In a perfect world, there would be no platform exclusives, especially not on consoles, unless we're talking about money-starved indie studios taking funding so they can survive as a company. The expensive consoles are all basically the same devices with some special tricks here and there. Sure, integrating games with the console OS will take some time, but most of the game isn't nearly as platform specific as these companies pretend it is.
In practice, every console brand is paying developers for exclusive rights, even just for timed exclusives. From Apple to Valve, the entire industry is riddled with companies trying to make their platform have an artificial edge above the others, because the truth is that the consumer doesn't really care what hardware the games run on; "you can't have this if you buy from our competitors" is the norm.
This causes silly things like Spiderman being a Playstation exclusive character in that Marvel game and absurd side effects on surrounding platforms (like that time you could make a Fortnite account on Playstation that only worked on Playstations despite the cross-platform nature of the game).
For the good of the consumer, I hope the merger gets cancelled, though I don't think it'll happen. Sony doesn't get to complain, though, as it has relied on these exact shady business practices for decades now.