Console gaming cannot exist without video game exclusives

Over the last few months, we’ve heard a lot of talk about Xbox and, perhaps, PlayStation going multiformat, with some in favour and some against it. Although, like most things in gaming, it’s hard to tell what are genuinely held beliefs and what is just thinly veiled console warring.

At first, Xbox fans were not happy about the idea, even if so far no big name games have made the jump. Many talked about being betrayed and yet many others quickly started convincing themselves that it was a good idea and that exclusives were bad all along, which is, of course, exactly the narrative Xbox wants to push.

I agreed with a lot of what the recent Reader’s Feature about Microsoft and Japan said, in particular the idea that they seek to destroy and sideline what they cannot dominate. After all, it’s a very basic business strategy. But now, instead of Japanese companies, it’s the concept of exclusives. We don’t have any good exclusives? Let’s pretend they don’t matter. More than that, let’s pretend their very existence is bad for gaming. Which is absolutely the opposite of the truth.

That fact that so many of the best games of this generation and last are exclusives should immediately invalidate the suggestion that they’re a bad idea. From Spider-Man to Zelda, from Super Mario to God Of War, not only are these some of the best games ever made but they only exist because they were created to be exclusives: games to show off not just the capabilities of their host consoles but to create prestige and loyalty around PlayStation and Nintendo.

The idea that exclusives are bad must seem so laughable to Nintendo, and anyone that enjoys their games, that the argument shouldn’t have got any further than that. Nintendo games are only the way they are because they control both the hardware and the software, allowing them to experiment and make consoles and controllers designed around specific games. They recently became the most profitable company in Japan and had one of the biggest movies of this year, their exclusives are everything to them.

Even if you write off Nintendo as too different to compare to Sony and Microsoft, it’s clear that PlayStation looks to them for inspiration in a way that Xbox never seems to. The PlayStation 4 was so successful specifically because of its exclusives, which is why everyone is so upset that they seem to have stopped making them in favour of… nothing at all at the moment.

There’s no point speculating as to what they’re up to, because nobody knows, but in the meantime their plan has been to publish third party games as exclusives and how’s that worked out? Really amazingly well. Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Stellar Drive are all apparently really good (I’ve only played Rebirth) and none would’ve had the funding they did if they weren’t exclusives.

Even Rebirth, which obviously Square Enix would’ve made either way, benefits from the cash they earned from the Sony deal, and you can tell from how stacked full of content the game is that they were not worrying about budget. Instead, they were worrying about making a game that was a statement: about the developers, about the franchise, and about the PlayStation 5. And that’s how most exclusives are.

This week saw the release of Stellar Blade and you can bet that it wouldn’t even have existed if it wasn’t an exclusive part funded by Sony. Or if it did, it would’ve been vastly lower budget, with nowhere near as good graphics. Stellar Drive, like so many others, only exists because it’s an exclusive.

What would the developer have done if exclusives were no longer a thing? They would’ve had to go begging to publishers to fund their new IP, with its controversial lead character, and they would’ve almost certainly been told no. And if someone did take a risk on them, they would’ve been given little to no additional money and probably told to alter it enough to become a part of some other franchise or licence.

Don’t believe me? Just look around and see how many other brand new, big budget IPs are being published today. Most of them are exclusives.

Not only is the idea of getting rid of exclusives silly, it’s being suggested for nefarious reasons, weaponising fanboy loyalties in an attempt to change the narrative in a disturbingly Orwellian way.

We’re over a quarter of the way through the year so far and what are the top two big budget games according to Metacritic? Final Fantasy 7 Remake and The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered, both exclusives. If Nintendo weren’t in a transition year, there would’ve almost certainly been even more. Exclusives are what are best in gaming and they always have been.

By reader Ishi