Fortunately most developers don't have your extremely negative attitude.
Console Exclusives: Are you for or against them & why?
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Fortunately most developers don't have your extremely negative attitude.
No, fortunately for "PC" current consoles have the same architecture and that's why "PC" gets new games that have a clear, defined target: current consoles.
Keep telling yourself that.
Since someone mentioned PC, what I find very interesting is that despite being significantly more powerful and can typically run multiplatform games better, they rarely get games that set the bar as high as console exclusives. Also developers wait for the next wave of consoles to start making games that are above the typical "better resolution, better AA, better framerate and some details enhanced" improvements. This counts also for gameplay not just graphics.
Its like the industry is being led by consoles and the PC benefits from that. Even in the 32 bit era, it is quite obvious that the PCs were obliterating the PS1 in terms of graphics very early. Yet many games that defined the generation were doing some "crazy" things or were more creative with the limited resources. They were either console exclusives or multiplatform games that pushed the consoles.
Exclusive examples:
Gran Turismo had set new high standards for racing games. Its direction and visual style inspired the racers to come.
MGS1 set new standards in AI and game expression. It was the first game probably that came with a good representation of predator like camouflage effect
Such examples today are games like Uncharted 2 and God of War 3. These games were doing so many things in just one title that it is mind boggling. I would even say that GT5 probably set new standards as well. Yes PCs can do these games easily but we dont find similar games on PC. Also I am not aware of a PC racing game that has such an attention to detail on weather as Drive Club.
Multiplatform examples:
There is one game that really made me a huge impression back then. Soul Reaver did crazy stuff with its environments. The game not only geometrically morphed the environments but there were also doors standing in the middle of a room where you could see another accessible environment on the other side as it was being streamed on the go. That game was a technical masterpiece.
Such examples today are games like MGS5, Final Fantasy 15, Batman Arkham Knight. I see exclusive games on PCs and they rarely impress me, minus some exceptions that follow the brute force approach
Its like the industry is being led by consoles and the PC benefits from that. Even in the 32 bit era, it is quite obvious that the PCs were obliterating the PS1 in terms of graphics very early. Yet many games that defined the generation were doing some "crazy" things or were more creative with the limited resources. They were either console exclusives or multiplatform games that pushed the consoles.
Exclusive examples:
Gran Turismo had set new high standards for racing games. Its direction and visual style inspired the racers to come.
MGS1 set new standards in AI and game expression. It was the first game probably that came with a good representation of predator like camouflage effect
Such examples today are games like Uncharted 2 and God of War 3. These games were doing so many things in just one title that it is mind boggling. I would even say that GT5 probably set new standards as well. Yes PCs can do these games easily but we dont find similar games on PC. Also I am not aware of a PC racing game that has such an attention to detail on weather as Drive Club.
Multiplatform examples:
There is one game that really made me a huge impression back then. Soul Reaver did crazy stuff with its environments. The game not only geometrically morphed the environments but there were also doors standing in the middle of a room where you could see another accessible environment on the other side as it was being streamed on the go. That game was a technical masterpiece.
Such examples today are games like MGS5, Final Fantasy 15, Batman Arkham Knight. I see exclusive games on PCs and they rarely impress me, minus some exceptions that follow the brute force approach
Such a game on PC was the first Crysis. It really felt like the equivalent of console exclusives but on PC. Truth be told, it couldn't run maxed on any hardware at release and it sold poorly, but it was something completely new. I still remember how i was blown away when i first played the demo. And it wasn't just graphics, gameplay was spot on too. There's nothing like this on PC nowadays.
Shifty, I just got shivers down my spine at the thought of Ubisoft buying ND. Terrifying.
D
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Uncharted 4 would probably be a better game if it included a map with a bunch of towers that unlocked nearby side missions.
Hardware that can play games is needed, but that needn't be discrete, incompatible boxes. Considering all consoles are basically the same as every other computing architecture (CPU, GPU, RAM, storage), having several incompatible variations on the same premise to do the same job doesn't make a great deal of sense. Back in the Old Days it did when the hardware was very different and specialised, but now it isn't. Why should games need specific brands of hardware to play where music and video doesn't? Truth is games don't need specific brands where there's no hardware differentiator, and it's only business reasons that limit software availability. That's why the vast majority of games are available on all the current platforms.
Again, the PC argument isn't valid here. The choice isn't all PC or mixed consoles. The question is if software designs that can be run on other hardware but is excluded from that hardware is a Good Thing or not.
