[veidr]

I think you are right, pursuing big name exclusives is often a fool's errand, and also that temporary hardware advantages like Kinect can cause exclusives to just happen, at least for a while.

But I also think that a thriving indie dev culture, as the OP is calling for (or rather, chastising MS for thwarting) can do the same thing: it can give a platform exclusive titles (games, but the same could be said of non-game apps) at least for a while, just because small indie devs can often only target one platform, at least until their indie title is a hit bringing in the cash to target other platforms.

(Had a little bit more but will have to leave it there as my laptop's reserve battery power warning is getting very insistent.)