So will you say that MS is anti-consumer for not putting Halo or Gear on PS4?
Well, it was produced by MSFT themselves, so it's slightly different. But yes, in the sense that consumers want to be able to play games without too much cost of entry. Which is why it's great for consumers that MSFT is opening up - putting games on steam, on PC, working with other companies.
Maybe you are right that some games wouldn't be made. That's certainly an angle I hadn't considered. Then again, there are other elements to that thought I think - like wouldn't time exclusives offer a fairly similar benefit, without as much cost to consumers (ie funding could still be offered upfront, at least some amount).
I don't know where you get that less than 1% or 2%. I mean just in 2018, I quickly count PS4 had 4 AAA exclusive, Switch had 2. And not even counting Forza that's 6 games
That surprises me TBH. When I was looking it seemed like there was less than half a dozen big broadly popular titles on any platform, in total. You're saying there was 4, on playstation in a single year. Maybe our mileage varies on what counts as a AAA? IDK, I mean, I was just looking at the full lists of games for each platform, and how many of them were full exclusives versus not full exclusives - certainly looked to me like well under 5% or 1 in 20.
Perhaps if you look at a single year it varies? That would seem logical.
Look at how many these major AAA exclusives sell on PS4. There are always peak of sales when these type of game release.
Who cares? How about you? Here you are complaining about them being exclusive...
I'll ignore the tone of that, and simply say - I was talking about who in the market, cares about full exclusives when they make such a tiny proportion of games. I don't know that you've really convinced me that say, xbox owners, are all going to rush out and buy a ps because of a few games. Or a PC owner. Or any way really.
The premise you started with was 'what's the point in a console if it doesn't have a slightly bigger but still tiny number of full exclusives' (paraphrasing ;P). I think my response is still pretty solidly - I don't see any evidence or reasoning why that's as important as you personally think it is. Maybe you'll yet come up with such an argument or such a presentation of the facts.
But I think a lot of market success is mindshare, branding, luck, marketing. I'm not one of these people who thinks the market picks products purely based on some kind of evolutionary feature set, or that win or lose is defined by a single feature set. They play a role yes, but there are great products that have failed or not done as well, or crappy ones that have succeeded.
When it comes to one particular element of a product, like full exclusives? It's pretty hard to measure the impact of that without some kind of hard data. Otherwise seems a lot like a subjective opinion. I could come in claiming cross-play, or backwards compatibility is some game-changing market gem, but I don't have a clue. I'm just a gamer, not a gaming market analyst.
There is a huge difference. Can't believe you can't see it.
Epic is investing money to delay a 3rd party game for some gamers. Nintendo is investing money to MAKE game for their customers.
There is no benefit to the user in either case, in a game possessing the quality of being exclusive. Think about it this way: what does the quality itself, of being exclusive, benefit gamers in general?
Those third party devs are locked into contracts where they can never multi-platform, like any successful game franchise or company would naturally like to (and like gamers themselves would prefer). Everyone wants to be rockstar games, not IDK, whomever made uncharted. And gamers want games to have that kind of success, and size and scope.
The only argument you've made so far in this respect, that I found personally decent was that some games wouldn't get made. But then, I wonder - what else would be made instead? Those development houses would stlll be hungry for success. They'd still seek funding from somewhere. It becomes pretty theoretical thinking about what the world would be like without xyz.
Some gaming houses have gone to crowd funding. Or made smaller games until they struck success. Or be brought onboard a larger coalition. If those developers weren't being locked into exclusive contracts - I think a fair number of them would still be making games, and it's quite likely some of them would be producing gold. But, like the supposed massive market impact of full exclusives, without anything concrete, it's all just speculation.