In reference to the exclusivity of the game, it appears the developers want to produce the game for Vista and 360 so they can concentrate on making the best possible game.
Taken from http://brightfalls.net/alan-wake-faq/
Is Alan Wake exclusive to Windows Vista? If so why? #
Petri Järvilehto had this to say on the official Alan Wake forums (18/05/06):
“I’ll confirm that Alan Wake is Vista and 360 exclusive. I know some people have reacted strongly to that, but for us this was one of the key decisions that will allow us to create the best possible game.
We’ve locked this down a while ago, and being able to focus on fewer platforms means that the game is going to kick more ass than ever before. By going with Vista, we don’t have to compromise everything to the lowest common PC denominator and since we’re not doing a PS3 version we can go all out with PC and 360 multithreading, HDR rendering etc. This focus benefits the tech and game design immensely.
We’re really sorry if some end up missing the game because of our platform choice, but in the end of the day we *must* base our decisions on what will let us create the best possible game. That’s just how Remedy as a team works: we’re passionate about creating something unique. Alan Wake is still our IP and we drive the creative control, but working with Microsoft gives us unprecedented levels of development support, testing resources and so on.
But… as they say, the proof is in the pudding. You guys are going to be the best judges on whether the calls we’ve made have been the right ones. We haven’t really shown anything on what we’ve been up to in the past year. Once we do, it’ll be up to you to see whether our work has been worthwhile.”
