The Argument for Exclusives

[Lod 10]

Para oIn my humble opinion, which is worthless, I think it's good to end this thing about exclusive games. For example, if we buy it, we have the same game for Xbox; if we have the same game for...

 

[JellyjamLu]

Since competition is dying away, that means even less innovation now. less reason to care by competing developers, less risk taking in general and mainly pump out whatever works. Exclusives imo is still important though as it made other consoles try at least a little harder.

 

[Rocket2049]

i wish exclusives were dead.
i still can't play zelda, metroid, mario pokemon, f-zero, kirby, donkey kong, xenoblade, pikmin, animal crossing, fire emblem, splatoon on any platform BUT nintendo hardware.
there's a lot of games on switch and switch 2 that cannot be played otherwise (unless you emulate)

i can't play Gran turismo, astro bot, little big planet, uncharted, tsushima, infamous, on any other platform but sony hardware. it's not a LOT (especially with most coming to PC now, god of war, horizon spiderman, last of us, death stranding, etc.)

xbox... well I really don't know what's STILL exclusive, and not on PC either,
but plenty of games are either PC OR xbox and nowhere else.

don't get me started on games stuck on mobile devices only...

 

[AntiAktion]

Gaming industry is moving in a bad direction. Less worker rights, lots of gambling, microtransactions, subscriptions, and attention-capture.

Exclusivity and competition didn't really help game devs before, they had to work across studios and the rival platforms, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft

And the more money these platform executives got, the worse the devs get paid and the worse their contracts and crunch.

 

[SpcDaicon]

I confess I'm quite divided on this topic.

I remember I've always complained about exclusivity since I could only afford one video game per generation, so choosing one meant giving up on other consoles for the longest time. Also, I think exclusivity contributed way too much to toxicity, justifying dumb things like console wars.

Yet, there is one thing to note. Nowadays gaming is much more "homogenious". I can hardly tell what is the real difference between an Xbox, PS5 and a PC and Nintendo seems to be heading in the same direction. They all have the same games and serve the same purpose. The console wars are over and we were left with just corporate interest that tries to squeeze every penny from the consumer.

 

[Graw]

Nah. Exclusivity has only ever been a business decision that brings no benefits for the end consumers.

 

[Anoobis]

Exclusivity isn't dead, but the benefits of the older form are gone. Modern exclusivity is going to look like the streaming wars, since it'll be based around launchers, and take the form of Epic Game Store's money hatting.

 

[_-_AceDragon_-_]

I think exclusivity was more of a by product of console wars, which was the real push for innovation. Sonic was the answer to Mario. (There was also Ristar vs Yoshi.) When it comes to first party flagship titles, then yes I totally agree that weaker competition isn't a good thing.

Most other third party developed games would probably have been made anyway though, and devs just pick the console which suits their projects the most.

Exclusivity is much less of a thing now and consoles are less distinct from one another than they used to be. But you could also say this levels the playing field and encourages devs to innovate even more to differentiate themselves.

Exclusivity can be a real pain like bloodborne being stuck on ps4.

 

[chibayoshi]

I agree competition is a must. AAA companies at this point have clearly demonstrated they care very little of innovation, or of their fan base, because they know for sure that even if they release slop or AI gen stuff (looking at you Black Ops 7) the game WILL sell, because there's this culture of fanatism and borderline obsesion with certain franchises that have a fanbase that will refuse to let it die (big ones at that)

I'D ARGUE THO, it will depend on the studios themselves to make that difference, new games coming like Silksong, can clearly upset or callout big companies to realize "we need to up our game(heh)" this is by far a long shot tho, I am aware, since its really asking too much for an AA studio, much less an indie dev to release games constantly unless they have a set team and even then it would not be a competition to AAA companies since they crap out 10 games per week.

At this point we can only give time to time itself. I'd go as far as to thing the game industry needs to crash for like a week or two to truly make them panic and get their sh*t together, again, wishful thinking on my part.

Buy indies and play retros, that's my way of going about it right now, and honestly I'm enjoying it

 

[shadowcat]

Gamers have been on the losing end for at least the past 15 years. Between that an nostalgia from us 30-40 year olds, I thought that was why retro gaming has picked up so much interest in the last few years.

