I thought I'd make a poll for this, and see what the community thinks.

I think a lot of games wouldn't get made, or wouldn't be as great if they weren't exclusives. Exclusives sell consoles, which increases the userbase, which increases the games sold, which increases the licensing revenue. Nintendo and Sony wouldn't put so much money into development of certain games, if they didn't plan on making that money back via console sales. 

In this day and age, you honestly only need a Switch, a PS4, and a PC to play all games. If you don't like Nintendo games then you just need a PS4 and a PC. If you don't like strategy, or sim games then you can get away with just a Switch and PS4. 

The people that complain the most over exclusives are PC-Only gamers. I've always thought this was funny, because if you can afford a great gaming PC at around $1000 to $1500, then you can afford a $300 console. 

Some people don't like that Epic is making certain games timed exclusives. I feel for them there, because Epic still doesn't have an offline mode, and I wouldn't want to buy a game that would become unplayable should anything happen to Epic's DRM servers. 

Anyway, what do you think? 

I think making fun of PC gamers in this regard is a little bit short-sided. I honestly think, as pathetic as this may be, that if PC exclusives were given the spotlight as much as console exclusives this probably wouldn't be an issue. Some PC games can sell millions and be virtually unheard of in the console space. It's the issue of sales vs. mindshare and because console exclusives are marketed to sell plastic (whereas Microsoft and Valve have rarely marketed PC exclusives to sell PCs), they get way more attention. It's an ego issue in a lot of ways, because that's what exclusives are about in terms of marketing.

That being said yes you could argue that exclusives are anti-consumer. I think the general consensus has become that moneyhatting exclusives are the big bad, and that first party or IP-exclusives are good or a necessary evil. And I tend to agree with that outlook.

i loved playing wow on my ps4 and wii u

That's way, way too vague a poll so I didn't vote.

It's like asking, "are drugs bad?" What, like aspirin? Crack cocaine?

There are also degrees involved. If Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo buy a third party exclusive, I might not be able to play it if I don't have that console. But a PC storefront, though? Not that big of a deal because I don't have to buy new hardware.

I feel like this is a very poor argument for a number of reasons. For one, not everybody who has $1000 of disposable income has $1300 of disposable income (or $1600 if you factor in the fact that you need multiple consoles to play different exclusives), and even if they do, the value proposition becomes highly skewed when you are spending hundreds of dollars for one or two exclusives (depending on how many exclusives you are interested in). Second, you have to account for all of the differences in the games between a console and PC. There are different communities that you would be playing with, different tools, different online platforms (remember to add in $60 a year to your value proposition if you want to play online), different control interfaces and different technical capabilities.

There is a lot more behind someone saying that they wish x game was on PC than simply whether or not they can afford another console.

That said, to answer your question, yes an exclusive is more anti-consumer than the open platform utopia, and basically by nature, timed exclusives are just companies holding back content for a week or a month or however long. That said, if you consider the monetary side of things, it becomes a little more shaky. Is Bayonetta 2 being Nintendo exclusive anti-consumer when it would have never been released without Nintendo's involvement? Is Super Mario Odyssey being exclusive anti-consumer when it is being used to drive console sales in order to attract games to the platform and ensure that Nintendo is able to maintain competition within the industry and keep freedom when it comes to how they want to utilize hardware?

Ehhhh, I'd argue that not all exclusives are created equal. To determine what is anti-consumer, I'd argue that you have to consider whether exclusivity is a platform holder paying to hold pack content for an out-group; or if it is a platform holder paying to provide content for an in-group. Often we don't have the information to make this distinction and there are still factors regarding the health of a platform and the maintenance of a competitive ecosystem which muddy the waters.

Well disposable income isn't a one-off thing though. Income comes in on a weekly or monthly basis, constantly replenishing itself. Unless someone is scrimping and saving for well over a year just to build their PC, it shouldn't take them that long to save enough for a console. I agree that the value proposition becomes skewed if you are just buying a console for two games. I've known a lot of people that bought a Wii U just for Kart and Smash. And I feel for them for sure. 

Oh, and yes, if somebody spends most of their time playing multiplayer online games then they should be playing on a PC. Me though? I'm mostly single player, so online subscirption fees might cost me $20 a year tops. 

Absolutely not.

Just a bunch of over entitled people whining about shit. An exclusive is not any more anti consumer as coke not sharing the recipe for their beverages with other companies, or any company that patents anything preventing anyone else from making it simply because they thought about it first.

I went with Other.

First party exclusives are fine. It would not make sense any other way. Third party exclusives? Those suck. Especially if it wasn't a developer decision, and instead the publisher got money to make it an exclusive.

Only if playing the game would suddenly require the consumer to spend a significant amount of additional money to play it. For example, a game that was promised as a multiplatform title that people had bought systems for was no longer coming to some of those systems, effectively either gating some people out of playing the game or forcing them to buy another system to play it..

Developer decision? 

Publishers foot the bill for the developers. So the developers don't really have a say in the matter. And those that do have say choose which publishers they ae goig to work with.