Being a Nintendo fan, people are under the assumption that I
think exclusive games are all good and that exclusiveness is something all
games should aspire to. Then I get labeled hypocritical when something like D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is an
exclusive and that’s the reason it’ll sell like shit. But I suppose it’s time
to surprise everyone, I don’t think games exclusive to certain devices or
regions or anything is inherently good. I don’t think it’s completely bad
either, but now we need to get into the discussion.
My stance, as with most things, is that gaming exclusiveness
isn’t 100% good or bad. It really is more of a case-by-case basis when it comes
to it being a good or bad deal. I can get on board with the idea that if no
games were exclusive and I could play Mario, Halo, or Uncharted on any console,
it would only serve to help the individual sales of each game and make each
console more robust in their library. But I understand why Mario is exclusive
to Nintendo, Halo is exclusive to Bill Gates, and Uncharted is exclusive to
Sony. These are brands mostly developed in their respective houses. And each
house wants to maintain control over their brands like how film studios refuse
to share the X-Men because then you make all the money from X-Men and don’t
have to share it with Disney, the same rule basically applies to gaming.
The other big issue is because each of these three houses
have a console (SEGA technically had consoles too along with Atari, but they
made mistakes and now make games for everyone, mostly). And in order to sell a
console, it’s common practice to make things exclusive for that console in the
hopes your console sells more because your games are more attractive than other
games. And while all three houses manage to be irrelevant in the shadow of
PC-Gaming without knowing it, consoles are still a large part of the gaming
market and continue to fight for their scummy second place. God forbid we do
away with consoles and just have one universal device for all the companies to
make games for instead of requiring us to buy three to experience any game
released… but I think we’re digressing here.
So, yes, I understand that certain games HAVE to be
exclusive for these above reasons. I don’t like them, but that’s the nature of
the games industry. If you have a house, you need to fill it with your family
before you can start inviting the neighbors over for orgies (or something along
those lines). But when there are 3rd-party games that are exclusive…
that’s where things really hit a grey-patch for me.
When you’re a third party (Sega, Capcom, Konami, RockStar,
Volition, Valve, etc) in general, you are shopping your game around to these
big houses (and PCs) to see which ones will take your game. In most cases, the
answer is obviously, “Yes, we’d like that game on our console.” But sometimes
there are extra rules or restrictions making these deals less than fun.
Sometimes a company may ask for a specific timeframe in which the game is only
available on their console (seeing that a lot lately). Sometimes a company will
ask for exclusive content for the game (which is gross). And sometimes they
just push for exclusiveness, no exceptions.
Along these lines, we’re going to discuss four games that
fall into this spectrum: Bayonetta 2,
Rise of the Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Knight, and D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. Won’t this be
fun?
Rise of the Tomb
Raider is a third-party game developed by Crystal Dynamics who work under
SquareEnix and have no restrictions (for the most part) about which company
they can make games for. Rise of the Tomb
Raider (stupidest name ever, so I’m calling it Tomb Raider2) is going to be an XboxOne exclusive game (for a
certain amount of time). However, in this arrangement, neither Microsoft nor
SquareEnix have come out to say how long that duration is, or even if there’s
an expiration to it. Furthermore, they have not mentioned any plans for a PC
(which technically has OS’s from Microsoft) or Playstation 4.
I would suspect it will come to PS4 and the only reason it
hasn’t been announced as to when is because Microsoft is hoping to scare sales
of people, thinking it will only be on their one console. And while I liked Tomb Raider a bit, I don’t think it was
good enough for me to warrant a purchase of an underpowered console when my PC
or even my WiiU can push better graphics as well as better games. The
arrangement, overall, is just gross. Timed exclusives are just companies
forcing the hands of developers in hopes of making quick sales for their
consoles. Now, I don’t mind it in the case where one version of the game gets
completed before another and you don’t want to make that portion of the
audience wait… but that’s almost never the case.
Batman: Arkham Knight
is the next one on the chopping block. This game is being released for XboxOne,
Playstation 4, and the PC. Not sure why they aren’t doing a WiiU port as I’m
fairly certain it’s capable of running it just fine, but I won’t get on that.
