Death of Exclusives?

So by now every one knows that another exclusive has died and gone multiplatform. As a owner of just the PS3 and Wii this should upset me right? Well it doesn't. First while I enjoy Tekken, it's not a system seller and its hardly a 60 dollar game. Frankly there isn't a fighter out there worth 60 bucks to me. But that's hardly the point of this blog. What should people think of the loss/gain of exclusive titles?

   Well, lets face it, it cost money to make games. It cost alot of money to make really good games. So whats the easiest way to make the most money from the games developers spend to make games? Make them multiplatform, obviously. Well that brings up several interest.

  So am I saying that only good games are multiplatform? Obviously not- there are plenty of examples that would just simply shut me up- MGS4 Gears Halo Uncharted. But do those games make as much as multiplatform games? NO! Call of Duty 4 was a HUGE success! If you just take the PS3 and 360 that game sold 10 million copies, as you can see here Call of Duty Sales. Now take the biggest 360 shooter yet, Halo 3  it sold 7 million copies, while not a figure to laugh at by any means, can you imagine how many more copies they would have sold to consumers like myself that don't own a 360? While I wouldn't say sales would double, they would make more money for sure. And slowly we are seeing this happening, mostly to PS exclusives, but that should be obvious, due to the fact that the PS brand has a longer history of titles that have become exclusive as a 3rd generation brand as opposed to the 2 xboxs. Also due to the fairly simple architecture of the of 360 (as in it's very similar to previous generations and computers) its relatively cheap and easy to take a PS3 game and put it on the 360. But 360 games aren't safe either as we see with Bioshock. The reality is that the world doesn't revolve around patronage and exclusives. It revolves around money, and by making games on both systems almost guarantees that devs and publishers will make more money.

   Which leads to another concern. So if exclusives are dying, why not have one system. While it makes perfect sense because it saves everyone money, I personally feel it would lead to the end of the growth of video games. Just like any business, things improve from competition. If Ford makes a stronger truck than Chevy, guess what? Chevy's going to make one tougher, or more fuel efficient as needed today. But if we had one system, the PSWii60, there would be no one challenging to push the boundries. There wouldn't be some one trying to out do a motion sensing controller pheonomeon and the use of a cell processor. And when huge improvements die, interest dies, and then the business dies. An example of this could be Mini Disc, Sony pushed this and it was great in a sense. But no one push it, no one attempted to out do sony to make it better, then interest died, and the product died. Whereas you can look at the cell phone business, if we only had Motorola for example, we would never see the likes of the Samsung Instinct or the Apple IPhone- a direct result of cell phone manufacturing competitions. So the worst thing possible would be a single console future.

     But in all reality exclusives aren't dead by any means. But I do think that exclusives will stop being massively sequelled games and become new ip's. This is seemingly obvious with the millionth incarnation of Final Fantasy and Tekken. These games have built huge fan bases who have bought a console of their choice. Some PS3, some 360 so why not cash in on both? The interest to persuade a buyer to a particular system is that game they havent had the chance to fully enjoy yet, which is what are now being called system sellers. LittleBigPlanet, Gears, Resistance, Mass Effect- these are the games that people haven't had a chance to enjoy over and over again yet. These are the games that push a particular system over the other. So while many sequels become multiplatform, more new IP's will start off as exclusives to give people a reason to get a system of choice.

   To close, the loss of an exclusive on either system shouldn't really anger or overjoy any one. It's business, it's reality and it's great. While I love having the system that has the "better" games, the truth is who says what games are better?  The gamers, so as the business of video games changes, remember the reason for video games. They are there for our enjoyment, regardless of the system we play them on. In the end we all have great games to enjoy regardless of what system we own. So kiss most sequel exclusives good bye and enjoy the new exclusives you have and enjoy the GREAT multiplats out there.