Last weekend was Summer Game Fest, a weekend long event that has effectively replaced E3 at this point. Though unlike most E3s of the past we only really heard from one of the major three game makers, Xbox. PlayStation had a State of Play a week before all this but I wouldn’t really count that as them being a part of Summer Game Fest. Regardless, last weekend saw plenty of shows, events, and game reveals! And one of the biggest surprises of those reveals were the fact that some aren’t going to be exclusives like people might have guessed.

LEGO Horizon Adventures, a LEGO spin off of PlayStation’s Horizon Zero Dawn series, and DOOM: The Dark Ages, the next game in the DOOM series, are both not going to be exclusive to the platforms of their publishers. While LEGO Horizon Adventures isn’t coming to Xbox it is coming to Switch along with PC and PlayStation. A pretty surprising move for Sony as they have only really done this one other time before with their MLB series of games but that doesn’t seem to be an IP they care too much about unlike Horizon. I imagine the thought process behind having this LEGO spin off release on Switch is that LEGO games are seen as far more kid friendly and the Switch, and Nintendo consoles in general, are often seen as the most kid friendly systems. So this move would make the most sense for them to reach the audience they want with this kind of game. Still seems like a weird spin off to me in general but that’s not what we’re talking about here! This shows that Sony might be willing to let some of their series appear on other consoles if they feel that series would fit the market that console provides. This certainly makes a lot of sense as I believe that money is probably the biggest reason we might be seeing exclusives fading away.

A couple months ago a former PlayStation CEO, Shawn Layden, talked to VentureBeat about how exclusives can be a big problem for big companies now with the ballooning cost of game development. He mainly said that if a game takes more than $200 million to produce it no longer makes sense to have it as an exclusive as it’ll be pretty hard to make your money back. And I think this is the main reason why we are seeing Xbox push to have more of their games not be exclusives.

While DOOM: The Dark Ages was the only first party game confirmed to be coming to PS5 that was shown during the event, beyond games that are obviously coming to PlayStation like the new Call of Duty, I honestly won’t be surprised if we see other games that were shown like Perfect Dark and maybe even Fable come to PS5 in the future.

Xbox has kind of worked itself into a corner after all. They have spent a crazy amount of money buying up game studios and now they need to earn some of that money back. Not only that but from recent reports it sounds like Game Pass isn’t the money maker they were hoping it would be. And the obvious solution is to release these new games to a bigger audience and make some money that way. Plus I imagine they are hoping that the fact that these games are a part of Game Pass will have people coming over to Xbox as well. So when Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, says that DOOM is a series all gamers should be allowed to play he really means it’s a series all gamers should be allowed to pay for.

Here’s the thing though, I honestly understand this approach and don’t blame anyone for going this way. Now what I do blame people for is spending an insane amount of money buying up game studios only to complain they don’t have enough money to run some of their smaller studios so they decide to shut down said studios. But that’s a discussion for another time!

But no, the problem I have with games no longer being exclusive is the fact that it might be bad for gamers and the game industry as a whole. Or at least the console side of things.

Console exclusives have always been what sell game consoles at the end of the day. People wouldn’t have bought the original Xbox without Halo, people wouldn’t have bought the PS4 without God of War and Bloodborne, and people wouldn’t have bought most Nintendo systems without Zelda and Mario. Exclusives sell consoles and as such it’s important to make very compelling exclusives. For an example of how bad things can get if you don’t have any compelling exclusives just look at the Xbox One. The Xbox One constantly struggled with putting out exclusives and exclusives people cared out and as such, no one really bothered to buy the system. It was out classed easily by both the PS4 and the Switch. I believe this is what spurred on Microsoft to go on a massive spending spree of buying up studios and developers so that they have these exclusives games. Which is not how I believe you should go about getting exclusive games since it’s basically just trying to make a monopoly, but Microsoft clearly saw the value of having exclusives at this time.

