Console Libraries: Quality or Quantity?

[Moonface]

Picture this for a moment; you go to a restaurant and get presented with one of two choices.

1. Ten sirloin steaks
   
2. Three filet mignons
   

Maybe not the best example I can give, but the general gist here is you can either get a bigger quantity of what most people would say is a lower quality cut of steak, or a better quality cut of steak but the quantity is lower.

Now take that and apply it to the idea of a library of games for a console. Would you rather have a bigger library if it meant fewer games you consider to be high quality, or would you be more interested in a library that's notably smaller but it's made up of more games you find to be better?

I got this thought after a recent interview Phil Spencer had where he said having big exclusives alone isn't enough, which I would say he's right about since if you look at the Wii U the thing had some amazing games but sold terribly, but Game Pass offers a huge amount of games for a ridiculously good price but that by itself is also not apparently enough to shift Xbox units to compete with Sony and Nintendo (Phil's words about Xbox not being able to best Sony and Nintendo, not mine, and for context this was about not besting them in the sense that with digital libraries and cross-gen libraries it's hard to convince people to switch between ecosystems no matter what company you are).

Obviously, the best solution is a middle-ground between both quality and quantity, but I'm curious that if you could only veer one way or the other which end would you rather go for?


Personally I think I'd rather take quantity, since I'm not saying that a higher quantity means you're just being given a load of garbage shovelware to play. But if it was something like the Wii U where there's amazing games but my console becomes a paper weight for extended periods while I wait for the next game to come along, I'd rather have a bigger selection to play. Especially since if a game came out I don't perhaps care for, my fallback options are fewer. I recall during the PS3 generation that I was always bothered how small my library was compared to my PS2 library, even though my PS3 library probably has a lot more games I'd consider to be of higher quality than my PS2 library. I just disliked the periods of playing the same old shit because nothing was coming out I cared for and the range of choice felt smaller too, which isn't something I really had with my PS2.

[Dragon Lord]

Quality 100%. I'd rather only have 5 high-quality exclusives for my PS5 than have 20 mediocre ones. I'd feel like the purchase of the system was worth it more that way than the other way.

Even now I don't think I have more than one or two exclusives for my PS5 and I still feel like my purchase of the system was more than worth it. If Final Fantasy XVI ends up being as good as it looks, then that alone would make it worth it for me.