GR: “Despite the industry steadily moving towards its inevitable digital-only future, console exclusives are still a huge selling point for manufacturers. Big games like God of War 4, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Halo 5: Guardians have each been used to convince players to pick up a new console, and it’s imaginable that we’ll be seeing plenty more in the next console generation.
But should these exclusives continue to be so prevalent? Do we really need games that only launch on one console in the future, or should we be championing a multiplatform utopia?”
Yes
When people speak about making every game for every system, I.E. even first party being multiplatform. I feel like im taking crazy pills for noticing first party games are a cut above the rest due to knowledge of ones own hardware, and ability to really take advantage of every aspect of their console given they are only making it for a single platform. Quality would not be even close if they had to make it multiplatform. Yet they talk as if there's no way it'll be any different and you cant convince them otherwise.
Yes, they need to still be a thing, in fact i feel like they should be MORE of a thing than they were this gen especially for MS
Yes of course there will be exclusives.
However, with streaming "yes" may be less of a real answer to what console exclusive will mean. We know that MS will bring XCloud to as many devices as possible. I assume Stadia is taking on much devices as possible approach as well. This means day one availability for their exclusives (an approach Microsoft already takes with Game Pass). I assume Sony will want to be competitive with PSNow or risk being stuck at 700k instead growing into 10's of millions buying into the service. And to get more people in the seats for their service they too must bring first party games to their streaming platform on day one or very soon after release (Yoshida has implied as much in interviews) You can't treat streaming as second class citizen, hold back content and not bring those consoles exclusives that they have to their own streaming platforms. It is not about the consoles this next gen but about the ecosystem of each company as whole. PS (consoles and streaming), Xbox (consoles, PC, streaming), Stadia (streaming) The question is not will console exclusives be a thing but will ecosystem exclusives be? And to that the answer is yes.
Should there be? Absolutely not. Keeping console gamers from playing games on another console serves absolutely no purpose to help the wholistic gaming community.
Will there be? Yes, console vendors will continue to monet hat publishers to bring games only to their console.
If there were no exclusives I could spend about $800 more per generation on games. Because I would only need to buy one console to play every game. Today people buy multiple consoles to make sure they can play every good game. In a world without exclusives that would not be required.
There will always be console exclusives as long as their are small teams that can only afford certification on so many platforms. Not to mention first party games.