Are 3rd party exclusives more lucrative than multiplatform titles
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Just remembered this article about Epic pushing MS to up Ram to 512 from 256 after showing how it runs at 256...
Yes. Likewise look at the recent interviews with Epic. In 2006 Epic was a little miffed at the DLC angle from MS; now Cliffy is singing, "MS has a business model for Xbox Live that works and we fully support it" (paraphrase, but that was the message). Personally I think Epic is positioning themselves for the void the Bungie antagonism is creating.
So you think that more people buy the game because it´s exclusive in order to support "their" platform.
I wonder how many actually gives the slightest damn in the real world were overweight fanboys doesn´t run the show. I would guess, not alot.
The only thing i can see working for the exclusive 3rd party games is the marketing support from whatever platform they chose.
specwarGP2
Regular
I doubt GTA4 would have sold more than it did if it was exclusive to a single platform
All salient point that I was making two years or so ago when we were first visiting the idea of the death of 3rd party exclusives. There are reasons to still go exclusive. However the reasons are up against the heavy fact that ignoring a platform is ignoring a large part of the market.
We're talking Epic here, purveyors of the most popular cross-platform engine of this generation! Single-platform polish isn't really a factor. That's more an issue with FFXIII who decided all that polish and the known fanbase on the PS platform still wasn't reason to stick with exclusivity. And as you say, there's are more JRPGs on XB360, meaning more competition (not that FF really gets competition), and yet they aren't selling gangbusters, which is why those not being first party funded are being ported to PS3, to get more sales from a larger userbase.
Yes, there are occassions when a good argument can be made for platform exclusivity, but on the whole, it'll never be a clear win to ignore a 50%+ larger market by going cross-platform, unless you are certain of either a very skewed demographic where a title won't be well received on a platform, or if there's very strong competition in a genre on one platform, such as not releasing a racer on PS3 because GT owns the genre on that platform. However, 'platform exclusivity == better adoption on that platform' is a fallacy.
Probably not. On the other hand, I'd wager that Killzone 2 will not be profitable so it's not a model anyone really wants to follow.
Going solo platform only really makes sense very early in a consoles life when there is little competition on a given box and the customers are desperate for the first big hit. This is one of the best times to successfully create a new IP, which ultimately is what every developer wants. The window of opportunity for that shrinks fast though. If you miss it, then you are better off going multi platform. Gears and Resistance both succeeded in creating new money/hype generating ip's this generation. That kind of situation is rare though, most everyone else is better going multi platform.
Existing franchises in my mind are *always* better off going multi platform. With a new ip early in the cycle, it makes sense to ride the coat tails of Sony or Microsoft. You are taking a risk, so distributing that risk to the console makers makes perfect sense. Let MS/Sony spend some of their own money on the hype machine. Let them do a lot of the brand support. Let them get the word out through their numerous channels. Let them influence the end caps at Gamestop, Best Buy, etc.
But once you've made it, then you may as well branch out. There is no longer any need to shackle yourself to one revenue stream because everyone knows you now. All of the hype and marketing work has been done, time to capitalize off it. GTA is the poster child of this. They worked with Sony to create and support an uber IP in the PS2 generation. Now, they don't need to bind themselves to anyone.
Gears may very well be in the same situation in the next generation of consoles. The brand work is done, why not have Gears of War 4 as a PS4 title? Is it really worth missing out on ~3 million or so extra game sales on a platform like PS4? Yeah, the marketing support Microsoft gave was great. But everyone knows Gears now. Do we really need to be solo anymore? Other games like Metal Gear may follow, when Konami's accountants finally realize that Cooking Mama was probably more profitable than their multi year development uber expensive flagship title.
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The biggest carrot for exclusivity is the platform holder will push your game for you, meaning you just need to focus on making a great game, rather than all of the fluff that surrounds it (marketing your title, picking your audience, figuring out the best way to get people hyped). This is especially important when exclusives are what most of the community discusses in detail.
