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Shiken said:
curl-6 said:

These days true exclusives are only getting rarer and rarer.

We live in a world where Xbox first party games make their way to Switch, Playstation first party games like Horizon and Days Gone are going to PC, and third parties basically never lock their games to one platform because there's just too much money to be made by spreading it around.

Switch may have only a small number of "real exclusives" but that's a sign of the times more than anything; a few gens ago stuff like Octopath would've stayed Switch only, but on the other hand we wouldn't have gotten Ori or Cuphead.

Splatoon 2
Mario Odyssey
Xenoblade 2
Mario Plus Rabbids
ARMs
Xenoblade Torna (stand alone game release)
Fire Emblem Warriors
Age of Calamity
Cadence of Hyrule
Fire Emblem Three Houses
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3
Luigi's Mansion 3
Mario Maker 2
Paper Mario OK
Kirby Star Allies
Yoshi's Crafted World
Link's Awakening Remake
Smash Ultimate
Astral Chain
Animal Crossing New Horizons

I dunno man, I just listed over 20 non cross gen true exclusives off the top of my head (and there are more than I listed).  Saying the Switch doesn't seem to have a lot of them doesn't seem to make sense.  I think it is safe to assume that any Nintendo IP, be it 1st or 2nd party, will not be going to any other platforms in the near future.  Now 3rd party exclusives sure, outside of whatever contract Nintendo has with the publisher, I can see most of them at least going to PC.

But to accumulate a list like this in just 4 years, which puts PS4 and XB1 to shame in their first 4 years without even counting "console exclusives" or WiiU ports...I would call that anything but a small number of true exclusives.

I see a lot of people try to spin that the Switch mainly just has WiiU ports pushing the console, but that clearly isn't the case and when you break it down it looks like more of a reach than anything else.

So while exclusives are indeed less common in the industry these days, I feel like Nintendo will be the outlier (as they are in so many things).  As long as Nintendo is making consoles, 1st and 2nd party Switch games are pretty much a lock to be true exclusives.

That's still a relatively small list of exclusives compared to say, the Wii, and even then Fire Emblem Warriors and Link's Awakening aren't exclusives and Torna is an expansion.

That said, Switch is a long way from done so over its remaining life it could bulk up and accumulate an exclusives list more in line with what I'd expect from a successful Nintendo system.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 05 March 2021