Something interesting started to happen in 2016. The exclusive "war" between PS4 and Xbox One took a sharp turn: Sony's console had always toyed with an edge over Microsoft, but at a certain point that edge started to cut. Uncharted 4 seemed to kick things off, but it's here in 2017 that Sony's lead has become insurmountable. The PS4 has Nioh, Horizon Zero Dawn, Gravity Rush 2 and Nier: Automata, all right in a row, with no real answer from the competition. Microsoft seems only to flounder, with delayed or canceled projects and follow-ups that fail to match the glory of their predecessors. An interesting phenomenon, good news for Sony, and ultimately a totally pointless comparison. Neither of these platforms has the most -- or the best -- exclusives, not by a mile.

No, the winner is not the Nintendo Switch, despite the wondrous beauty of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nor is it the Neo Geo or the Ouya. Give up? It's obviously the PC. How could it not be? Microsoft does, in fact, have the upper hand here, just not with Xbox One.

Anyone who has read my stuff here before knows I'm no PC master race type. There are plenty of other reasons to prefer console gaming over PC gaming -- it's simple, sidesteps technical problems and can be cheaper depending on how we're measuring things. I've spent time here explaining why I do most of my gaming on a console, and I love my little machines to death. But this point, for one, seems hard to argue anyway but one. All debate about "which platform has the better exclusives" is inevitably destined to come back "PC."

To start with, sheer quantity. The PC receives a veritable tidal wave of games -- many of them terrible, to be sure -- that no other platform will ever receive. Anyone with the fortitude to explore the wide world of indie gaming will find plenty of diamonds in the rough, too many to name here, though Undertale, Kentucky Route Zero and Owlboy, for some. Your helpful neighborhood blogosphere can assist you in navigating that. The PC is the wild and weird testing ground for the games of the future, long before they would ever make it through the hoops necessary to get onto a console.

And then there are the name brand games. Looking at my desktop right now, I see Sims 4, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft and Civilization 6: games I've sunk dozens of hours into that will never see the light of day on console. Some of the most popular games in the world, like League of Legends, and DOTA 2 are PC exclusives. It's not just individual games: there are entire genres on PC that are near or totally absent from console. Strategy games and builder sims are almost exclusively available on PC, and the small offering of adventure games, MMOs, MOBAs and puzzle games available on console mostly call out just how many more there are on PC.

Older games, even if they were once on a console, are basically PC exclusives. Xbox One might tout its ability to go back a couple years for Xbox 360 games, but I can easily boot up my PC and play games from the '80s. I recently bought several dozen Nancy Drew games for $40, and I basically never need to buy another game again. Last year I got addicted to Warcraft 3. I could boot up Doom 2 right now if I wanted to. Even older console exclusives are sometimes more available on the PC due to emulators, though we don't encourage illegal behavior here. If you want to go down that road, you may even be able to play Breath of the Wild, though agC.

Many of the PCs best exclusives do wind up on console eventually. Xbox One and PS4 are getting Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Stardew Valley soon enough, and other favorites like Divinity: Original Sin and Diablo 3 got their console ports. But so many of these games that eagerly await release on console have been on PC for years. Even games that see simaltaneous release, like Fallout 4, are near-infinitely broader on PC due to the presence of uninhibited mods.

There are far too many titles missing from this piece, but that's sort of the point. Any discussion of console exclusives takes place in a contained space where we debate the merits of a couple of games. The world of PC exclusives is broad, wide and full of excellence.s.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidth.../#726cafbb24a7