They are anti-consumer, but for smaller devs in particular, they can make the difference between between canceling and releasing a game, between bankruptcy and the studios continued existence.
They are anti-consumer, but for smaller devs in particular, they can make the difference between between canceling and releasing a game, between bankruptcy and the studios continued existence.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
If your success depends on a storefront paying you to sell your game to less people, maybe it is for the best that it doesn’t succeed.
DdCno1@kbin.social 5 months ago
Do you see developers making games exclusively for one console manufacturer the same way? Are you willing to deprive the gaming community as a whole from these titles? Games like Shadow of the Colossus or Alan Wake 2 would not have happened without exclusivity.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Bullshit. If the publishers for those games had made them for more platforms, they would have sold more copies. Exclusivity deals are made between console makers and publishers in order to sell more consoles and are an anticompetitive practice that should be illegal.
DdCno1@kbin.social 5 months ago
No, both of these titles are "halo games" (not in the Bungie series, but in the way that they are showcase titles) that sold poorly compared to their development costs - and their publishers likely knew that these would sell very poorly, but chose to publish them regardless, because they bring prestige to their platforms. They sold poorly, because they are niche games, not due to their platform exclusivity.
It's kind of like a car manufacturer making an exclusive sports car that only a few hundred people will buy, but that is meant to elevate the entire brand, bring in customers for other products and wow journalists so that they think of the brand more highly. Most of Sony's publishing strategy hinges on strong exclusive titles - since their hardware is virtually identical to Microsoft's - and they started this by going down the "high art" game route all the way back with the PS1 (with extremely niche games like "The Book of Watermarks") before creating more mainstream blockbuster exclusives like the Uncharted series.
I get your frustration with this, I have felt it myself with exclusives that I wanted to play, but couldn't justify the expense of buying a console for, but there are solid reasons from the perspective of developers and publishers for doing it and outlawing this practice would result in a far less vibrant and interesting gaming landscape. Another comparison is how rich aristocrats used to pay artists like Leonardo DaVinci to create art for them. This was also an exclusivity deal of sorts, since most of the public didn't see these artworks until centuries later (the platform exclusivity was being born to the right kind of family), but without these wealthy, selfish patrons of the arts, mankind would have been deprived of amazing creations.
ABCDE@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Which still may not have recouped development costs. Shadow was on PS2, no other console got close to their sales. Costs to convert it to other platforms may have been more than profit from sales on Xbox and GameCube.
Noodle07@lemmy.world 5 months ago
confused pikachu noises