My issue is actually with exclusive content. According to articles on numerous
gaming sites, Warner Bros and Rocksteady have said there will be exclusive DLC
for the Playstation 4. And it will be DLC that prominently features the
returning villain, Scarecrow. Which, as most of you know, is probably my
favorite Batman (and possibly DC) villain…
But fuck Warner Bros and fuck Sony for this absolutely
disgusting arrangement. I was already upset when they decided to bar off the
DLC from Arkham Origins for the WiiU
version of the game, meaning that there’s content I’m not allowed to play
unless I buy on a console I don’t want to play it on. But now, for my PC
version of the game, I can’t get all the content? If this is an attempt to get
me to buy a PS4, sorry, no. I will not be supporting these gross business
practices. I loved Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. But if you’re going to
stoop to levels and hold content hostage for me to buy an overpriced
underpowered PC, sorry, no. Unless a “Complete” edition is released for PC with
this content, you have lost a sale of this game and that’s a shame because I
fucking love Scarecrow. 
D4: Dark Dreams Don’t
Die is another example of exclusive gaming done wrong. D4 is a game exclusive to the XboxOne. But here’s the kicker, the
XboxOne is a console with a target audience in the west… mostly Americans. D4 is a very Japanese game made by a
Japanese developer with a target audience of people who enjoy Japanese things
like anime, manga, quirky Japanese games, and probably sushi. The normal target
audience for games like this generally reside on the Playstation consoles (and
sometimes Nintendo). Not only that, but the previous game made by Sweary
(developer of D4) was Deadly Premonition, which was released
for PS3 and eventually for PC. So not only do we have a target audience
misfire, but we also have a formerly most-platform developer sticking to just
one platform. 
Pick the better console to put your game on and one
that you know has your audience behind it. In general, the Xbox audience has
almost always been fans of sports games and FPS games (with some obvious
exceptions, but that’s the general buying audience for Xbox consoles). So an
episodic Japanese-centric game that plays in a similar style to TellTale
adventure games and will have a quirky Sweary plot is completely out-of-place
on an Xbox. It will make some sales, but not as much as it could have made. If
they want me to feel sorry for their bad sales or expected me to buy an Xbox
for this one game, sorry, but again, no. I won’t say it was a gross decision,
just a poorly made one.
This last brings me to Bayonettta
2. Oddly enough, similar to D4 it
is a game that was formerly on more consoles in the previous installment. But
now it’s only on one console and the previous installment (until very recently)
wasn’t on a Nintendo Platform. And while I’d normally be against this kind of
thing, as it should be for all consoles, the exclusiveness of this game has
actually been backed by a reason. Platinum (the third-party developer) had
shopped this game around to other publishers (Microsoft, Sony, etc) to get the
game out the door. But none of them would take it. When proposed to Nintendo,
they agreed and the game was greenlit as an exclusive game for Nintendo. 
In this example, the publisher didn’t strong-arm the
developer into making the game exclusive. The developer didn’t have other
options available to them, but still wanted the game made. Not only did they
make Bayonetta 2 for the WiiU, they
re-made the original game Bayonetta
for WiiU with additional content AND it was a bonus free game for those who
supported and bought Bayonetta 2. So
the developers not only made the best of a bad situation, they made sure any
customers would get the most out of their experience and that’s just a sign of
a good developer, whether your into these kinds of games or not. And, yes, it
won’t sell as well on just the WiiU, but Platinum is a company that isn’t out
to sell the most games. It’s a company that just makes good games and is happy
to just make the sales to the fans who love them.
Conclusion, I think that exclusiveness in gaming SHOULD be
done away with entirely at some point. I don’t think Japan-only titles should
exist and that everyone should be able to access any game for any console. I
don’t think there should be exclusives for specific consoles. I think the idea
of multiplatform games having exclusive content to any one platform is the
grossest business practice in the entire fucking industry at the moment (right
along-side pre-order bonus content and season passes). I get some cases of
exclusiveness happen for good reason. Exclusive games aren’t special in a
positive way. They’re games that exclude large portions of the gaming community
in favor of trying to make more sales in an isolated environment, when that
doesn’t make any sense because the larger number of devices you can release on
would allow you to sell more of the game. But these practice are unlikely to
change anytime soon because, for now at least, it works for the publishers and
the gamers don’t have enough balls to stand up against this nonsense and would
rather fight amongst themselves for console superiority instead.
That’s all for my talk about exclusionary gaming. If you
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subscribe. See ya next time!
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