Currently we have three boxes all capable of playing the same games. Why is it better that you can only play QB if you own an XB1 when the same could in some form could run on PS4 and PC? Similarly why is Dreams limited to PS4? And why is Epic's Fortnight only coming to PC? If you want to play these three games, you need to have three similar boxes.
I'd quite like to see someone on the pro exclusives side make the same argument regards movies. Or at least explain why movies and games as content aren't comparable and why the game market shouldn't and couldn't operate as the movie market.
It's been a while since I gave you shivers, hun'.
If MS didn't compete or have to compete against Sony and vice versa we wouldn't see the same quality of games most probably. The console market almost always had multiple competitors (Sony, Nintendo, MS, Sega). In addition, competition also drives innovation under the right circumstances, you can read more on that here: http://web.stanford.edu/~nbloom/PevertedU.pdf
If there's one downside to all this is that console exclusive devs are put under more pressure to deliver. But this helps the final product in the end. Hardware focus and performance is also another point, most if not all exclusive games tend to run better than their multiplatform counterparts, which leads to a better player experience. There are other pros and cons to this whole debate but it's better to put it simply like this:
If there's one downside to all this is that console exclusive devs are put under more pressure to deliver. But this helps the final product in the end. Hardware focus and performance is also another point, most if not all exclusive games tend to run better than their multiplatform counterparts, which leads to a better player experience. There are other pros and cons to this whole debate but it's better to put it simply like this:
- Software competition = good
- Hardware competition = good
- Software + Hardware competition = best case scenario for consumers
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True but it was one of the exceptions which was also a brute force approach too.
Because EA and Ubi etc aren't competing? There seems to be a view that first party console exclusives are significantly better than what anyone else is producing. This just isn't the case. Go look at Metacritic for the top scoring games on any platform. It's dominated by third parties, simply because the number of first party titles is dwarfed and 3rd party developers are just as capable of creating awesome games as 1st party. All software markers are competing for game players' dollars, and all are pushing themselves within whatever limits (economical, etc) are in place.
That's kinda patronising. I think everyone on this board knows how business works. No-one's suggesting remove competition from software. The hardware competition just isn't essential to get awesome games, and comes with a significant penalty of either limited library or considerable expense on redundant hardware.
Publishers control. What you're describing is standard publisher behaviour. As a game developer, you have an idea and see if anyone will publish it. If not, you come up with another game idea. Sometimes publishers go to you to make a game. Uncharted exists because Sony told ND to make a shooter. Yes, these games wouldn't exist if the companies that forced them didn't make those choices, but they'd have made other games instead. We wouldn't lament the lack of QB or UC if they'd never existed and we were playing the latest games from Remedy and ND.
Huh? One, that's not the argument, that consoles shouldn't exist. Two, if there was only one platform it'd get all the games, wouldn't it? How can that not be the case? You're suggesting that there are game developers, people who want to make games, who'd be doing something else if there wasn't a hardware platform they could be exclusive to. That everyone at Remedy and Naughty Dog and Media Molecule would refuse to make games on the available game playing platform.
List of ~60 PC exclusives that apparently don't exist because only consoles get decent games and PC only gets ports. I'm sure some (many) of these will go cross platform because being platform exclusive just means limiting your audience, but the cost of porting may make the business case for staying PC exclusive.
Always feels like the first time!It's been a while since I gave you shivers, hun'.
The more platforms (or architectures ) , the better. Honestly I don't remember the PS2 virtual monopoly as such a great era for gaming. If Steam (the PS2 of PC?) had more competition and less money in the bank maybe they would have already released Half Life 3 and Portal 3.
Overall there are much more interesting and diverse games nowadays thanks to exclusives from several competing hardware manufacturers + big AAA multiplats from competing third party publishers + indies & PC exclusives (that can be ported to consoles if they are really successful).
So yes keep producing exclusives, whether their platforms, because we love them!
) , the better. Honestly I don't remember the PS2 virtual monopoly as such a great era for gaming. If Steam (the PS2 of PC?) had more competition and less money in the bank maybe they would have already released Half Life 3 and Portal 3. Overall there are much more interesting and diverse games nowadays thanks to exclusives from several competing hardware manufacturers + big AAA multiplats from competing third party publishers + indies & PC exclusives (that can be ported to consoles if they are really successful).
So yes keep producing exclusives, whether their platforms, because we love them!
PS2 was awesome! Loads of amazing games. And, again, the reason games were platform exclusive was the cost of porting due to highly disparate architectures. PS2's 3rd party exclusives weren't amazing because they were exclusive, and all this exclusivity meant was that if you wanted to play Kingdom Hearts and Halo, you had to buy two boxes.
