Agreed. I'm still hoping to get a cheap PS3 someday to get MGS4, Valkyria Chronicles, and the tales of symphonia pack (among others). Luckily, there are many more exclusive games to handhelds and the PC than for anything else.Rendark said:
Console exclusives: are they really necessary?
- Thread starter arber man
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I'll absolutely concede to you that it's a terrible option, but you have to concede that the reason it's not viable is that your average consumer is an idiot. We're basically on the same side here. I don't think any of this is a likely scenario, neither of us wants to see a monopoly, and I don't think that if it did happen people would have the will to actually make the stand required to affect change. The fact is that it's the average consumer that makes the rules, and we just get to hope they don't screw it up. I'm of the mentality that Microsoft didn't recant on the Xbone because Sony was taking the gaming community by storm, but because Jimmy Falon pointed out to mainstream consumers that it was full of rubbish.Yopaz said:
Like I said, I'm fairly neutral on the subject. They exist, and they move consoles, but as the consoles become increasingly similar technologically, the number of console exclusives will likely also dwindle until strictly first party titles are left. The only reason I care is that I'd love to see more hardware side variation because hardware makes games possible and is directly responsible for limiting what games can do. I think that exclusives reduce hardware innovation because the companies can just hold them to a given console. That's my take on current trends anyway.
Yes exclusives are necessary, ppl wouldn't buy the gaming machine otherwise. Consoles aren't some out-dated thing that should die, they are and will continue for quite some time to be more popular than PC gaming (EDIT if consoles are outdated so are desktop PC since they been replaced by laptops & handhelds). Consoles are a good thing since the competition and money in them fuels our whole hobby. And besides it's not as if each machine is a carbon copy of each other, each has their own particular strengths, control types, genres and community. Exclusive titles are built with those strengths in mind, therefore giving gamers a better gaming experience.
As I mentioned each platform has it's own community that likes certain genres and one type of game might be a flop on another platform. That includes the PC where even though there are plenty of niches, there still is an archetypal PC gamer who uses M&K instead of a pad, you only have to look at the type of games that are most popular on Steam's Greenlight to see that in effect. EG the total lack of arcade style 2D run and gun games while indie M&k 2D run & gunners are ten a penny and good luck playing a MP FPS with a pad on PC.
Also PC has more exclusives than consoles do, or do they not count?
While PC is great and all, I bought a 360 to play all the exclusive shmups plus 3rd person shooters and hack and slashers. I also enjoy the SRPGs and Dungeon Crawlers on the PSP / DS.
There is alot of games that are on the PS3 / Wii/U & 3DS that I'd love to play but don't have the time or money to buy them, (getting a WiiU near Xmas though) that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist and they along with consoles certainly aren't out of date (as if popularity should have such a pull on any hobby of mine)
As I mentioned each platform has it's own community that likes certain genres and one type of game might be a flop on another platform. That includes the PC where even though there are plenty of niches, there still is an archetypal PC gamer who uses M&K instead of a pad, you only have to look at the type of games that are most popular on Steam's Greenlight to see that in effect. EG the total lack of arcade style 2D run and gun games while indie M&k 2D run & gunners are ten a penny and good luck playing a MP FPS with a pad on PC.
Also PC has more exclusives than consoles do, or do they not count?
While PC is great and all, I bought a 360 to play all the exclusive shmups plus 3rd person shooters and hack and slashers. I also enjoy the SRPGs and Dungeon Crawlers on the PSP / DS.
There is alot of games that are on the PS3 / Wii/U & 3DS that I'd love to play but don't have the time or money to buy them, (getting a WiiU near Xmas though) that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist and they along with consoles certainly aren't out of date (as if popularity should have such a pull on any hobby of mine)
Do they need to exist? Depends on who you ask. If you ask Sony, Microsoft, and especially Nintendo(who has a HUGE amount of exclusives), they'll say hell yes. If you ask me, they just serve the interests of those three companies. People who didn't choose them get shafted out of potentially great experiences they would really enjoy. The developers, if the games aren't first party developed, get screwed out of a significant portion of the market, which is especially bad now that it should be easier to port from system to system... with the exception of the WiiU because, lol motion controls.
It's the only sadness I had when I switched to PC more or less exclusively. Not that I don't like certain PC exclusives, but some games are just impossible/difficult to play with a controller, most RTSs for instance. That being said, playing a racing game on keyboard is not something to be recommended. I'd like to be able to choose slightly left and slightly right rather than LEFT or RIGHT.
I wouldn't mind an idea of timed exclusivity. Like the game was out a few months early for one console and then came out for the rest. Xbox 360 has this for a lot of DLC packs, but outright exclusivity annoys me.
Finally, if anyone wants to say I have no right to be annoyed, kindly keep it to yourselves. I'm willing to give the game developer money for a product, but a third party is saying no so they can make their product look more appealing. Essentially two of us miss out on what we want so some prick can have an easier time marketing.
