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Exclusives Aren’t Healthy for the Industry

Exclusives Aren’t Healthy for the Industry

Two games announced in 2014– Street Fighter 5 and Rise Of The Tomb Raider –seem to be signaling the return of a dark trend from gaming’s past. Here’s hoping things play out better than they did the last time our industry went through this faulty-logic arms race.

Console exclusives were a very common practice in previous generations of console releases, all the way up to the era of the PS2. With the 360/PS3 generation, that was a practice that mostly went away. This was a good thing, seeing as 3rd-party developers had the ability to get their titles in front of as many people as possible. Prior to this, console exclusives lead to mid-level studios closing due to an inability to market their games to as many potential customers as possible.

To break it down, the problem with console exclusives is two-fold; it leads to rush jobs–which we can see with just how close Street Fighter 5 resembles Street Fighter 4 –and console exclusives don’t actually do what publishers and hope they will, which is sell more consoles.

The reason for the practice going away in the first place was due to the fact that consumers were either pirating the game in question, or just avoiding it altogether. In today’s economy, and with entertainment being sold at extremely high premiums, there’s really no such thing as a “system seller” any more. For most game players, choosing which console they purchase comes down to which one the majority of their friends are playing on.

Exclusives Aren’t Healthy for the Industry

That the practice seems to be rearing its ugly head once again is worrisome, as it seemingly implies that console manufacturers are desperate for fresh, exclusive content on their machines. All signs point to AAA-games reaching the event horizon of budget outweighing returns, and that could eventually lead to a mini bust within the industry. This isn’t to say that gaming will go away, but the way games are made, for how much, and by who, could quickly change if strangleholds on content like this become the norm.

This all leads us to my ultimate point, which is a lesson I thought the industry learned several years ago: more games on your platform makes it more appealing, not holding games back from other platforms. It’s a practice which ensures that fans and developers alike will suffer in the process.

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