 

[JellyjamLu]

I agree competition is a must. AAA companies at this point have clearly demonstrated they care very little of innovation, or of their fan base, because they know for sure that even if they release slop or AI gen stuff (looking at you Black Ops 7) the game WILL sell, because there's this culture of fanatism and borderline obsesion with certain franchises that have a fanbase that will refuse to let it die (big ones at that)

I'D ARGUE THO, it will depend on the studios themselves to make that difference, new games coming like Silksong, can clearly upset or callout big companies to realize "we need to up our game(heh)" this is by far a long shot tho, I am aware, since its really asking too much for an AA studio, much less an indie dev to release games constantly unless they have a set team and even then it would not be a competition to AAA companies since they crap out 10 games per week.

At this point we can only give time to time itself. I'd go as far as to thing the game industry needs to crash for like a week or two to truly make them panic and get their sh*t together, again, wishful thinking on my part.

Buy indies and play retros, that's my way of going about it right now, and honestly I'm enjoying it

Yep, that's how i view it mostly, Exclusivity may not benefit the consumer in the long run & having everything in one place is great, i get that, but as a practice to challenge each other from a developer/console perpective, Competition added intrigue, ideas. not saying it cannot exist now but it will hit hard i think.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Yeah, no. The idea that Sony would “answer” exclusivity today by making a CoD-style FPS just isn’t realistic. With development cycles of 6+ years (plus the huge budget) by the time the competitor ships, the trend has already moved on. That thinking is exactly what led to things like Concord.

And I really don’t see how every studio chasing the same trend is innovation. The PS3/360 era still had plenty of exclusives, but it was also one of the least creatively diverse periods compared to the PS2/GCN/Xbox generation. Exclusivity didn’t guarantee innovation then, and it definitely doesn’t now.

If anything I hope exclusives can truly die and we get PC ports of more Sony games.

 

[redux007]

Consoles as a commercial product worth purchasing have decreased in value on the whole. What once was an exclusive machine with tailored software made specifically for it and its architecture are now little more than poor man's PC's with overly exhaustive and finicky OS's ridden to the gill with spyware, planned obsolescence, and other massive hindrances rather than benefits to the owner. Take the PS2 vs the current and absurdly named "PS5," is there a single element that wasn't superior in the earlier machine vs its modern pretender? Online storefront? That's about the only thing I can think of. Library, inferior. Multimedia and hassle free interface, inferior. Backwards compatibility, non existent vs the PS2. The list goes on and on. If the hey day of the console market wants to see a return, then they should bring their own selves "back to the future" and start making products worth purchasing again.

 

[hazys]

The thing is that when companies are getting an exclusive deal, they are slightly more willing to fund a new, original, or unusual game idea. This relationship between first and third-party developers is now disappearing.

On the flipside, companies don't have to worry about the user bases of consoles anymore, so they can ideally fund smaller, weirder projects and trust that they'll find their audience on Steam. They can also work with indie studios to give fans what they want, like SEGA did for Sonic Mania.

 

[Gavin_McShooter]

I always thought this war was dumb anyhow. Competition is fine but at the end of the day, we all game the same way. We all were winners, and I wanna say we still are.

The REAL losers are the CEOs of those gaming companies that are constantly trying to push into us what we THINK we want, like always online, love service shlock that's acting akin to a Digital Amusement park that's gonna shut down in a few years anyhow.

With so many ways to game these days, that's the way we won. You won.

Don't blame yourself.

 

[NOTthatHARD]

Exclusivity doesn't "create" good games, good developers do and THAT is what we are missing right now, good developers.

 

[moonbits]

It's a pain in the ass to make a game for 5 different platforms at the same time, exclusivity at least reduces scope and focuses more resources on actual development.

I like the idea of exclusives as a single platform to focus on, to exploit in creative ways and see what can happen. But realistically speaking, they play it so safe nowadays; its a disappointment. The ideal is there, Nintendo keeps impressing me with what they can do on such a small device.

Who knows what Monolith Soft will do with the next Xenoblade, or Nintendo EPD with Zelda.

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2025

no more competence will be practiced

Hard to say, the competition on Steam is furious; dozens of games release every day and you barely notice. They'll have to work extra hard to stand out, which is good, right?

 

[JellyjamLu]

I get the perspective but ultimately I respectfully disagree to bye-bye exclusivity, current console gen depending on who you ask is weak, I don't see it improving by a great margin with everything new in the future coming on everything, looking at this,,,, new Halo as an example.. not a decent first impression from a massive exclusive IP back in the day. I still believe rivalry & competition is healthy but hey i'm open to it industry, throw what you can, surprise me!

