Topic: Should Console exclusive games...Stop?

(Please know that even though i am posting on a Playstation centric site, i am talking about game systems at large here. That means PC, Switch, and XBOX One are included in the topic I'm talking about here.)

I've been having this thought in my head the last little while; "Should Console exclusive games just end?" Ask different people and you will get many different answers. Well, I'll be honest, i have no clue where i stand on this issue.
See, on one hand, I Think The concept of Console exclusives needs to go out of style. The reason for this is because it's a different world for developers nowadays, and they need to find profit anywhere they can. This would also be good for players, as they don't have to get locked out of the Zeitgeist because they can't play a certain game straight away due to not having a certain console. And Most of all, Phasing out the concept of Exclusives would mean that we can also finally stop arguing over which console is better then the other. Or at least shut up one part of the arguments that still tear parts of the internet up even to this day.
But....
There's a part of me that stands with the other side: Console Exclusive games are still needed in this day and age. Why? Well, The first reason is more personal; I Think that a lot of original concepts come along and get picked up by Companies Like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo because they want to show that their console is better then the other. A Lot of great games have come about this way. Also, And this is a bit more realistic... You Gotta have some reason to get people to pick up your system. You Can have all the awesome specs in the known universe, but all people will care about is what can be played on the system. Competition can lead you to do absolutely stupid things, the Industry is full of examples of that, but Competition can also lead to brand new and exciting ways of doing things no one else ever thought was possible. And hey, It might even encourage some to do better. Who knows, stranger things have happened.

It's a complicated question for me. And I'm not like some people, where i pick a side and then stand by it unwavering. But the reason I'm asking YOU this question is because i genuinely want to know what the rest of the world thinks. What are YOUR ups and downs to the Question of Ending Console exclusives? How else could companies get people to play on their systems? And last but not least, is it OK To not strictly take just one side on a Heated debate? OK, that one is more me, but you know.

(And whatever you chose to post next- Please try to keep it civil. I know that sounds dumb, but you would be surprised at how quickly this kind of conversation on message boards can get out of hand.)

On a personal level, I don’t like exclusives as a concept. I would rather shop around and get the best deal and value for money that I can but I’m realistic, they’re needed by the companies to make customers buy their product. I really would like to see a day where the only exclusives are first-party games, I reckon that would be a good way of doing it. Even still, games like Horizon and Death Stranding got help from Sony but are releasing on PC. What people need to realise is that Sony didn’t have a gun put to their head to make that decision, fanboy mentality aside. Playstation Now is already on PC so if they decided to turn that into a Game Pass PC deal then I think it would prove popular without turning people away from the PS5. Instead of a release through Steam, they could funnel all sales through the PS Store, ensuring they retain all money. It might make some people annoyed same as how Heavy Rain etc were released only through the Epic Store but I think PC players would definitely pay to play God of War and others.

@KratosMD I still reckon games like Persona 5 shouldn’t be exclusive and there’s no reason for them to be. If Sony had made it then fair enough but otherwise I just don’t see why other consoles should miss out.

@KratosMD Yeah, agreed.

Additionally, how many third parties would keep a project like The Last Guardian alive after being in development hell for so many years? It's a very niche game on top of that. Sony doesn't care that it doesn't turn a profit, because it was well received and another game they could put on a ''reasons to buy a PS4'' list. If they were a third party developer it would've been shelved a long time ago. Same with Dreams I think.

First party games have to be good above anything else. Third party games need to make money first and foremost, that's the big difference. That's why hardly any first party games have micro-transactions. A higher review score does them more good than a few extra bucks from loot boxes.

Personally, I would much prefer companies like Sony, MS and Nintendo publish their games on other platforms. They could be no different to EA, Activision etc in that respect. If you have the 'best' hardware, then you don't need to 'blackmail' people into buying your system to play your games - people will buy it because its the 'best' system for them and then these companies have a much larger sales base to sell to. There is no way Naughty Dog for example could sell as many copies of its games as Rockstar for example because Rockstar has a much larger target audience.

The advantage of Exclusives though does mean that the developers can change the game structure, the actual layout for example to fit the system rather than make a game and then try and make that work the way they want. If a view is causing GPU bottlenecks, you can put something into obscure the view in an exclusive to reduce that workload but may have to drop the resolution, reduce the visual settings etc on a multi-platform game.

