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Tulipanzo on 03 October 2017
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S.T.A.G.E. said:
Alkibiádēs said:

As if Sony has never tried to keep games from rival platforms.

Doesn't anyone else find it suspicious that Capcom isn't releasing Monster Hunter World, Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Disney Afternoon Collection, Okami HD, etc. on the Nintendo Switch? Either Capcom is the dumbest company in the world or someone is paying their bills.

Both Microsoft and Sony are guilty of this. Maybe even Nintendo, but much less so as they rely on first party much more than any other hardware company. 

Its not that Sony hasnt tried. When Sony makes deals they lock them in immediatley. Secondly, no competing company with Microsoft has ever had the lackluster first party they have every every gen since inception. Microsoft knows this so theyve always depended on PC exclusives to jump ship to consoles from day one. Counter-strike? KOTOR? Jade Empire? Pub g? Witcher 2 and so many others. Microsoft has never fixed their first party and that will always be the thorn that keeps them dependent upon third party.

Let's open with this: yes, buying exclusivity is bad, and both Microsoft and Sony have done, and continue to do it.
They should, in my opinion, invest their money in projects that need actual investement.

If you want to know however why Microsoft is much more the subject of attention on this (beside the fact that they actually do it more often) it has everything to do with how they've handled things.
They are far less popular than any of their competition, and have sold far less, making bought exclusivity a terribly unwise decision.
If you look at games like RotTR or PUBG the story is: "Microsoft has paid a studio money so that most people won't get to play it". 
This is compounded by their own lineup being very barren and by a series of high profile cases where this has happened.
Sony and Nintendo (to a point) don't have this problem, because you are far more likely to own or be thinking about buying their systems. Plus they both have a very healthy line-up of first party exclusives, avoiding the need to rely on this.

Add that this is also detrimental to the developers themselves. If your game is an XBox "exclusive" in many regions of the world it means it won't get discussed or advertised, creating problems for future projects as well.
While on other systems the exclusive funding and marketing usually makes up for lost sales elsewhere, if you launch on XBox you might as well not be out in Europe, Japan, Asia etc.


At this point in the generation it has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that "bought exclusivity" is a bad idea. I hope Bluehole does the right thing.