Loss of Exclusivity


Opinion

Video game exclusives: A relic of the past that’s losing its value.

By Josiah Sapp



    In the early nineties, there was a famous dispute between Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo had an iron grip on the gaming industry and Sega wanted to be the ones to rival them first and take them down. This is known as the console wars and it’s effects can still be felt today. During the “wars”, both companies had a champion for their cause. A mascot that would represent them to the masses. Nintendo had the loveable Italian plumber Mario and Sega had the fast paced, edgy Sonic the hedgehog. Both companies screamed from the mountaintops “You can only play this character on our console!” Thus pitting customers against one another forcing them to choose one gaming console or other. This is where exclusivity began and gaming companies are still trying persuade use with the same argument today.

Sony vs. Nintendo vs. Microsoft
    The word “exclusive” means to be limited or restricted to a single group or idea. It also means to exclude or not admit other things. It has some grand connotations to the word. It provokes thoughts of the upper class and being a part of something special that not just anyone can be a part of. The big gaming companies (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) try to tap into these feelings when they claim their games are exclusive. They try to pull you into their group and make you feel superior to the anyone else who aligns with another console. It’s all about hardware sales. The more they can entice you, the more likely you’ll spend money on their products and gridlock you into a single brand. This is a basic business model that is proving to be difficult to maintain today.   
    Things aren’t as clear cut as two companies competing against each other. There are even more independant game developers in the market and the amount of ways that people can play games has grown exponentially. Console generations are starting to get blurred and with the rise of PC gaming, there just aren’t that many options for companies to pin exclusives to but they still try. This is where the word “exclusive” gets muddied and loses it’s value. Terms like “timed exclusive” and “launch exclusive” are getting tossed around at game conferences and if you think about those phrases it becomes an oxymoron. How can something be exclusive if it’s only for a time or at the beginning of a console’s life span? Doesn’t that negate the meaning of the word itself? This happens far too often and the fans are the ones paying for it.
    Fans end up paying the most for these exclusives. They have to weigh the pros and cons of what console (if any) they want to play on solely based on what games are available and aren’t available but everyone knows that it doesn’t even matter. Most if not all exclusives will eventually come to the console of your choice thanks to PC gaming. PC game rigs have become easier to make and more popular to play on and they easily outpace consoles in specs. Games are easier to make for PC’s, easier to access, and to distribute to the fans. There isn’t such a things as a PC exclusive because it often serves as a testing ground for consoles. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a great example. Right now it’s only available on PC and has already sold a few million copies but just struck an exclusive deal with Microsoft to be available on Xbox One. The odd thing is that the creator of Battlegrounds, Brendon Greene, has already stated that a PS4 version is “in the works”. All while Microsoft is toting it around stating that Xbox is the only place to play it.
    Exclusives have gotten laughable within the gaming community. Producers trod out their line up for their consoles and everyone who is reporting on it already know that these games will eventually come out everywhere. All major gaming websites (IGN, GameInformer, Polygon, Kotaku) don’t treat exclusive claims with any value or merit. Fans don’t make console purchase decisions based on what games are “exclusive”. It appears the only ones to actually put stock in this process are the game producers. What fans really want is to be able to play all games in one central location but that’ll cost these companies a lot of money. Unfortunately, claiming something is exclusive doesn’t make them the big bucks either.

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