The buzz around Titanfall did have one drawback. PlayStation fans, who had long played Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games, were going to be left out in the cold, at least initially. Respawn had planned to focus on one main platform at launch and release Titanfall first for Xbox One and PC. But as PlayStation 4 gained more and more buzz and consumer attention coming out of E3, the requests for a PS4 version started intensifying.
The way Respawn saw it, the developer had never agreed to full exclusivity for Titanfall on Xbox platforms, only an exclusive window of up to 13 months. Zampella maintains that the team only found out that EA had turned an exclusive window deal into permanent exclusivity in the summer of 2013, weeks after the game’s spectacular showing at E3.
The deal was a complicated one as Respawn wasn’t dealing directly with Xbox. Instead, terms were negotiated through EA, which signed a larger, overarching partnership deal with Microsoft for the Xbox One. In order to make the economics work and keep Titanfall alive, EA needed a first-party publisher to invest. Xbox was willing to step up and save the project, which turned out to be a wise bet. Xbox now has one of the biggest games of the year as an exclusive to its platforms, although it lays no claim to any sequels.
Always one to be honest and direct with his fans, Zampella took to Twitter to explain that it wasn’t Respawn’s choice to never release the first Titanfall on PlayStation 4:
