As the lines between consoles continue to blur, popular ex-PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has weighed in on the debate.
Speaking with podcast Pause for Thought, he pointed out that while he doesn’t believe every game needs to be console exclusive, he believes tying certain software to specific ecosystems is what makes them “sing”.
He said:
“There is a huge value to the brand of having strong exclusives. If Mario starts to show up on PlayStation, that’s the apocalypse, right? Cats and dogs living together. And the same goes for Nathan Drake and Uncharted. I think they make the platform sing.”
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Of course, many would argue that the irony here is that Nathan Drake – specifically Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy – is already available elsewhere, as Naughty Dog’s remaster bundle was ported to the PC not too long ago.
Indeed, Sony’s approach to exclusivity in the PS5 era has been a bit unpredictable. Many of its first-party single player games now get ported to PC, but we’ve even seen breakout live service success stories like Helldivers 2 launch on Xbox Series X|S.
To be fair, Layden acknowledged this strategy, arguing that online multiplayer games tend to demand a large audience in order to succeed.
However, he added that exclusives have an additional benefit when it comes to extracting as much value from a particular piece of hardware as possible:
“When you do code across multiple platforms you do have to code to the lowest common denominator. But if you do exclusives you can push every lever to 11 in that platform.”
What do you think? Do you believe exclusives still value, or are they a relic from the past like Microsoft seems to believe? Let us know below.