If anything will make people question this, look at the hype for the exclusive FPS's this year - KZ2 and Res2. Much like Halo 3, looking great, but not exactly the top of their field compared to what's out there already - look at what Stalker does, Crysis, even FEAR PC (don't think about the poor console versions), and even the Orange Box's sales won't really compare thanks to the hype the community will put around them. The platform holder will take huge advantage of this, of course, and push them down your throat.
Hell, look at Haze - a poor game by any measure, but it managed to capture the crowd quite a bit. Why couldn't games like Timeshift - far better received critically - get that much hype? Look at the threads discussing these games, and see how many people praised the game prior to its release. Look at views and posts in that thread, too, as a measure for "interest" in the game.
Then look at the hype for the genuinely innovative FPS Left 4 Dead, coming from Valve (yes, Turtle Rock is a wholly owned group in Valve), who are behind what are considered the greatest FPS games of all time - twice! Look at how much people aren't talking about Project ORIGIN.
Exclusivity isn't just about the simple bean counting... it impacts sales on your core platform. The hard part of going multi is identifying just how many more (or less) sales the exclusivity will cost you if you're concerned about getting lost amongst the bigger titles.
If anything will make people question this, look at the hype for the exclusive FPS's this year - KZ2 and Res2. Much like Halo 3, looking great, but not exactly the top of their field compared to what's out there already - look at what Stalker does, Crysis, even FEAR PC (don't think about the poor console versions), and even the Orange Box's sales won't really compare thanks to the hype the community will put around them. The platform holder will take huge advantage of this, of course, and push them down your throat.
Hell, look at Haze - a poor game by any measure, but it managed to capture the crowd quite a bit. Why couldn't games like Timeshift - far better received critically - get that much hype? Look at the threads discussing these games, and see how many people praised the game prior to its release. Look at views and posts in that thread, too, as a measure for "interest" in the game.
Then look at the hype for the genuinely innovative FPS Left 4 Dead, coming from Valve (yes, Turtle Rock is a wholly owned group in Valve), who are behind what are considered the greatest FPS games of all time - twice! Look at how much people aren't talking about Project ORIGIN.
Exclusivity isn't just about the simple bean counting... it impacts sales on your core platform. The hard part of going multi is identifying just how many more (or less) sales the exclusivity will cost you if you're concerned about getting lost amongst the bigger titles.
I'd like to take this bet.
On topic, repeating the question Shifty asked, why are all those new IPs are released on multiple platforms? Are all those publishers stupid or what?
not every developer is epic though.
this thread was original entiled something about epic and epic is the dev mentioned in the first thread.
Epic with its track record could get a developer to go out on a limb with it . They have made tripple a games time in and time out . MS's marketing push with gears made it a huge seller . Epic putting an established franchise on both consoles and the pc amounted to lack luster sales compared to gears.
Look at bioware when they were solo . Partnering with ms and others helped them make alot of huge games.
Kotor series was extremely big on the 20m selling xbox , you had mass effect also which was a strong seller .
You could ask why they didn't go multiconsole with the game .
i think with ms they have alot of things to offer. When you go exclusive to ms you really have 2 platforms you can target , the pc and the 360 . If approached right ms will also dump alot of money into the project in the form of advertising or even funding dlc .
Thats another interesting point. Look at fallout . Why make the dlc for 360 and xbox only. Why not make it for ps3 too ? Perhaps its because ms is able to advertise more effectively and has a great following that buys the dlc.
I disagree with that. Gears was a top title at its time and set a standard. There wasn't anything to compete with it graphically and they had the nicety of fire-and-cover gameplay which was a rare thing. It was a good game, and I feel folk are totally downplaying that. UT3 came after a long run of shooters, looked like Gears, and so offered little worth buying into. The marketing helped, but remenbered people MS paid for Gears! It got the marketing push because MS was using it to sell their platform. If MS hadn't have ponied up the money, what would Epic have done differently? How would that have affected the product? We can't rightly say, but looking at Gears as an example of a success, you're looking at a 2nd party exclusive and not a 3rd party exclusive. Same pretty much with Resistance.