Of course there are benefits to companies to lock people into an ecosystem - even if the hardware itself isn't that profitable. Publishers have to pay to have their games on consoles - have their logo's on the boxes, etc. That may not be great for Sony to be paying something to MS to have their published games on a MS system - which is another reason Exclusives exist. Its not often for the benefit of the consumer - no matter what fanboys will argue, its more the benefit of the company and not giving money to potential rivals. The whole concept is to make people buy their hardware - regardless of whether it is the best option and to stop giving money to their competitors even if it means making more money from their users than they can by selling to just their own...

@KratosMD PS4 and Xbox One games are all built on the same framework. Switch and PC games are a bit more complicated but I don’t believe for a minute that the extremely small resources required to make a port for Xbox wouldn’t make them a massive profit. It makes you wonder if they’ve got a deal with Sony we don’t know about because there really aren’t any reasons why the mainline games should be exclusive to PS when spinoffs come to other consoles. RGG Studio are smaller than Atlus under Sega and yet they’ve ported Yakuza Kiwami, K2 and 0 to Xbox and PC all while working on Judgment, FOTNS and then Yakuza 7. It’s absolutely doable and yet Atlus just seem to make their main series games as hard to play as possible. The only reason I even bought a Vita was for Persona 4 Golden because it’s not playable elsewhere. Notice how as soon as the Dreamcast started to fail, there were loads of exclusives ported to GameCube. For some reason, they still haven’t ported 4 anywhere despite the fact it would make a ton of money for them.

@BAMozzy Yeah, but as they don't give money to the competition and they get more people to buy the console which means they buy more third-party games on that which also benefit MS, Sony, or Nintendo and gives them more money an incentive to make stellar first-party games. Okay maybe MS hasn't quite followed that pattern this gen but the point still stands, even if it's not technically for the consumer, it has a number of ways of benefiting the consumer. And as you said it allows for the game to be designed on a fundamental level that wouldn't work on other systems, it doesn't need to be designed to be scaleable.
And just because you have the best hardware doesn't mean everyone will buy it. People still bought the Xbox One even though the PS4 was superior just because they had a 360. Not everyone thinks about or even knows which is the superior hardware, in which case it'll be the best advertisement.
And as @KratosMD said Sony or Nintendo might not be as motivated to try and move games forwards if they weren't trying to sell their system too. Ubisoft's innovation outside of a couple MP games has dropped just about completely and don't have any real great games to speak of this gen. Excluding indie-type games.

@Jaz007 Best hardware is relative and I meant best for the purchaser. A Nintendo Switch can be the 'best' hardware for someone if they prefer to game on the go and occasionally play on a TV - A PS5 or Series X won't offer that. The best could also come down to controller preference, where their friends play (although that could be redundant if 'cross play' was standard) or even which they prefer the look of or can afford - point is, without Exclusives, you don't have to buy any particular platform just to get access - you buy the platform that best suits you, has the features you want etc and not have to buy 2 or 3 platforms to play the handful of games that are unique to each.

If you wanted to just buy a PS5 because that was the 'best' platform for you, you wouldn't have to buy an Xbox/PC/Switch/Stadia to get access to what ever few games each has that you may want to play. You wouldn't have to wait weeks, months or even years to play those 3rd Party timed exclusives or miss out on games because you can't justify buying the Xbox for Hellblade 2, Ori, Sunset Overdrive etc for example - you could just buy them on PS5, play with the controller you prefer and not miss out. Its like buying a Sony Bluray player and not missing out on movies from say Universal who are only available on Samsung Bluray players but Samsung don't have Sony Pictures Movies. You buy 1 bluray player to suit your budget and needs (not that you need to buy a Bluray player with these consoles anyway).

The competition is still there of course. If Sony don't make better games, people won't buy them regardless of whether or not they are available on multiple platforms. They still have competition from Xbox Studio's, EA, Activision, Ubisoft etc. They have competition in the hardware too - more so because they wouldn't have the 'exclusives' and FOMO aspect to rely on to sell consoles. It doesn't matter how bad their console is (to a degree) because people will have to buy it to play games from their studio's so they can be 'less' competitive.

Its swings and roundabouts. Overall I would prefer to buy 1 platform to play games on without having to buy another console to play the handful of games I can't play without buying it. There is no reason that Sony, MS or Nintendo couldn't publish their games, have Game Pass, PSNow etc subscription services on other platforms - except that would mean given some money to their 'competition'. Its not as consumer friendly as giving players a choice of platform and access to all games. Its fear of giving money to the competition and people not choosing to buy their platform IF they gave people free choice. Its almost blackmail.

Whilst I can sympathise with a desire to play everything everywhere it’s important to make sure that the everything is not more limited and it is now. 1st parties both develop games themselves and fund games that wouldn’t otherwise be funded.

