| padib said: It wasn't such a simple view. When they planned this the X1 probably hadn't even launched. You can't use 20/20 hindsight to judge a past decision, it's illogical. They couldn't exactly predict the PS4 would do so much better. |
And nobody knows that. The exclusivity announcement was made almost a year after the PS4 and XOne released. And 2 months before that, they first revealed the game without any talk about exclusivity. Phil Spencer explained after the Gamescom 2014 "I'm a fan of Uncharted, we don't have a good enough game like Uncharted so this one was an opportunity". Nothing indicates that the exclusivity deal wasn't definitely made between the E3 reveal and the Gamescom announcement. Uncharted 4 was really revealed at E3 2014 with the announcement of the release for Christmas 2015 after all. Tomb Raider was announced at the same time for the same release window. And all of a sudden, 2 months later, they go XBox exclusive while Spencer explains that it's the "Xbox Uncharted". But no connection ? ^^
Anyway, even if we imagine that the deal was made a long time ago... Some developers, like other SE studios, announced games for the Xbox One, even Japanese games usually PS-only (FF, Kingdom Hearts...). That's what you do when you don't know how it will turn out, you play carefully. Square Enix announced several Japanese games as multiplatforms, then they saw that Japanese games still don't sell well on XBox, and now all of their recent announcements for Japanese games are PS4 only (or Vita/3DS/Switch). That's the way : you minimize the risks, and when you have more information you can aim better.
But if you're right, then Crystal Dynamics went the other way and did an "all-in", restricting their playerbase without knowing at all how the consoles marketshares would turn out (well, in reality, several months before launch the Xbox One was in an even worse place than now...). Meanwhile, the previous game was obviously already released and sold more on PS3. And the guys just guessed that they could forget about Playstation and that the XBox would win, no need for caution or anything.
How many third party developers placed their bet on restricting the playerbase of an already existing multiplatform IP on an unique console before the launch of the new generation? Not a lot... I honestly don't care about "they didn't know at the time" : they took a risk, unfortunately for them they failed, and now they lost the IP and the CEO his job. If you take a risk with your game or studio and you lose, you're responsible for the risk you took. "I couldn't have known" is an excuse for when you play safe (AKA "go multiplatform"), not when you take a risk.
