It’s interesting to see where we’ve come in the span of just two to three years. Several years ago, when Final Fantasy XIII was announced for the Xbox 360 as well as PS3, it was taken as the final sign of the death of third party exclusives. However, nowadays, we have Street Fighter 5 exclusive to the PS4, Bayonetta 2 exclusive to the Wii U and even Rise of the Tomb Raider being a very top-tier timed exclusive to the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
So will third party exclusives play a big role this generation? GamingBolt spoke to Dom Matthews, Product Development Ninja for Ninja Theory – which is bringing Hellblade out exclusively for the PS4 after working on third party titles for the last few years – about his thoughts.
“You know, I don’t know whether it’s gonna play a big role, I mean, it’s something that’s happening now in the market, but I don’t think the players really notice all that much, the players just wanna play games, on their new gen consoles or their PC, and I don’t think they really care where the game may be. And I think there are far bigger topics in gaming currently than any exclusivity or anything.”
Even with third party games that aren’t strictly exclusives, there are several other arrangements that are made such as exclusive bundles, marketing and distribution, etc. The best examples are the timed DLC for Call of Duty games on Xbox platforms and the recent timed exclusive DLC for Destiny on PlayStation platforms.
It’s pretty smart from a third party perspective – who wouldn’t want a major publisher handling all the marketing, distribution and publicity, thereby increasing exposure for their game and even providing financial assistance?
Matthews responded as to whether this is a factor for all third party exclusivity deals. “Well, of course, for us it allows us great things, for instance, for us, we were able to announce our game at Sony’s conference, in front of thousands of journalists.
“And we’re a small team, that’s something we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do by ourselves, I mean, we wouldn’t be able to get a thousand journalists in a room just to see what Ninja Theory is working on. So, to have the chance to have our game highlighted by Sony alongside the other great games coming to their platform, it’s the kind of thing where it’s great for us to have that kind of opportunity.”
What are your thoughts on the rise of the third party exclusives? Let us know in the comments below.
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