Exclusives... only good for ******s???

Many times exclusives push the hardware more than multiplatform titles.

Also, I'm not really sure what causes it, but it seems exclusives are generally the best titles (looking at my PS2 collection, 95% of my games are exclusive to PS2). Most multiplatform titles generally lack the soul/life/polish that many exclusives seem to have (as dumb as that sounds).

There's been a few 360 exclusives announced for PS3. Oblivion and that other RPG (can't think of the name at the moment) were both labeled as only on 360 and are both coming to PS3 now. It happens both ways.

I wish all publishers would decide on one platform, to be honest. Console wars are as dumb as video format wars (HD-DVD vs Blu-ray) in more ways than not. Exclusives are generally the only reason to own any platform at all (not just owning console A over console B, even) -- multiplatform games are generally the junk filler... once in a blue moon there will be a good multiplatform game, but that's like 2-3 times a year, if that.

Of course, that's just my opinion and I'm sure there are more than a few out there that love some/lots of the games UBI, EA and whatever other multiplatform giants put out. (sports games in general, splinter cell, tom clancy games, etc.)

 

Exclusives only for ******s?

Totally not.


Competition is not for ******s thats for sure. A ****** would have LOVED the existence of only their favourite console. There is no point for more than one console to exist if there are no exclusives. And we all know that wouldnt be a good thing

if all games are multiplatform then forget competition, forget product diversification and efforts between exclusive developers to offer extraordinary titles to counter the exclusives on the other competitive console, because its them that usually offer the most remarkable games

But even if more than 1 concoles exist multiplatform devs usually dont put the same remarkable effort to offer something brilliant as exclusive devs and they almost NEVER bother to optimize the game as perfectly possible to each hardware's capabilities and architecture.

Although the industry is kind of messy especially with so many fanatics of one brand, and the fact that gaming fans are forced to invest more to have the best experience possible, its because of that variety of consoles and exclusives that makes the console gaming industry all the more interesting and exciting.

 

Every platform has strengths and weaknesses. When you have to design for 2 or more platforms you have to take into account the accumulated weaknesses of all the systems. And you end up designing for the lowest common denominator.

The advantage of an exclusive is that it allows a developer to sharply focus on the strengths of just one particular system. And not have to make compromises over the weaknesses of another platform.

If course the problem with an exclusive is that your audience is smaller. And especially when a console just launches its hard to make your money back quickly if you only release on one platform.

As each platform matures we will probably see more and more good exclusives not less. It will get harder for developers to distinguish themselves from the competition unless they focus on just 1 platform.

When 2nd and 3rd gen games come rolling by, the difference between an exclusive game and a multiplatform game will be so obvious.

 

GTA was only a timed exclusive for PS2, and PS3 will also have extra downloadable content. I dunno whether the content will be the same as on the 360 or something different.

Assassin's Creed's exclusivity was suspicious from the beginning. AFAIK, Ubisoft has always released their games on multiple platforms.

Resident Evil hasn't been PlayStation exclusive since its 3rd part. I think everyone knew RE5 would be a multi-platform title. It was somewhat surprising they decided to release it on 360 as well, but was there really any another choice? Wii certainly couldn't handle RE5 without severe sacrifices.

 

People hoping desperatly for titles to remain exclusives are ******s for sure.

However, if a studio feels that their game is best intended for a specific platform and would rather not compromise by going multiplatform, then I support that notion fully. However they must take into account the financial factors.

 

http://www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/museum/games/scans/1226.jpg

 

you cant loose much if you have not got much.. no other thing to say actually

 

I think that the console market works in a way it needs the differents systems to have their own identities, so I guess that each have to brought its load of exclusive games to theirs consumers.

After that I disagree with this more multiplateform game=less quality.
OK exclusive are likely to be better quality wise but some huge editors have financial shoulders to provide good games to each systems. Especially when you compare the cost of content creation vs engine creation.

It's all in the editors's hands, if piracy is low this gen (more money for editors, better attachement rate) maybe editors will push quality on all the supports.

 

Without even mentioning which platforms have whatever game, I think this is an interesting discussion. I hope some of the wiser (industry folk) B3Ders chime in on the financial aspect of exclusivity versus the multi-platform route. If there is already a thread (or well-written document) discussing the financial strategies of software licensing across platforms please lead way Vysez.

 

I think the whole idea of having exclusives for one console is related to the idea of the console market itself, and how things have worked in the market for 20 years or so...

The day when every game can be played on every console, the console market will be exactly like the PC gaming market. Only with the difference of having 3 version of the same game all the time to choose from (until one console can play another console's title, which i don't think will happen any time soon).

I can understand why some people don't want that. Exclusives help shaping a console's image, and the console market in general. And of course, in the internet forum world (which is a tiny minority, let's not forget that), it's very good "discussion material" if you know what i mean...

Some people will always have a "personal attachment" to their goods and it seems that the console market is particularly prone to this. It's the whole "my dick is bigger than yours" (MDIBTY) mentality which will never, EVER die.

By contrast, the only MDIBTY material people can hang to in the PC world is how fast their PC can run a certain game - not if the game is on it at all...

 

When it comes to exclusives, I don't understand why there is such a thing as a "3rd party exclusive". It is clear that consoles x,y,z might have nearly an identical game library sans each console's 1st party exlusives (where the closer the hardware performance, the more this is true). But why would a 3rd party decide to go exclusively to a certain console? How is this ever justified in the business sense? The only explanation is that console x pays the dev > y+z will pay the dev (install base must have something to do with this also). <ex> I'd understand why a publisher would go with the PS2 over GC and Xbox - because of the massive difference in install base - but why decide so early in this market cycle? ramble..ramble ramble.....

 

If they can afford to be choosy, and they value their artistic integrity, the may choose art over commerce. There might be occasions (and i think there are) when a dev chooses to stick to one platform and really target it and push it, over a multiformat title which will have to avoid the weakest parts of both platforms. eg. Imagine one platform is great at churning out polygons, and another is great at particle effects. If developing a multiplatform title, you'd need to keep the polygon counts down to the lower spec'd machine unless you want to create duplicate content at extra expense. And you couldn't throw in fancy particle effects as a fundamental part of your game design as the other machine could cope with them. Hence you develop for only the common ground, the lowest common denominator. For commercial reasons that's okay, but if want to make a name for yourself as a developer of worth, being exclusive is quite an important choice to consider.

 

Not Splinter Cell 1 and (soon to be) Splinter Cell 5.

 

I am all for exclusives otherwise why have 3 different consoles, we may well have only 1 console in the market. It would be dreadful to have everygame multiplatform!

 

Splinter Cell ended up on PS2 and Gamecube as well, but of course they didn't look as good as the Xbox version.

 

Many japanese developers target the Japanese audience with games like gundam, onimusha, naruto, genji, etc....
Sure, they release it in NA and Europe but they don't sell as good as in Japan.
Because xbox360 doesn't sell well in Japan, there's no reason to port a game if not enough people will buy it. Porting a game is cheaper than making a brand new game but that doesn't mean it will automatically result in profit.
Also, 'human resources' are limited. The same guys that are working on the xbox360 version of a PS3 game could instead be instructed to work on a new PS3 game which will result in more profit.