It's really quite simple: if developers put less effort into the PS3 due to lower sales and expected RoI, you get less games or worse quality games.
Yes, but
predicting that is irrevelant, no? That's my point. There's no need to worry about this. If it happens, if happens and I can jump ship whenever I want, keeping the old console and games I like. But if I already have a PS3 now, there's nothing I can do about the choices developers make. And that's all ignoring exclusives. At the end of the day, if PS3 sells worse and gets inferior ports, but I still get the quality exclusives I like, much as better cross-platform titles would be preferred to cheap ports, the console still serves me. There's no need to turn every third thread into a prediction as to how many PS3's will be sold in the next 4 years. Anyone accurately predicting today that PS3 will sell no more than 35 million in its life makes no difference to me owning a PS3 now and buying games for it based on the quality and appeal of those titles. And if that prediction is wrong and PS3 sells 28 million in its life, or 50 million, or 100 million, my position is still the same.
The only sensible reason to want to know how much the machines will sell and what their life-time libraries will be like is if you're sitting on the fence wondering which one to choose. Then you have to weigh up the features and exclusives of PS3 against it's probability of suffering a software slide, and maybe decide 'no, because in a few years the quality of software will be too low to interest me because it won't have a large enough install base.' And that reasoning is ignoring completely the price difference, features, and also the change in the market where games have moved towards cross-platform rather than ports.
AFAICS there's really nothing in it. If you want cross-platform games, buy an XB360. It's cheaper and the games tend to be better, though the difference isn't normally worth bothering about, less so even than PS2 versus XB difference. That's a no brainer. If you want the BRD player and/or PS3's exclusives along with your cross-platform games, get a PS3. If you want both, get both. None of these machines are going to die and leave you with a closed library like the Saturn, or a very limited library like GC. Those lokoing at PS3's relative performance now really aren't factoring in that it hasn't had a price drop and is still silly expensive by comparison to the competition, yet is still selling better than XB did and that remained a viable platform. Once the price comes down, it'll do far better bulking out the user base with buyers of cross-platform games that'll keep the developers interested. So between now and 2013, the only thing PS3 owners or buyers really need worry about is hardware failure, worldwide economic collapse, heart disease or meteor collisions.
