Written by John Scalzo  on September 04, 2007

Special Report: Xbox Live Arcade leads PlayStation Network 2.5:1 in downloadable game exclusives.

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"Whereas our competition takes a bunch of old content and catalogs content from previous generations and offers that in a download fashion, our development organization are making games specifically for PS3."
- SCEA Head of Marketing Peter Dille

During our attempts of counting and evaluating exclusive games for each of the three new consoles, it was decided that downloadable games shouldn't count because it would be unfair to compare them to full fledged retail releases. But requests from readers and the above quote from Mr. Dille have encouraged us to use this slow summer month to examine each console's downloadable offerings.



Currently, this comparison will only be between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 for obvious reasons. While the Wii boasts the largest library of downloadable content with over 110 titles, they are all a part of the УVirtual ConsoleФ and thus, have been released on home systems before. The first title in the console's original games initiative, "WiiWare," won't roll out until early 2008.

The simplicity of these games also made the rules much simpler as well. In fact, there is only one condition that makes a game eligible for this list:

A downloadable title must not have been released for any home console prior to it's availability as a downloadable game.

This means that something like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game is out (because of the NES release and the inclusion in TMNT2: Battle Nexus), but games like Marathon: Durandel and Flow are included (even though they have also been released on the PC).

So with the rules established, here's what the current totals look like.

Xbox Live Arcade (61)

Released (45)
Games with a Metascore of 75 or Better: 20

Title	Publisher	Metascore
3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures	Wanako Studios	65
Aegis Wing	Microsoft	61
Assault Heroes	Wanako Studios	79
AstroPop	PopCap	78
Band of Bugs	NinjaBee	68
Bankshot Billiards 2	PixelStorm	65
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe	PopCap	69
Bomberman Live	Hudson Soft	85
Boom Boom Rocket	EA	69
Carcassonne	Sierra	79
Catan	Big Huge Games	81
Cloning Clyde	NinjaBee	81
Crystal Quest	Stainless Games	65
Eets: Chowdown	Klei	77
Feeding Frenzy	PopCap	65
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved	Bizarre Creations	86
Hardwood Backgammon	Silver Creek	66
Hardwood Hearts	Silver Creek	66
Hardwood Spades	Silver Creek	65
Heavy Weapon	PopCap	77
Hexic HD	Microsoft	82
Hexic 2	Microsoft	75
Jetpac Refuelled	Microsoft	73
Jewel Quest	iWin	68
Lumines Live!	Q Entertainment	77
Luxor 2	MumboJumbo	70
Mad Tracks	Load	62
Marathon: Durandal	Freeverse	67
Marble Blast Ultra	GarageGames	79
Mutant Storm Reloaded	PomPom Games	77
Novadrome	Stainless Games	54
Outpost Kaloki X	NinjaBee	77
Pac-Man Championship Edition	Namco Bandai	83
Pinball FX	Zen Studios	67
RoboBlitz	Naked Sky	76
Small Arms	Microsoft	73
Soltrio Solitaire	Silver Creek	59
Space Giraffe	Llamasoft	48
Spyglass Board Games	Strange Flavour	53
Street Trace: NYC	Gaia	N/A
Texas Hold'em	TikGames	63
TotemBall	Microsoft	44
Uno	Microsoft	81
Wik and the Fable of Souls	Reflexive	77
Wing Commander Arena	EA	54
Zuma Deluxe	PopCap	79

Unreleased (16)

Title	Publisher
Alhambra	Vivendi
Battlestar Galactica	Vivendi
Castle Crashers	Behemoth
Every Extend Extra Extreme	Q Entertainment
Feeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck Showdown	PopCap
Geon: Emotions	Eidos
Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm	Sega
HoopWorld	Streamline Studios
Mutant Storm Empire	PomPom Games
N+	Metanet
Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness	Hothead Games
Schizoid	Microsoft
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe	Empire Interactive
Tetris Splash	THQ
Undertow	Chair Entertainment
War World	Ubisoft

