Exclusives Done Right

Skip it if you are someone who is rich and don't have a care in the world.
Read on if you are someone frugal who would feel something eating you inside if you see something that you own sitting there not being used regularly.

In my humble opinion, Platform Exclusives is the necessary evil for platform holders like Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. Exclusives help sell their hardware and ultimately offer them the platform differentiation. So, I am very happy that the big 3, have several in-house game development studios (generally called first party studios) to develop exclusive games for each of their platforms. The first party studios have early and in-depth access to their own hardware and more often than not develop games that utilizes each platforms unique features. I fully understands and supports this.

Then, we have the 3rd party development studios, fronted by big publishers like Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Take2 and the like. Finally, the indie development studios. Surely if you are a third-party studio, you would want your games to be on more platforms as long as it is economically viable, making platform exclusives some sort of misnomer.

So why 3rd party studio exclusives?
Things started off simply with the more benign platform exclusives such as characters in a fighting game, then grew all the way to platform exclusive games. If I were to point fingers, it will be to Microsoft who started this initially with Activision's Call of Duty(COD) during the Xbox360's glory days. It meant that Playstation owners will get COD map packs a month later the Microsoft console owners. This has now ascended to the gamer-divisive exclusive such as Titanfall, Sunset Overdrive and Bayonetta 2. Platform holders fill the coffers of these companies to secure these exclusives. I bloody hates this. Why?

Any form of exclusivity means that the larger general console gaming public (ie one that owns a single console) will never get to experience the magic of some of these titles, which is such a shame. I will never get to play Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy, Mariokart 8, Professor Layton, Shovel Knights, Bastion, Gears of War 3, Splintercell Conviction orTitanfall, because they are either on Nintendo or Microsoft platforms.

So, how can Platform Exclusives be done the right way? Here's what I think:

• 1st Party Platform exclusive for game: YES but
• This should be done but I think with hardware sales struggling Nintendo should look into porting a set of hit franchises from previous generation (N64 or Wii) to XboxOne/PS4. This will help the non-Nintendo gamers develop some love for Nintendo games and perhaps buy Nintendo WiiU or future hardware as the secondary console. 

• 3rd Party Platform exclusive for game: NO because
• This limits the market potential for the game. Developers can consider timed exclusive to reduce risk if the game is a new IP

• Indie Platform exclusive for game: Definitely NO because
• Any form of exclusive alignment with a platform holder kind of goes against the tenets of an indie developer 

That being said, here are some of the recent exclusivity terms that we are seeing and what I think of them:

• Time-limited exclusive - means that the game and/or its downloadable content will be exclusive to a single platform. It will arrive to other platforms later (1 month, etc)
• My opinion: Ok, patience is a virtue

• Platform exclusive content - means that a game content either character or game mission will be exclusive to a single platform. 
• My opinion: Totally against this. Unless the character is totally useless or the game mission is totally uninspiring, developers should never have different experiences for a specific market subset

• Early Access or Beta Access - means a specific platform get to beta test or play a portion of the game early than other platforms
• My opinion: Ok, no problem with this (quite similar to timed exclusive in a way)

No doubt, some of these exclusives in the previous generation (Xbox360, PS3, Wii) could be due Xbox360's supreme market position, PS3's insanely difficult architecture and Wii's lower horsepower. 

I am hopeful that this current generation, with XboxONE and PS4 market parity (arguable though, if you look at worldwide sales at the moment), their similar PC-based architecture, and multiplatform development tools such as Unity(PC, Android, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft), platform exclusives will rear its ugly head less and less. Money should be spent on developing your own games, not blocking other platform's access to a 3rd party or indie developer (Microsoft, I am looking at you)