A reader is upset at the thought of video game exclusives becoming a thing of the past and worries it could mean the end of PlayStation.
For months now we’ve been hearing about job layoffs across the games industry and trying to work out why Sony is being so uncommunicative, but I have to admit I didn’t pay it much attention at first. Not that I want to seem heartless about the job cuts but, obviously, there’s nothing I can do about it. Then the rumours of Microsoft going multiformat started and, shockingly, Sony started to say the same sort of things as well. Change is clearly upon us and I can’t see that any of it is good.
Admittedly, not having to buy two different consoles, for a different set of exclusives, is a good thing but I feel that is going to be small comfort once we realise the full ramifications of what all this means. I’ve seen some people (mostly Xbox fans) cheering the idea of the end of exclusives entirely, but they seem to have forgotten why it is that they exist in the first place.
Exclusives are a way to promote a console, to show off everything it can do and create a game so good people will buy a new machine to play it on. If Sony and Microsoft don’t have exclusives then there is nothing to distinguish the consoles, which are functionally almost identical, and at that point there becomes no point in making them anymore.
As ludicrous as it was to spend that much, Sony would not have spent $300 million making Spider-Man 2 if it wasn’t a way to also sell and promote the PlayStation 5, which it clearly did very well. The licence wouldn’t even have been offered to them in the same way, since Marvel was specifically approaching them with the idea of doing an exclusive.
Spider-Man games had been multiformat for years before that and while successful were never really blockbusters. It’s likely that, with less money being spent on them, that any multiformat Spider-Man game Sony made would’ve just been a minor hit like they used to be.
Or consider Halo. Nowadays it’s a fairly unremarkable shooter franchise that relies on nostalgia for most of its success, something that PlayStation owners don’t have. Most Xbox and PlayStation exclusives either wouldn’t have had the same amount of money and time spent on them if they were multiformat or they don’t have the same appeal outside of the original audience.
The time and money spent on exclusives is because they’re designed to be killer apps, they have a specific purpose and are prestige products. Even if people aren’t interested in them they make the console seem better and more desirable, as they win awards and are used as reasons for why one console is better than the other. Not many people ever bought The Last Guardian or Bloodborne but their reception is still a great help to the PlayStation’s reputation.
In the one format future we seem to be headed for (I’m ignoring Nintendo in all of this, for obvious reasons) consoles will be no more different than a washing machine or TV. Sure, some of them have slightly different features but they’re all basically the same and you probably don’t even know what yours is called or who made it.
The rumours about Microsoft is that it’s planning to let other companies make Xbox hardware, which will really hammer in the nail on the console coffin. Some may celebrate the end of console wars but if you accept that competition is good then for games then that has to mean exclusives.
Once exclusives fade away so will the importance of which console you need, a double whammy that will basically destroy Sony. What happens to Microsoft I couldn’t say, given their money, but it’s going to be a Pyrrhic victory for them if they then proclaim themselves the final winner of the console wars.
Phil Spencer claims he is a gamer, but he seems oblivious to the fact (or, more likely, doesn’t really care) that his decisions are destroying everything that the games industry has been for the last 50 years. If you want a future where PlayStation doesn’t exist, and everything is live service games except for Nintendo and a few evergreen franchises, then by all means cheer on the death of exclusives.
If that all sounds like the opposite of what you want from the future of gaming then I’d be a little less blasé about the changes that are happening around us, all of which seem to be for the worst.
By reader Domino
he reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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