When a flame war erupts, the exaggerated fanboy smack talk almost always boils down to, “My system has (or will have) better games than yours.” It’s the end-all argument. It doesn’t matter how fancy your Wiimote is, how many polygons you can render at once, or whether or not you can play Blu-ray discs. The games are what matter. Unfortunately for the diehard fanboys, their precious exclusives tend to do more flopping about than a trout caught in a bear's claw.

Crysis, the upcoming FPS blockbuster, is a PC exclusive. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, told us so, sort of:

“...neither Crytek nor any third parties are currently engaged in developing Crysis for console platforms.”

The words "currently engaged" leave a lot of gorgeously rendered room for speculation. So is or isn’t Crysis coming to consoles? Yerli had this to say to CVG:

"PC is our focus right now, we were born there and we want to showcase what we can do there, before we made any move onto consoles."

His tenses may have been slippery, but the spiel was the same. Though we can't help but wonder why Crytek would post job opportunities for PS3 programmers if it had no plans for a console version of Crysis. Please, Mr. Yerli, tell PC Gamer what’s on your mind:

“Crysis could be on the 360 or PS3."

Thank you, was that so hard?

Above: Possibly, maybe coming to a console near you. In a while

Crysis' questionable PC exclusivity is just one of many examples of exclusivity flip-flopping. Metal Gear Solid 4, for example, is definitely a PS3 exclusive. Everyone, including both SCEA President Jack Tretton and Hideo Kojima himself, has said so. So why are rumors flitting about that MGS 4 will appear on the 360? Will Sony get a "timed" exclusive, with the 360 version being released a few months after the PS3 version? Will Microsoft fork out $100 gazillion for it? Do we care?

And who does exclusivity really benefit? The console manufacturers certainly know the value of a strong exclusive. Finding and securing the killer apps - the games that will sell more consoles  - is top priority. Microsoft did it when it bought Halo developer Bungie, which turned out to be a pivotal moment for the Xbox.

But does exclusivity make our games better, or does it just validate our brand loyalties? We wandered the office in search of answers, or, in lieu of answers, venomous rants. We found OXM Editor Dan Amrich, and like a true video game Swami, he offered us the insight we needed to move on with our lives and stop freaking out (mostly) about exclusivity.