It's the only sadness I had when I switched to PC more or less exclusively. Not that I don't like certain PC exclusives, but some games are just impossible/difficult to play with a controller, most RTSs for instance. That being said, playing a racing game on keyboard is not something to be recommended. I'd like to be able to choose slightly left and slightly right rather than LEFT or RIGHT.
I wouldn't mind an idea of timed exclusivity. Like the game was out a few months early for one console and then came out for the rest. Xbox 360 has this for a lot of DLC packs, but outright exclusivity annoys me.
Finally, if anyone wants to say I have no right to be annoyed, kindly keep it to yourselves. I'm willing to give the game developer money for a product, but a third party is saying no so they can make their product look more appealing. Essentially two of us miss out on what we want so some prick can have an easier time marketing.
Well yeah, they kind of are necessary. Why would anyone feel compelled to buy anything if they had another device that could do the same thing? Also, console exclusives are tend to be very good, or at least extremely well made. I don't know if this is just coincidence, but my suspicion is that developers are generally given a larger budget for console exclusives, because if the game is good, that console now has another selling point. I'm not saying that is the case or that I as a consumer wouldn't love to be able to play the new halo or uncharted without buying a 500 dollar console, but I totally understand why exclusives are a thing and they're pretty necessary to keep market competition.
they're totally necessary, because otherwise how i know who to hate?
seriously, fuck console exclusives, there have been quite a few games i have missed out on because they weren't released on PC. its annoying because the devs/publishers could potentially make profit from it (or at least, wouldn't lose money), and i would get another great gaming experience
seriously, fuck console exclusives, there have been quite a few games i have missed out on because they weren't released on PC. its annoying because the devs/publishers could potentially make profit from it (or at least, wouldn't lose money), and i would get another great gaming experience
If consumers are smart enough to vote with their wallet why is it that people keep buying an Xbox 360 when their first 2 or 3 consoles failed? This happens, I have seen this a lot more than once.shirkbot said:
Also it's not the consumer who makes the rules. It's the competition. The Xbox One didn't drop DRM because the consumer were against it. They dropped it ebcause the consumers were likely to buy from their competitor. Just look at pricing models between competing companies. They don't lower prices because consumers think the prices are too high. They lower them so they will buy from them rather than from the competition.
Remove the elements that facilitate competition and you'll eventually see the competition disappear altogether. Once the competition is gone there's no need to be consumer friendly. This is what happens with the medicine prices in USA. They can pick their price because there's no-one to take it from them.
Steam sales is an example of how one of the competing elements.
Origin is an example of us buying into monopoly because we don't have a choice.
Massive companies who sells at cheaper prices in order to rid themselves of less resourceful competitors is one of the means to monopoly.
I can actually find examples of things that build up under my hypothesis. While the result in monopoly isn't very plausible it is possible. The first step is to lose the competing elements which are exclusives. You have ignored all the examples I made and basically posted your first post again. It isn't about the consumer being stupid. It's about the consumer not thinking that buying an Xbox 360 over a PS3 will have any kind of consequence over the next 20 years. I know I don't make weighted decisions like that. I pick by games or price. If one got enough resources to sell at a massive loss thinking that they will eventually make that money back once they've got monopoly then it might actually eliminate competitors. This is far fetched and I don't think that anyone would take that risk.
However if you really think that removing perhaps the strongest competitive element won't have any consequence for the future of consoles then I'm not sure what to tell you. However it doesn't matter what I tell you. You'll just ignore it and repeat the same thing you said the last time.
Edit: Another example is how Microsoft tried to compete with the PS3 in terms of price which in turn caused them to cut corners. That's why the Xbox 360 had the issue of ruining discs. That's what caused the red ring of death. That's why they didn't push a new storage medium which actually lost them some deals with developers who wanted to make games too big for a standard DVD.
If the producer of a game is SONY they don't want their competition to have it. Same thing with microsoft. It's just standard marketing.
They're necessary in the sense that a proprietary game system needs them to distinguish itself in a way that actually matters.
A game system without games is a useless computer.
A game system that cannot offer distinct or superior experiences (or for cheaper) is just another computer.
A game system without games is a useless computer.
A game system that cannot offer distinct or superior experiences (or for cheaper) is just another computer.
Maybe in 1995, but now they have a lot of different features and interface type stuff. For example I would gladly pay the fee for Playstation Plus with it's free games, early demos, and reduced prices of DLC over the same priced privilege of playing multiplayer xbone games.krazykidd said:
The PS4 and Xbone are identical in nearly every way, and no longer have any reason to have exclusives. The industry doesn't "need" them; they are just sticking to old habits.
EDIT: If you want to distinguish yourself from the competition, then have features that don't suck. If you can't handle that, then you have no right to exist. People have been saying this throughout the thread and I'll repeat it: "I don't want them to hold my games hostage."