You're saying Baldur's Gate, NWN and KOTOR were small-fry and not until Bioware went XB did they did get anyway?
The problem with that is they were PC devs and the PS2 was totally un-PC like. XB offered a platform that suited the devs, an extension of their PC market. If they could have produced quality Bioware titles on PS2, and wouldn't have had to compromise their artistic view to do it, they'd have made shed-loads more cash, but it wasn't their field.
Same can be said of Sony, with lots of developers saying how happy they are with Sony's support. But most importantly, if you're getting that much support, are you really 3rd party? If you're getting the console company behind your product and working exclusively for them, that's 2nd party, which is a different ball-game.
DLC is different from 3rd party exclusivity. The real question here is, if going 3rd party exclusive is so lucrative, why is Fallout cross-platform and not platform-exclusive?
Dominik D
Regular
I think it's pretty obvious in some (not all) cases. Engine development and platform familiarity.
Let's take a look at Codemasters. Colin McRae: Dirt was their first next-gen racing title. They released it on PC/360 in June 2007, PS3 SKU followed in September 2007. Race Driver: GRID on the other hand had real multiplatform launch.
Codemasters clearly needed time and money to support engine development, so they are able to keep up with other next-gen racing games. They focused on PC/360 SKU to get most of their studio and once proven that they can deliver quality on MS platforms, they shifted resources towards PS3 development. Focusing on arguably easier to develop for platform allowed them to release game faster and cash on it to support their further development. Once they got engine performing on all core platforms, they were able to work on all of them in parallel.
So yeah, I think it's a matter of maturity. I think that the goal of any studio is to be able to deliver quality on all platforms. To aid that, they need their teams to be proficient on all of them and they need tech supporting all the platforms. This was also true for Epic - they showed their tech on 360 with GoW, then shifted towards PS3/PC to prove the point (our tech works well on all platforms, buy it!). It's safe to assume their titles will be multiplatform from now on.
There are other examples like this: Red Alert 3 or even sport games from EA - there is no way EA would go exclusive with sport "simulators". Yet gap between development maturity is obvious. Other companies took the same approach: Dead Rising, Lost Planet - Capcom started engine development on one platform and now is able to deliver games on all of them. It's also true to some extent for, say, Crystal Dynamics. First "next-gen" Tomb Raider weren't really next-gen. Developer got familiar with the platform however and is able to pull of PS3/360 development today.
The current market is vastly different then markets of old where the console leader had such a dominant control over the market that multiplat cost vs. multplat revenue was skewed in favor of just being on the PS2, PS1 or SNES.
But going exclusive in today's market makes no sense without compensation. If you are a third party dev or pub then Halo, MGS4, GT, KZ2 or GeoW aren't really great examples of success. COD4, AC and Guitar Hero serve as better example since they have a more typical dev and marketing cost, yet rival unit sales of their exclusive, high budget and highly marketed brethrens due to being offered on various platforms.
Furthermore, the line for heavily funded or supported by manufacturers third party titles is relatively short and exclusive titles with more typical costs and budgets haven't been lighting up the top sales lists.
I think it depends on the lifecycle of the market. In the late stage where consoles are cheaper and there are greater install base overlap between the consoles, the difference may not be that great. But then again, the devs may have figured out cheaper and more effective ways to develop multiplatform games.
I'd invest more in understanding Wii and portable gaming user base, and somehow bring the same game there (or the reverse).
I'd invest more in understanding Wii and portable gaming user base, and somehow bring the same game there (or the reverse).
Actually, much of the software on the console leader is exclusive. Porting all that shovelware to the second-place 360 and third-place PS3 apparently is not worth it.
UT3 and GearsoW are two very different games in the sense of the way they were received by the gaming media and eventually the gamers.