I also believe that developers should be given as much freedom as possible. If they want to build a game targeting a fixed platform they should be free to do so.

only for third party companies, first party should always be exclusive

First party exclusives should exist. Third parties? Different story. I understand business deals sometimes happen, but if I were running an independent company I'm trying to get the games on any system that can run it.

The circumstances differ considerably across different developers. They have to decide what the best way is to keep themselves in business.

If I was a small independent developer and Sony offered me a big pile of cash for my game to be exclusive, or timed exclusive, I would absolutely be very tempted by that offer. Keeping in mind as well that porting to multiple platforms takes more resources, that shouldn't be taken for granted.

First Party games should absolutely be exclusive. Even though hardware itself is more standardized than ever these days, first party studios develop games for different reasons than third party studios (their main goal is to drive eyes to their parent company's console, so gaining critical acclaim & gamer cred often just as important, if not moreso, than pure financial success, than it is for 3rd party productions), resulting in differences in how those games are experienced. Sure, God of War & Spider-Man should be possible on Xbox, and Breath of the Wild & Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on both the power consoles, but there's no doubt in my mind they'd be worse experiences if that was the case, due to the fact that they'd likely be monetized differently (then there's the every chance that fantastic games like XC2 or the Last Guardian wouldn't even be made in the first place).

Also, that drive to have a wide variety of consumers looking at their specific box means that first party studios are more likely to be tasked with creating (good) games aimed at kids & teens, in addition to mature titles (Sony needs it's Ratchets, Astro Bots, Spider-Mans, & Everybodies Golfs as much as it needs it's God of Wars, the Last of Us', & Tsushimas), which are markets that the AAA Western studios have either forgotten about, or are a tertiary concern. Now Japanese studios seem to have a better spread (they have their Tales', Ace Combats, & Sonics, to go along with their Niohs, Resident Evils, & Metal Gears), but it's a market western 3rd parties oft forget (though props to Activision for trying to bring back Crash & Spyro in a big way), and I have a feeling 1st party studios would likely forget about them as well (particularly the more western focused Sony & MS) if they didn't have to target them for any specific reason.

As for 3rd party games, I absolutely agree that they should be multiplat, if there's no reason their games couldn't be. However (as unlikely as it is currently), I think they should be free to create an exclusive if they plan on deeply using a console's unique features for their vision (lets say a game that needs the DS4's touch pad, or split Joy-Con for motion).

@RR529 Was about to submit my post when I read yours and realized you hit on most of the same points I was making, only more succinctly. I think it's incredibly important for some subset of large-budget games to be designed without an overriding concern about profitability above all else.

Although I would like to add that, in contrast to the simple logic of "less exclusives = more consumer choice," I don't think that always ends up being the case. Without protections for the competition, you often end up with less choice if one actor is allowed to just swallow everything whole. I don't think anything good would have come from SEGA not providing muscular competition against Nintendo in the 90's, for example. I also don't think anything good would come from Nintendo not being able to preserve its own chunk of the market with its stable of iconic exclusives. In both cases, what fuels the preservation of struggling actors against a juggernaut is their exclusive access to games that the juggernaut simply couldn't offer.

I think it's better to have more competition and software diversity in the market, even if it means having to spend a few extra hundred dollars every 6 - 8 years in order to be able to play all of the games you're interested in.

First party exclusives should absoulety exist. Timed third party exclusives can go f themsleves.

Nothing wrong with exclusive releases but I think companies are shooting themselves in the foot by not porting them to other platforms. Maybe like 6 months later or so. Waiting till they are bargain bin games like Sony did seems counter productive. I've never considered buying a console just because of the exclusives. MS buying Zenimax does make a difference but those will be on PC also. And how long until those games are bug free and playable. I'm done paying to be a game tester. How may Xbox player switched to PS so they could play Last of Us? Probably not a lot. How many would have bought it for Xbox.. Probably a huge number.

If every game was open platform it would suck. Games made for particular hardware is way better than a generic standard.

@themcnoisy Agreed, and also games made for a specific platform usually turn out even better. Obviously there's amazing 3rd party titles too, but it was also amazing seeing what Sony's studios could get out of the PS4 Pro in the last couple of years even though it wasn't the most powerful system on the market.

Exclusives what made every video game machines are unique and different.
Every video game machines have their signature games that only made specially for that specific machines.
Cooking Mama games are perfect for NDS and 3DS for touch screen play.
BEMANI games are perfect for PS2 especially DDR for having symmetric analog buttons and proper D-pad buttons display.

I think Sony is going about it the right way with their PC releases. Release your exclusives on your platform first, then everyone else’s a couple of years later.