The competitive nature of trying to make the best exclusive on the market to draw in more people to your console is how we get such great games like Halo, Bloodborne, and Breath of the Wild. This competition is great for the consumer! And this is the reason why I’m honestly kind of scared by the idea of losing console exclusives. I’m scared we are going to lose this competitive edge in the industry. Because if publishers aren’t trying to sell consoles with exclusives anymore there may be a chance we don’t see such big exclusives. We won’t see Sony or Microsoft trying as hard as they have been to grab attention and get people to look at their consoles wanting to pick them up to play some of those games. And once they have bought one of these consoles, they are far more likely to buy any third party game on said console too, making Sony or Microsoft more money in the long run. At the same time though, it’s hard to argue the fact that it is exciting knowing games like DOOM: The Dark Ages is coming to PS5 since I might want to play it sometime. And knowing I don’t need an Xbox to do that means I’m far more likely to pick it up and as such give Microsoft another sale. And you could argue that publishers still have the motivation to make something great so that the game will sell well, which like yeah obviously, but is that really enough? Is that enough to fuel game makers like Microsoft and Sony to make something so ground breaking or cutting edge? We’ve seen that having competition in an industry like this is good for the consumer! And if every game is on every console, that begs the question of why get one console over another?

What is this industry going to become if we don’t have exclusives to sell consoles? What will be a console’s selling point then? It can’t just be power at that point or better graphics. If that becomes the selling point then people will just move to PCs for the most part as those are some of PC gaming’s biggest selling points! I suppose the answer could be hardware gimmicks, like the Dual Sense controller on the PS5 and the Switch being a handheld and home console at the same time but that would require console manufactures to get a lot more creative. And while that is something Nintendo is clearly willing to do I’m not sure about Sony and especially Microsoft as each time they introduce a new console the big new thing about them is that they are more powerful than the last one. Still, I wouldn’t be totally against this being the approach of new consoles. After all, I love the Dual Sense and all it’s features! But I can’t deny how worried I am about losing big exclusives as Sony and Microsoft no longer see them as needed for selling consoles.

The next generation of gaming, whenever that might be, is going to be a big turning point for the industry if this keeps up as it’s becoming more and more likely that we are going to getting less exclusives. Not only because they’ll be coming out on multiple platforms but also with how long game development is getting, another big factor to why we might be seeing more games going multiplatform as publishers and developers need to make back those costs some how and it’s just not likely that they will be able to do that on just one platform. That’s exactly why Square Enix recently announced they would be going multiplatform from now on, no longer keeping series like Final Fantasy as timed exclusives for PlayStation. They want to see their games making more money. Granted, that’s partly because companies are run by shareholders and if they aren’t making more money every year they consider it a bad year even though the game industry should not be an industry based solely on growth but that’s a topic for another time!

The point is that everyone wants to make more money on the games they are making and again, I can’t really blame publishers and developers for wanting that. Though I do think they need to reassess what they think is a failure when it comes to sales as some publishers feel that 3 million copies sold is somehow a failure and that mentality is really really bad for this industry. With that in mind though it’s more likely we’ll see less exclusives in the future which isn’t exactly a bad thing but it’s going to depend on whether or not console manufacturers are going to be able to figure out a way to still sell their consoles without exclusives. Because I don’t think one or two exclusives will be enough for people to pick up a console, especially when they already have another console. I think this is the angle Microsoft is hoping for though because with their console they have Game Pass they can sell to people. And if Sony exclusives start appearing on their if they ever go to Xbox, which is a big if mind you but still, then that will give Microsoft a massive edge as they can say that you’ll be able to play all these games you can play on PlayStation but now for ‘free’ on Game Pass.

Exclusives have been just a massive staple of this industry for years. It’s hard to imagine gaming without them. While I feel like they should always exist as they are the biggest ways companies can be competitive with each other, I have to admit that could just be me wanting things to stay the same as change is always scary.

This console generation has been a very weird one for sure with the massive console shortages at the start, the pandemic, and the ballooning costs of developing games. It’s clear something is going to have to change and right now that seems to be exclusives for better or worse. I don’t think we’ll see the real impact of this change until the next console generation but we’ll see how the big gaming companies accept this change. Well, we’ll see how Sony and Microsoft accept this change since Nintendo will never change but still!

Anyways, those are just my thoughts, what are some of yours? Do you think exclusives are a thing of the past? Do you think that is a good thing? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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