Game exclusivity is dying, and that’s a good thing

digitaltrends.com:

Up until the current generation of video game consoles, each system was defined primarily by its exclusive games. We may call it the “console wars,” but the battles have always been Mario vs. Sonic and Master Chief vs. Nathan Drake rather than Nintendo vs. Sega or PlayStation vs. Xbox. It was the games that drove people to buy one box over the other, and those have always driven a wedge in the gaming community. Few people had access to every console, so we felt the need to justify our choices by idolizing “our” exclusives and downplaying the competition’s. For a long time, that tribalism helped console makers build a loyal fanbase to run a successful business on.

Exclusives make less and less sense in our modern era. They have always been anti-consumer to some extent, but now both first and third-party developers are wising up top the fact that the old business model needs to die in order for the industry to survive. We’re currently witnessing the death of traditional exclusives and that’s not a change you should fear.

Tearing down the walled garden

Exclusive games have always been a manipulative and predatory business practice for players. Those who could only afford to buy one console each generation would miss out on a whole library of games due to that choice. That, or they’d be forced to purchase an expensive piece of hardware to cover all their bases. This approach gave each console a distinct identity from its competitors but at the cost of FOMO and a hostile environment between fanbases. I believe everyone understands that exclusives have never been good for consumers on a basic level despite the segments of the audience that felt the need to crusade against one another on behalf of a major corporation that only cared about their dollars.

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