GearsoW had its single player and multiplayer modes, UT3 was critisized for not having a real single player mode outside of arena style combat.
+
I doubt that is actually true, it may seem that way if we forget all of the free coverage that Gears of War and Halo 3 received from non console gaming media sites and magazines like CPU, Maximum PC, Anandtech, Tomshardware and others. I would also include the many blogs about those same sites posting their impressions on these games back when they were first released yet as far as PS3 is concerned there is barely a mention so far including even for Resistance FoM, that may change with R2 or KZ2 but at this point its up in the air as even MGS4 did not get all the free blogs (or at least the same ammount)
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
You can't be serious. Although they're frowned upon, we do have smilies that can be used to more accurately convey sarcasm.
I think Luna said it best, but he should have added 'at this point in this generation... it's more profitable for multiplatform releases'
The ease of development on the 360 and the early launch of the 360 made it very profitable for companies to make 360 exclusives. Now that both consoles have a fairly-sized install base and now that developers have had enough time to work with both the PS3 and the 360, the costs involved of going multiplatform are outweighed by the benefits. That wasn't true two years ago when this generation began, but it is true today.
So I'd expect to see less and less 3rd party exclusives for the remainder of this generation.
I am serious. The Wii really is the market leader, and a lot of its 3rd-party software is exclusive. Even if it's mostly shovelware, an exclusive is an exclusive, and some of it is very successful. I'm not expecting a 360 port of Carnival Games any time soon. Also, on the market leader, you have the advantage of a lower bar, so you don't need to sell as many titles to be profitable or invest as much in assets to be competitive. Zack & Wiki was moderately successful on Wii, but I doubt a 360 port would make any money. Shovelware getting dumped on the market leader is hardly a new phenomenon. Now that the Wii leads in the USA, I expect it to get even worse.
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A lot of Wii titles are cross-platform with PS2 though. You're also wrong about developing for the market leader not needing to sell as much - a game costs x amount to make and you have to recuperate. The market leader offers a larger install base, but the amount it is larger, and the willingness of the install base to buy software, all matters. That is, given Console A with 19 million units, Console B with 20 million units, and tie ratios of 10:1 and 5:1 respectively, it'd be clear the market leader wasn't a smart choice for exclusivity. As boring as it is to repeat, a cross-platform XB360 and PS3 title has a larger market to sell to than a Wii exclusive. And some would say far less competition as you wouldn't have Nintendo to compete with. Until a console has won a substantial lead such that an exclusive is still a larger market than the competition combined, and by a big way, exclusivities don't make economic sense from a pure-numbers POV. That's why we still have developers creating expensive PS360 games, instead of focussing on the Wii market.
I think the missing factor in your point on the Wii is that from day 1, before it was the market leader, it had a high ratio of exclusives which had nothing to do with momentum or market leadership. Part of that is GCN legacy, part of that is small investment in the actual games, part of that is not knowing the demographic, and part is the trend toward casual games that are shorter. Wii games, in more than one sense, are "cheaper" than PS3/360 games.
They don't translate well over to the PS3/360 because of control issues, but also because of quality/demographic issues. The business strategies are very, very different. The mass of exclusives on the Wii had less to do with market leadership or massive software adoption patterns by consumers of 3rd party titles, but some of the other factors. And because of the unique situation the Wii is in it seems like that as it draws more attention and larger investments that games will continue to [tend toward] being exclusive because they won't port well (controls), or compete well (design, graphics) on the other platforms.
They don't translate well over to the PS3/360 because of control issues, but also because of quality/demographic issues. The business strategies are very, very different. The mass of exclusives on the Wii had less to do with market leadership or massive software adoption patterns by consumers of 3rd party titles, but some of the other factors. And because of the unique situation the Wii is in it seems like that as it draws more attention and larger investments that games will continue to [tend toward] being exclusive because they won't port well (controls), or compete well (design, graphics) on the other platforms.