It’s becoming a more and more standard practice in today’s gaming industry for companies to release games, DLC, and many other exclusives to just one console for a limited amount of time before being made available to other platforms. But does this really help the industry or does it, in actual fact, damage more so than help? This is an ongoing debate, so let’s talk about the effects that this is having on gamers and on the gaming industry.
Above all else, I feel that the fans and gamers are the ones who suffer the most from this, because not only does it make choosing a console more difficult, but it takes away some great gaming experiences that otherwise would not have been missed. The greatest example of this that comes to mind, for me at least, is Rise of the Tomb Raider.
To put it into perspective, I wrote an article not that long ago, on my top 5 games, and Rise of the Tomb Raider was on that list. This is a great game, but I feel the timed exclusivity, which Microsoft had for this game did a disservice to the title and the gaming world. Owners of the PlayStation 4 had to wait an entire year before the Xbox One exclusivity was lifted, and by this time, some PlayStation owners forgot about this title and moved onto a more relevant release.
With how fast we get great, new games it’s very hard to stay on top of the new releases as they come out. making time to complete these great titles before the next AAA comes out is near impossible and with the volume of games coming out today, the list keeps growing.
So why does the industry feel that it’s necessary to get the next great game as a “timed exclusive”? Basically, it comes down to “developers above the gamers” They feel that if they get the rights to certain games, then the people who want to play the game will have no choice but to go out and buy their system to enjoy that game.
Let’s go back to Rise of the Tomb Raider. When the franchise did its reboot back in 2013, this game was released for all systems, and then when the next generation of gaming consoles came out from Sony and Microsoft, it was also released for both systems simultaneously. So say if someone went out and bought a PlayStation 4 and bought Tomb Raider and had a great experience playing the game, then heard the announcement that a sequel was on its way. This should be great news for anyone who really enjoyed the first game of the reboot, but this was not the case for PlayStation owners. Being told that to play the next offering of Tomb Raider on release day you would need an Xbox did nothing but upset PlayStation owners, and many of them probably moved on to the next great game that they could play on the same release day while missing out on playing a great title.
To give the Xbox owners access to both offerings from the Tomb Raider franchise, and allowing the Sony players access to only one of the offerings, is just not cool, especially when it’s coming from a highly anticipated franchise.
Another popular franchise among the gaming community, and one of the biggest is Call of Duty. Microsoft for the longest time had early exclusive rights to DLC for this franchise, but the “tables turned” when Call of Duty: Black Ops III was in the making. Activision, the developers behind Call of Duty: Black Ops III had developed a close relationship with Sony mainly due to another very successful new I.P, Destiny. With this success, Sony signed a deal with Activision to ensure that their fans would get exclusive access to the Call of Duty DLC.
Activision signed a 10 year deal with Sony and owners of their system got exclusive access to content on their PlayStation’s before any other console. Activision also gave Sony a high amount of exclusive content for Destiny, including a co-op strike mission, exclusive maps and a tonne of exclusive guns, gear, and even ships. Some of this content will remain exclusive content for PlayStation owners up until after the launch of Destiny 2. So as you can see, this is a substantial amount of content to offer one player base over another.
So now that “the gloves are off”, it seems that Microsoft is trying to somewhat “even” the competition by sealing a deal with another successful title. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds proved to be very successful on PC, and Microsoft noticed this and took the necessary steps to secure exclusivity to the game’s debut on console later this year . This was a huge E3 announcement for Microsoft, and another big step in the segregation of console owners.
With all this fighting over console exclusivity, is this just confirming that we will never get cross-platform gaming between Sony and Microsoft? If this is the case, then this is just another successful attempt at undermining gamers on Xbox and PlayStation. For first party titles, this is totally acceptable and some gamers will purchase a console solely based on what first party titles they have to offer. But for third party titles, exclusivity should be removed from the equation.
Another scenario where one might miss out on a great title from this exclusiveness is when a friend or colleague discovers a great game. Some people don’t have the luxury of owning multiple systems and as a result they could have different systems. Then they go and tell their friend about this great game that they played which isn’t a first party title, and the friend learns that they won’t be able to play this certain game until maybe a year down the road. I feel that this is not right and does nothing to grow the gaming community.
So as you can see exclusivity could actually be used to persuade someone to purchase one console over the other, and then that person will have to live with that decision and hope that their favorite franchises will remain exclusive on their console, or they will need to spend their hard earned money to buy their competitor’s console, just so they don’t have to wait however long, to play a favorite title.
In conclusion I would like to say that when it comes to buying a new gaming system, there’s a couple reasons why we choose to get the console that we buy. Whether it’s because a friend play’s on a certain console, or if it’s due to which console offers your favorite first party title, these should be the only reasons we choose our console of choice, but now with timed exclusives being thrown into the mixture, it just adds to the frustration in choosing which console to commit.
So what are your thoughts on “timed exclusives”? Did you buy a console based on a title that had exclusive rights? Please let us know in the comments. Thank you and happy gaming!
