The Shifting Nature of Exclusivity

gamesreviews.com:

Exclusivity is changing. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted a PlayStation to play Tomb Raider. I drew pictures, I read magazines. I had a Sega Saturn, and could’ve played it perfectly well there. But six-year-old me didn’t know that, and nothing I saw convinced me otherwise. I had a PlayStation that Christmas.

A bit after that we went into a little game shop in Birmingham – up near where Currys and Pizza Hut is now, if memory serves. We asked for recommendations and the older guy, who looked more like a mechanic than a game shop owner, picked up Final Fantasy VII and said we wouldn’t need any other game. This was the be all and end all of interactive entertainment. And for the then seven-year-old me, he was right. For a couple of months anyway.

I guess part of me knew that VII meant this was the seventh game in the franchise, and that they hadn’t been on PlayStation. But it didn’t matter. If this was where Final Fantasy was, that’s where I’d be.

Those days are long gone. With the announcement that Xbox is bringing HiFI Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves and Grounded to other consoles, and the double whammy of Sony looking to expand its PC efforts and the huge hit of Helldivers 2, those days of exclusivity are truly numbered. And as nostalgic as I get thinking about the 90s, that’s only a good thing.

Everybody I knew thought Tomb Raider was a PlayStation exclusive. Today, we’d be able to check any number of sources in seconds. It almost feels quaint that it was ever a question. A quick Google tells me that the Saturn version was quite successful, even. Nobody told us.

That kind of platform specific marketing is still quite effective. Call of Duty is often hinted at as the kingmaker when it comes to exclusive content in the last few generations. But not in the same way. Nobody is buying a PlayStation because Modern Warfare might not be on Xbox.

And Final Fantasy as a Nintendo product?! Even writing it today feels wrong, though I know logically it was once a thing.