Whenever Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo do a press conference they are always extremely proud to announce that they have a third-party exclusive up their sleeves and expect people in the audience to commend them for their efforts. 3rd party exclusives are not something to be proud about and instead are horrible entities which need to go away.
When Sony announced that Street fighter V (SFV) will be exclusive to the PS4 and PC and when Microsoft announced that the highly anticipated ‘Rise of The Tomb Raider’(ROTT) will be exclusive to the Xbox One they expected a big applause; why would anyone applaud a reveal such as that where a game is being taken away from a sizeable portion of gamers. We knew that SFV and ROTT where going to be released, all that was announced was that the game will now only be accessible to the select few instead of everyone.
It is weird to hear people in the audience cheering this announcement, what did they gain from it? They were already going to be able to play the game, were they cheering that some of their friends will not be able to join in with the fun?
While 3rd party exclusives are obviously good for business; look at Titanfall, Microsoft sold thousands of Xbox Ones on the back of that exclusive, they are not good for gamers. This also goes for ‘Timed Exclusives’ such as the ROTT. ROTT is the worst kind of timed exclusive as it is on the console with the lowest install base so even fewer people will have a chance to play it.
Now to be fair there are some rare examples where 3rd party exclusives are good, the best example of this is Bayonetta 2 which would not have happened unless Nintendo helped fund the game, a similar situation is present with Double Fine and Sony where Grim Fandango is being made partly on Sony’s dime.
For the most part though 3rd party exclusives are not beneficial since they prevent gamers from playing games they want to play unless they are willing to purchase another system.
So the next time you think about cheering for an exclusivity announcement at a conference think twice about whether it is something to be cheering about.