Now before you jump on the hate train by only ready the headline. Hear me out.

Let's talk hypothetical here. 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.

2) It pushes Console manufacturers to focus on creating even better hardware to outdo the competition. Much like DvD player brands. You buy what's the best value for your dollar. Not what movie can play on one and not the other.

Example: A console manufacture can make a poor console, money hat IPs and funnel customers into buying the console that the customer has no interest in buying however has no choice because the games they like have been paid to be exclusive. 

3) It allows console manufacturers to invest even more into 1st party games, creating killer apps to sell with the hardware. This increases investments on the 1st party software front, hardware front and might even push companies to open up more studios to increase their portfolio.

For companies to have the option to money hat games, it is nothing more than a short cut. It's basically paying to handicap your competition. It would be more interesting to see how all these companies fair if 3rd party games weren't able to be paid exclusives. It will focus more on 1st party content and who offers the better deals with Hardware. 

Nintendo is in a very unique spot. They found out they couldn't compete on the 3rd party front like Xbox and PS can, so what Nintendo did was focus on building great 1st party games and unique system designs that tend to make 3rd party games exclusives by default due to controller features, like the Wii. Nintendo have found a structure where they don't have to rely on moneyhatting developers to make 3rd party exclusives because Nintendo has an unrivaled 1st party lineup that even if you took all the 3rd party games away from the Switch, Nintendo games alone will sell the systems as we saw with Zelda BOTW literally selling more game copies than hardware devices. 

If this hypothetical became a reality than we would also need to put in place rules for purchasing studios. Otherwise, MS will just buy all the 3rd party companies and eat the competition. 

If you really think about it all, we all win. Software developers win, as they can sell more games to more people, customers win because we will be offered better hardware options and 1st party games, and console manufacturers can drive each other and the industry into the right direction much like AMD vs Nvidia. Drive the hardware innovation and we might be able to expand this console market.

2) and 3) don't make sense

Playstation got exclusives, but Playstation and Xbox hardware are basically the same. Nintendo don't have exclusives and sometimes release whack hardware (Wii U)

Playstation is also the one who invested more in their own first party, even when it had exclusives. Nintendo invest strongly in their own IPs even when they indeed had almost all exclusives (NES, SNES)


Releasing good hardware and investing on their own IPs don't seem to correlate with having (a lack of) third party exclusives

3rd party is great for the industry. Steam plays most everything which is great. Exclusives are bad for the industry. Who wants to own 4 pieces of hardware instead of 2 (PC+switch)?

Who wants to waste money buying another machine like switch when you can just own a PC and play all games? if exclusives are bad for the industry then bring all switch exclusives on PC as well then no exception.

I disagree with getting rid of exclusivity as a whole. In the case of Nintendo, the problems come from (a) the experiences which they develop aren’t intended to be played on next gen consoles (people playing Zelda TotK on their PS5 are going to complain about all the graphical restrictions: triple-A experiences which release on strong hardware have a standard which they need to live up to. And as we’ve seen with the recent AAA-bubble, it’s not always best to be producing the most graphically impressive experience, for these take many many years to produce and carry a heavy budget.), (b) producing for all systems would technically make the Nintendo console version the worst version to purchase due to the weakness in the hardware (you either play 30fps TotK on Switch or 60fps, 4K on PS5/PC. The Switch literally cannot handle 60fps nor 4K especially not on such a grandiose experience, nor should we be incentivizing this seeing how the industry has been damaged with this ballooning standard in hardware strength.), it becomes a bigger risk for Nintendo to use “wacky” gimmicks on their hardware (the Nintendo Wii, for instance, took advantage of motion controls: no other console prior to 2008 supported such. So you have restrictions in how much they can truly do when it comes to taking advantage of gimmicks.), (d) etc etc etc.

At the end of the day, exclusivity is not a problem. We only have four options to choose from (Switch, PS5, XBSX, PC) and if you really want to play every experience, then it’s not too difficult to simply purchase whatever console you prefer. A lot of the charm that comes from first-party experiences is playing on the intended hardware: Without exclusives, no console would truly have any reason for existing, for only the most powerful holds any true value (monopoly is not good, technological race is not good).

Let me explain 2 and 3.

2) Console Manufacturers will have to invest more into their hardware, focusing on creating exclusive features that the opposition doesn't have, to help sell over rival hardware, instead of just money hatting IPs to get people to buy their consoles. Gen 9, both companies have played it very safe, the X/S is a more powerful version of the XB1 arguably with less features, and the PS5 is just a more powerful PS4. No risks were taken to innovate over the other. PS5 and X/S are practically the same machine with a different badges. Why innovate when they can just pay for 3rd party exclusives to get you buying the machine anyway. 

3) Exact same thing as 2, only with 1st party content. Push these companies to invest even more into their IPs, New and Old, instead of playing it safe and rely on moneyhatting IPs to carry the load and hampering your competition. Majority of gamers buy a PS5 and X/S for 3rd party content and the 1st party content is a secondary for the majority. Do what Nintendo do and make the majority buy the consoles off 1st party bangers. Just look at the top 10 lists of both Xbox and Playstation, it's all 3rd party, then look at Nintendos. 

We want even better games and even better consoles. We want these companies to compete by building rival games and better hardware rather than building similar machines and instead of making IP counter parts, they just money hat, instead of pushing eachother to make the best FPS, Fighters etc. Only rivalry we have is GT vs Forza. 

These companies are not pushing boundaries, we want them to. 

I would support Nintendo on steam, but Nintendo financially won't be doing as such anytime soon.  

I agree 100%, especially since the switch is so far behind technically, it's the worst platform to play games (in terms of specs)

Software makes money, hardware loses money.  I would buy halo infinite and FF16 but won't buy consoles for them.  PC releases are more money in the hands of developers.  To me it is that simple.  A ps5 + online + hdd upgrade + Xbox + online.....  too expensive.  Exclusives don't work with today's development costs.  

It very much depends on the games made and who they are trying to sell to.


Not all games are a fit for all consoles, even the 3rd party ones, porting to all platforms costs money, like buying 3+ platforms to play on and some smaller Devs can't do that and have to stick to 1 or 2 platforms, in which case, exclusives may come because the game they are making has a better chance of success on 1 platform over another that may not make the money back to cover the costs of a port