EDIT: If you want to distinguish yourself from the competition, then have features that don't suck. If you can't handle that, then you have no right to exist. People have been saying this throughout the thread and I'll repeat it: "I don't want them to hold my games hostage."
I don't think console exclusives are an ideal that's supposed to be liked by the consumer. They're just a means to get you to support one console over the others. While a world without exclusives would be a much better one, asking that is simply too unreasonable.
this actually hit the nail on the head, in my opinion.Scars Unseen said:
I hear a lot of people saying that exclusives are just "games held hostage" and that "consoles should sink or swim on their own merits" While I don't disagree with the spirit of these claims, necessarily, they're missing a very obvious truth.
Video games are designed to appeal to an enormous market. they want to push to kids, casuals, and hardcore gamers of every stripe and genre. This is where the idea of abolishing exclusives and making only technical merit falls on its head: to the vast, VAST majority of people games are marketed toward, these merits are NOTHING but technobable
If the only people console manufacturers were interested in courting were the college-age hardcore group who held passionate opinions about processing power and actually know what RAM is, then there wouldn't be a problem. But at the end of the day when the holiday season rolls around and you're making your pitch: claiming to be the console with the greatest state of the art graphics card and complete Linux support won't gain you even a fraction of the attention that simply saying "I'm the console for mario games!" will.
As a result, the merits of the consoles still wouldn't matter much, even if you did away with exclusive games. you'd just see more and more needless bells and whistles tacked on, like the Xbone.
Console exclusives are one of those things that are deemed extremely necessary now but I envision years from now people will look back on them and laugh and/or feel ashamed. It certainly doesn't really benefit games as an art or even as a medium, and it will severely hurt games from a historical perspective. Case in point, in order to "legally" and "officially" play the ORIGINAL home version of Breakout, you need to frantically search vintage stores and websites until you find a retro video game store/some guy's Ebay auction page and procure both a functional Atari 2600/5200, the proper video/control outputs for these antiquated machines, and a cartridge of the Breakout video game. That is a really atrocious method of preservation when retro games could be procured so easily digitally, but of course in many cases that is illegal, and very few retro console game developers support downloadable systems. Retro game ownership is easy enough for PC gamers, but fairly difficult for console owners. The only system that I can think of that does it remotely right is Nintendo's Virtual Store, but even they fudge it up by having the purchases bound to the console instead of the account, damaging preservation (how many times can you re-buy Super Mario Bros?). Meanwhile Microsoft and Sony ignore backwards compatibility altogether, which will only culminate in further damages; how will one legally be able to play Xbox 360 games 15 or 20 years from now? Console exclusivity was a necessary force about 20 years ago when computational hardware was limited and console developers were game developers, but now, when digital downloads are commonplace, computers are powerful, and console developers aside from Nintendo are essentially no different from publishers like Activision or EA (except that the publishing stipulations that Sony or Microsoft lay out differ in that the only platform for developers are the publishing entity's box of choice)? An unnecessary force that will eventually do massive damage to the history and preservation of games. Mark my words, there WILL be a centralized "gaming box" (whether its PC or a standalone device), and Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will either be out of business or thirds party developers, and really, is the latter option so bad?
They are "necessary" because if every game ran on every system, what reason would I have to get a dedicated gaming machine instead of a PC that can play all the games as well as do other things?
I have to disagree that they are necessary. The reason you chose a certain console should be because the makers of it worked hard to make it better for you than the other consoles, not because it is the only one that has your favorite series. A lot of games lose out on money they could have because people aren't usually willing to buy a whole console for one franchise, much less one game.krazykidd said:
First party exclusives are essentially the Hollywood blockbusters of games. The big three, especially Sony, will sink huge piles of money into their games because they get money from console purchases and from game purchases.
They also know how to get the most out of their consoles.
They also know how to get the most out of their consoles.
There is also the fact that porting a game takes mountains of time and effort that some studios simply don't have, so some games end up being console exclusive simply because the effort to put it on multiple consoles would require more time and money than the studio simply has at the point of making the games. This doesn't apply to all games but for some games from smaller companies, or games not given a sizable budget, it could be the cause.
For titles with much larger budgets you're probably looking at a company owned by a console manufacturer, like how Sony owns Naughty Dog so The Last of Us and Uncharted are exclusive to the Playstation. Also some game companies end up contractually obligated to certain systems, or they only feel like dealing with the rules for publishing for one of the companies, etc., etc.
For titles with much larger budgets you're probably looking at a company owned by a console manufacturer, like how Sony owns Naughty Dog so The Last of Us and Uncharted are exclusive to the Playstation. Also some game companies end up contractually obligated to certain systems, or they only feel like dealing with the rules for publishing for one of the companies, etc., etc.