of years is pretty even about a third each. So sony and microsoft are pretty much even hardware wise. So lets look as to why they are releasing these games, to sell software and make a profit.
First lets talk about the games like
Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel, Hyperdimension Neptunia, and Yakuza these games are developed for japan, where they will be big hits, so since sony has already spent most of the development money on the game, it will cost a few hundred thousand to localize it, so even if the niche market for these games is as small as 50k to 100k throughout the lifetime of the game here in the USA, it still make a healthy profit vs. extra cost.
Second i would like to tell you why resistance 3 and sequels like this are planned even though the second games make less than the first. the first reason is becuase the games are easier to make the second time around, tweaking a game engine and programming code is much cheaper then buidling it from scratch. so development costs are signifganly reduced. Second, even though resistane 2 sold less, world wide it is still a 2 million seller. conserivately guessing each game sells for an average of 40 dollars after factoring in sales in store during the latter part of the game lifespan its still over 80 million gross. Also when a sequel comes out, many people who havent played the orignals also buy the previous ones so it boost sales again. So if you look at internationally it makes sense to release most of the sequels on the list.
lastly i would like to tell you why infamous 2 is being made, becuase the first one is a million seller in the US, and 2 million seller world wide, and because the game was awesome.
Source NPD Figures
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_2007_sales_figures
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_2008_sales_figures
http://vgsales.wikia.com/index.php?title=NPD_2009_sales_figures&oldid=11419
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_2010_sales_figures
http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/13108/infamous/
http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/15255/resistance-2/
ing console shut the 
