3rd Party Exclusives are hurting the industry

[Azzanation]

JWeinCom said:

If you're confused we'll take it slow. Please answer yes or no to these two questions. 

Quote 1: "What would the industry be like if all 3rd party games released on all platforms, with the only exception of exclusives are 1st party games. 

1) Developers have a larger market to sell their games on, increasing popularity and profits. Keeping the lights on."

Quote 2: "I am not arguing if it's hurting the devs, I am debating that it's hurting the industry."

Does your first quote say that third party exclusivity existing in the industry hurts third party developers by decreasing profitability and harming their prospects of staying in business? 

Does the second quote say that third party exclusivity does not (at least not necessarily) hurt third party developers?

If your answer to both of those questions is yes, and if you are honest it should be, then you have agreed to the point I was trying to make. That third party exclusivity does not necessarily hurt third party developers. Therefore the first reason you presented for third party exclusivity hurting the industry is wrong. If we agree on that point, we could potentially move on to the other reasons you have for exclusivity being bad, but don't know how inclined I am to continue as I'm not sure you're willing to honestly engage. I think I'm being extremely clear, and it honestly feels like you're just trying to change your argument (or rather that part of the argument) on the fly cause you see it is wrong. 

 I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you genuinely misunderstood me. You absolutely read too much into my replies. In particular, you read the word ALL which I am fairly certain I never used. Clearly not all developers use third party exclusives and not all of them should.

My argument is that arms length deals made between two parties will  only be made if both parties find them to be beneficial. Developers sometimes opt to make their games exclusive, which means at least sometimes exclusivity is predicted to be beneficial. As these types of deals have been made for years, we can safely assume that in the past they have indeed turned out to be beneficial.

As most third party games are not exclusive, it is pretty clear that most of the times, making a game exclusive would be detrimental either to at least one of the parties involved. So, I'm obviously not arguing that all third party games should be exclusives. But, the option to make exclusivity deals is obviously beneficial to third parties. And so, what is best for them is probably to simply continue exactly as they have been doing. 

Yes, to both quotes.

There are good and bad sides to both these quotes. Yes, 3rd party deals can help some devs and sometimes releasing games on more platforms pay off better. 

Now I don't believe you have read the rest of my thread, but the reason why I am talking about this is because the console industry is stagnated, meaning its not growing, it's the same customers buying and rebuying the consoles. Today's generation simply don't care about it. The console market only cannibalizes sales off each other. Instead of Sony and MS competing by innovating and flooding the market with 1st party games, they rely on keeping games off each others platforms. We saw this with Tomb Raider, we see this with FF7 Remake etc. 

My thread is about if we removed the luxury of moneyhatting IPs from 3rd party developers, this pushes more focus on 1st party games and hardware. Nintendo is the only one in this industry that strives to find a bigger audience every generation, they innovate, and they sell their innovations based on their own IPs. Sony and MS are completely opposite, it's a fight on who can get marketing rights for GTA6, CoD, Fortnite etc. This is why PS and Xbox hardware is so similar. Very little innovation every generation.

In my opinion, Thats why the console market is stagnated. No risks are being taken to drive hardware further, and outside of the usual customers.