 

[MegaDrive1987]

Consoles as a commercial product worth purchasing have decreased in value on the whole. What once was an exclusive machine with tailored software made specifically for it and its architecture are now little more than poor man's PC's with overly exhaustive and finicky OS's ridden to the gill with spyware, planned obsolescence, and other massive hindrances rather than benefits to the owner. Take the PS2 vs the current and absurdly named "PS5," is there a single element that wasn't superior in the earlier machine vs its modern pretender? Online storefront? That's about the only thing I can think of. Library, inferior. Multimedia and hassle free interface, inferior. Backwards compatibility, non existent vs the PS2. The list goes on and on. If the hey day of the console market wants to see a return, then they should bring their own selves "back to the future" and start making products worth purchasing again.

Yeah it pisses me off that the media capabilities are so bad on a modern console. You'd think these days such a basic task would be a standard feature.

 

[redux007]

Yeah it pisses me off that the media capabilities are so bad on a modern console. You'd think these days such a basic task would be a standard feature.

I'm finding that simple economic transactions and product quality is somehow an elusive concept for companies in the present. And, they're all suffering for it. If you publish a tv show/movie it should be accessible by itself with no problems. If you manufacture a phone or tv it should simply work without additional features or elements making the experience a hassle. No feature should ever be a hindrance.

 

[heynoranora]

honestly, the bigger problem is that consoles themselves are just too powerful these days. exclusivity used to be a design restraint because the N64, PS1, and whatever SEGA machine was alive at the time were all so vastly different that developers were locked in to one platform. this bred unique games and incentivized abstract creativity to see the directors' visions through. but from a consumer perspective, exclusivity was always a raw deal. having to spend boatloads of cash just to simply access the games they want to play also locked consumers in to a single branded console--which created a closed-mindedness in gaming culture to justify or rationalize gamers' console choice, and excuse their inability to access rival games with disinterest or even outright hate. (not to mention the advertising campaigns of the era preying on this, amplifying the discourse)

exclusives should've died in the ps4 era when every console was built on standardized PC hardware. but now? i can't help but feel exceptionally cynical about all this. as a "i prefer to play on my PC" flavor of gamer it's certainly nice that i can access the sony branded games these days but if you pay attention to their prices it's very clear all of this is a corporate cash-grab.

makes me wonder if the lackluster sales performance of both final fantasy 16 and 7 rebirth was the catalyst for this. both of those games were sony-exclusive for a year and by the time they launched to PC their marketing budget was worthless in the face of a years worth of gamers(derogatory) complaining on social media.

 

[Sonic Boomer]

For me it's less about exclusives and more about how nowadays all systems are more or less the same, all games look the same on all systems. There are no distinguishable hardware characteristics to give games a unique look, atmosphere, sound. This died with the PS3 era, we'd still get some of it thanks to the less powerful systems like 3DS/PSP, Wii and such but overall, hardware just isn't different enough anymore to provide different atmosphere and unique distinguishable characteristics.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

I mostly play on PC now so this is fine for me, the more the merrier.

 

[hazys]

For me it's less about exclusives and more about how nowadays all systems are more or less the same, all games look the same on all systems. There are no distinguishable hardware characteristics to give games a unique look, atmosphere, sound. This died with the PS3 era, we'd still get some of it thanks to the less powerful systems like 3DS/PSP, Wii and such but overall, hardware just isn't different enough anymore to provide different atmosphere and unique distinguishable characteristics.

This is very true, and it's even more true now that we have standardized control schemes for everything. Think about how different the PS2 was from the Gamecube, or the PSP from the DS... no such thing anymore. Even the Switch, with its unique hybrid design, has basically surrendered to the "universal" control scheme.

As someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, consoles used to have very different technical limitations. That's why there is an identifiable "Dreamcast look" or "PS1 look." No longer the case.

 

[Sonic Boomer]

This is very true, and it's even more true now that we have standardized control schemes for everything. Think about how different the PS2 was from the Gamecube, or the PSP from the DS... no such thing anymore. Even the Switch, with its unique hybrid design, has basically surrendered to the "universal" control scheme.

As someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, consoles used to have very different technical limitations. That's why there is an identifiable "Dreamcast look" or "PS1 look." No longer the case.

yes and those same technical limitations is why we have so many great new games being developed for old systems now. I think modern retro development is probably one of the best things to happen to gaming.
These new games for old systems push the systems to their limits while maintaining their authentic atmosphere and feel.