Ever since the advent of 7th generation of consoles, there has been a drastic reduction in the number of consoles exclusives. Of course, they exist today but you won’t find too many third party exclusives similar to what we had during the PlayStation 2 days.
So what exactly is the reason behind the lack of exclusives on current gen consoles? GamingBolt recently caught up with Andy Nealen who specializes in computer graphics and is a consultant at Hemisphere Games. Andy also handles his day to day responsibilities as a professor of Game Engineering and Design at NYU Poly. We asked Andy about his thoughts on the lack of exclusives on current gen platforms and according to him it all comes down to people wanting to make more money.
“I think it’s mostly because people want to make money. Again, when we had fewer releases, it was totally viable for a platform holder to offer exclusive deals to developers. A developer knew that if they are exclusive to a console, and that console developer gives them a leg up, or funding, or marketing and advertisement, and that sort of stuff, then it’s gonna be beneficial for them. But these days I think at the end of the day, if your product or your game only launches on a single platform, and that platform is not mobile, then you’re going to have a tough time. And I think that’s the main reason that people are not seeing as many platform exclusives.”
“I mean, that said, Street Fighter V is console PS4 exclusive, right? So it’s not like we don’t have them. The games industry comes up with the wildest terms, though, right? I mean ‘console’ exclusives. So funny! I still remember back in the day when Rockstar announced that they got a billion dollars from Microsoft to make the GTA4 episodes Xbox 360 exclusives- I don’t think they can pull that off anymore. And those things were timed exclusive anyway! Unless you are a first or second party developer, those things are usually timed exclusive.”
At the end of the day, you will see a lot of first party exclusives like Uncharted 4 but you won’t see a popular third party AAA franchise like Fallout going exclusive to one platform. In today’s market it’s simply too big a financial risk to develop a multi-million dollar game for a single platform.
What are your thoughts on this matter?
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