PlayStation Network (23)

Released (11)
Games with a Metascore of 75 or Better: 2

Title	Publisher	Metascore
Blast Factor	SCEA	68
Calling All Cars	SCEA	77
Cash Guns Chaos	SCEA	N/A
Flow	SCEA	71
Go! Puzzle	SCEA	62
Go! Sudoku	SCEA	63
GripShift	SOE	67
Nucleus	Kuju	56
Piyotama	SCEA	N/A
Super Rub A Dub	SCEA	48
Super Stardust HD	SCEA	83
Warhawk	SCEA	83

[Editor's Note: Warhawk is included on this list for completeness' sake only. It is officially counted in the Exclusive Arms Race retail release list. The same will apply to Little Big Planet.]

Unreleased (12)

Title	Publisher
Echochrome	SCEA
Elefunk	SCEA
Everyday Shooter	SCEA
Go! Sports: Ski	SCEA
High Stakes on the Vegas Strip: Poker Edition	SOE
High Velocity Bowling	SCEA
LocoRoco	SCEA
Pain	SCEA
PixelJunk Racer	SCEA
SOCOM: Confrontation	SCEA
Toy Home	SCEA
Wipeout HD	SCEA

As is to be expected, the Xbox Live Arcade has many more exclusive titles than the PlayStation Network. More than three times as many actually. And almost half of them have a green Metascore of 75 or over. The same can be said for only three of the PSN's eleven releases.

The XBLA and the PSN also differ greatly in the number of titles created by first and third parties. The PSN list has only one third party title, the Kuju-developed shooter Nucleus. This is contrasted with the XBLA list, which features very few Microsoft produced titles. Although many of them are the highest scoring games on the service.

Not only that, but among the PSN's eleven upcoming exclusive games, all of them are being developed by an internal Sony studio. While it's great to see the company embrace the smaller, more pickup-and-play fun of a downloadable game, that is not the way to create a steady stream of unique content. And it's definitely not something to brag about as it appears Mr. Dille has a statement he needs to retract.

Exclusive Arms Race Mini-Update
While August was a slow month for exclusive announcements, there were a few that can be mentioned in this mini-update to retail release list.

The Wii continues to lead the overall list with a new total of 118. Five titles were added since last month and they include the already released Chicken Shoot (Destination) and the upcoming Cranium Kabookii (Ubisoft), Ready 2 Rumble Revolution (TBA), Victorious Boxers: Revolution (XSEED) and Worms: A Space Oddity (THQ).

The Xbox 360 also holds steady in second place with 97 exclusive titles, an increase of one over last month. Three new games were added to the system's upcoming release list: Dead Island (TBA), Warhammer: Battle March (Namco Bandai) and Warhound (TBA). All three were also announced for the PC.

These three titles were slightly offset by two previously exclusive titles going multiplatform, id's next-gen Castle Wolfenstein title and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles expansion (which will be coming to the PS3 in Oblivion's Game of the Year edition).

The PlayStation 3 continues to sit in third place with 48 total exclusives with only one addition during the month. The status of Haze has gone from a little hazy to PS3-exclusive as Ubisoft has said the Xbox 360 version is no longer in development. Of course, we all remember how Ubisoft jerked around the Assassin's Creed announcement, so we'll be keeping an eye on this one.

With the downloadable games tallied, we also now have the oppurtunity to create a "super chart" that compares the amount of retail releases and the total amount of exclusives between all three systems. This new chart ranks the Xbox 360 in first with a total of 158, the Wii (even without an original downloadable games service) comes in second with 118 and the PS3 again finishes in third with a total of 71.



For those that wish to track the changes from our previous lists, they can be found here:
October 2006
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007

We'll continue to keep you updated on all of the exclusives for each of the three consoles with our next update sometime after the Tokyo Game Show in September.