PS2 was also a platform dominated by third parties (Metacritic), not first party flagship titles.
So to summarise, the best games, going by metascores, are made by third parties and are only platform exclusive when the business made sense. Developers strive to produce the best games they can because they are competing with other software developers - the platform has no influence in that. Every first party developer producing games would be a third party developer producing awesome games (or at least the talent would be in the industry still) if the first party exclusives weren't being made - every studio closure sees the developers get other jobs.
Unless someone can actually counter this with something other than a circumstantial reference to some first party exclusives they like, I consider the argument concluded.
PS2 was also a platform dominated by third parties (Metacritic), not first party flagship titles.
So to summarise, the best games, going by metascores, are made by third parties and are only platform exclusive when the business made sense. Developers strive to produce the best games they can because they are competing with other software developers - the platform has no influence in that. Every first party developer producing games would be a third party developer producing awesome games (or at least the talent would be in the industry still) if the first party exclusives weren't being made - every studio closure sees the developers get other jobs.
Unless someone can actually counter this with something other than a circumstantial reference to some first party exclusives they like, I consider the argument concluded.
I agree that we'd still get awesome games and fun experiences regardless of platform exclusivity. What i don't agree with is that games made for a single platform == games that are being developed for different platforms. I mean, sure we'd probably get Uncharted and Halo and Zelda in a single platform if we had a unified console tomorrow and all other platforms stopped existing all together. We wouldn't have future franchises that will be created during this generation purely for competition though. I just don't see how one unified console will benefit gamers in the long run other than saving, what, 300-400$? Sony and MS competing with each other means much more than just better, more competitive games:
Competition, be it hardware or software, means more value for consumers, you get more for less. Sure, you miss on some exclusives if you decide to go single platform, but the value you get in return doesn't even compare to what you'd get if there wasn't any competition. It's like saying that we don't need different retailers selling 90% the same things, we don't need Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart and w/e else competing with each other and offering better value, because everything can be sold from a single retailer. What!? How can anyone even think this is a good idea for the typical consumer? Monopoly usually means firm profit >>> everything else, even if that means that you'd have to pay twice the amount for the same console you are buying today for 400$. This is nothing new in Bussiness:
- More software & OS optimization, trying to squeeze every % of performance from the hardware
- Added features, late gen OS and features will look different because of neck and neck competition driving change
- More competitive bundles, offering more value for a lower price point
Competition, be it hardware or software, means more value for consumers, you get more for less. Sure, you miss on some exclusives if you decide to go single platform, but the value you get in return doesn't even compare to what you'd get if there wasn't any competition. It's like saying that we don't need different retailers selling 90% the same things, we don't need Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart and w/e else competing with each other and offering better value, because everything can be sold from a single retailer. What!? How can anyone even think this is a good idea for the typical consumer? Monopoly usually means firm profit >>> everything else, even if that means that you'd have to pay twice the amount for the same console you are buying today for 400$. This is nothing new in Bussiness:
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You still don't seem to be getting the argument. No-one has suggested just one hardware. I think there's another discussion on hardware/platform competition in this board. This thread is just about games not being available on other machines. There could be multiple hardwares, exactly as is now. Only with all games being cross platform. Exactly like DVD players - lots to choose from, all play the content you want. And the games that Sony and MS make, they could release on their rivals, because they'd make more money from those games. Or they could not make games and just make hardware and take a cut of every game on their machine made by third parties.
Yes, I know that'd never happen, I know that the exclusives is what they use to try and get people to buy their machine. But without those exclusives, they'd still compete on price, power, and features. Having exclusive games doesn't necessarily make those games better (see Metacritic argument).
Yes, I know that'd never happen, I know that the exclusives is what they use to try and get people to buy their machine. But without those exclusives, they'd still compete on price, power, and features. Having exclusive games doesn't necessarily make those games better (see Metacritic argument).
That's really a big problem IMO, not diverse (as in special, exotic) enough. Just compare the 10 best PS2 Vs PS4 games. PS2 list is boring: 3 GTAs, 2 Tony Hawks, one madden after so many years of domination? Meh.
Not anymore the case.
Unless someone can actually counter this with something other than a circumstantial reference to some first party exclusives they like, I consider the argument concluded.
2nd, 3rd and 4th, I don't think it can be considered circumstantial.
Sure, I don't deny it, but it didn't deserve so much success IMO. Sony pulled a "Wii" with its PS2 + DVD Player, killing the Dreamcast along the way and its potential new games or sequels from already released exclusives.
