Again I would disagree with that. 

I guess they could have not released on PS5 at all and the sales also would've been the same? See now some Sony fanboys will throw a little fit if you even suggest that. 

The way people consume games has been shifting for years now, I think it really started to accelerate around 2020 and has picked up steam (no pun intended) since then. 

The modern generation of kids really don't have much/any brand loyalty to Sony and if you're not putting games where they're at they're simply going to ignore said game. 

Playstation exclusivity as it existed in the 1990s/2000s is an outdated concept, even Sony themselves (lol) won't even commit their IP to being exclusive to Playstation consoles any longer, who even knows if we're not that far away from something like Last of Us or Spider-Man 2 ending up on a Switch 2 eventually. You can't operate any longer like it's 1999 or even 2010 anymore, you're gonna lose significant amount of sales. 

The big, fat brick stationary home console in a lot of ways is becoming an outdated thing ... lots of people simply don't care for that form factor, the PC or Switch hybrid gives satisifies a lot of gaming needs more than a home Playstation can.

I just saw AMD's latest earnings report ... everything is up for them as a company except for one thing ... their sales from home consoles (so PS + XBox) are down big time, lol. PS/XBox are a drag on their earnings release, tells you that brand momentum is not with those systems. People need to understand Playstation and XBox for a lot of up and coming gaming audience is their *dad's* generation, it doesn't speak to their generation in the same way. 

Most people don't care if the games arrive late on their preferred platforms. Those who do care will play it on the other systems, those who don't will just wait. There is no "penalty" to timed exclusivity, especially if said exclusivity is on a popular platform.

It's an "outdated concept" because its very expensive now, and timed exclusives just don't sell enough consoles, because again... most people will choose to wait for those games to come to theirs platform.

Playstation does face challenges and I spoke about this in length in multiple threads. But it's not really related to my argument that timed exclusives don't kill games or necessarily impact sales negatively in the long run.

Time to grab my popcorn and see all the future discussions

These games should sell very well on Switch 2; over the last generation Nintendo has cultivated a substantial audience that loves these kind of games (JRPGs, big epic adventure games) and being available on a console that's actually relevant in Japan should really help the series there.

So many Japanese third parties must have been chomping at the bit for Switch 2 for ages now, with PS and Xbox being weak there and the Switch 1 struggling to run their games.

It's an outdated concept because the Playstation isn't the center of the gaming universe any more, it's just one platform of several other large gaming ecosystems. Steam/PC is a huge one. Switch is a huge one. 

You can't have success with exclusives in the same way as you did even 10 years ago IMO. Even Sony themselves knows this. 

Square-Enix just got a rude awakening that operating like it's 1999 doesn't work for them any more. 

If FF7 Remake was launching this year on all of PC/Steam + Switch 2 + PS5 + XBox day 1 ... IMO it would sell easily more than 10 million in sales instead of the 7 million or so it capped off at. 

Microsoft in a lot of ways ironically dealt the "fat brick home console" concept a giant deathblow when they started to normalized what used to be home console 1st/2nd party exclusives as games you can now expect on PC day 1. Now 3rd parties followed suit and even Sony is bringing their own 1st/2nd party games to the PC. It just destroyed a lot of the value proposition of the old fashioned home console ... you don't need one at all. 

And I agree with it. I sold my PS5 and will not be buying a PS6. I don't need it. I can get Sony games on the PC, I don't give that much of a fuck if I have to wait a year to play Spider-Man or Ratchet & Clank or God of War, Sony's IP aren't that great that I must have their 5-6 good IP exclusives day 1. 

What the Playstation or XBox used to be (basically the place you *had* to go to play a fair number of exclusives or wait years for maybe a half assed PC port at some point) is long gone. Playstation couldn't even make it through the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy without losing exclusivity on those games, lol. 

I finished the main story/campaign for FFVII Remake Intergrade yesterday on Steam.

Doing Intermission DLC right now, halfway done - overall 54 hours in and loving it.

First game I've played at 4K 120 FPS as well so I'm hooked.

Its gonna be tough to play this game at lower frame rates but I'm fine with it - will get Remake, Rebirth and the third game on Switch when they go on sale and heavy on discounts.

A lot of the reasons why people didnt move on to Rebirth or get into XVI imo is....

1. VII Remake was heavily marketed and hyped up to be a remake of the greatest and most popular FF game, people went into the game fully hyped but came out deflated due to how different the game was - the genre was more action based, the storyline was for the most part completely different/technically a follow up to the original FF7 and that there will be multiple parts to the game, so this ticked off a sizable amount of the fanbase that they dropped the game completely.

2. XV was successful sale number wise (due to how often the game went on sale) but critically it was a flop due to the genre and gameplay changes, the DLC situation, the poorly written main story, high influence of western gaming aspects and themes (Open world, heavy on side quests, etc which were radically different to previous FF games).

3. Square Enix's bizarre release plans (drip feed releases across multiple platforms, literally takes 3-5 years for a game to come out on every platform - i.e. FF Pixel Remasters coming to mobile/PC and years later on other platforms, Kingdom Hearts) and the pricing of the games not going as low as they did in the past again due to the re-releases made sales suffer.

I believe these factors affected people's decision to hold off on major purchases - FFVII Rebirth suffered a lot because a lot of people dropped Remake and didnt have as much expectations as they did with Remake. FFXVI suffered due in point because of XV and its changes. People lost faith in the series.

For me personally -  aside from their bizarre release plans which didnt affect me that much (aside from the pricing) - I actually enjoyed FFXV and FFVII Remake. I only played through the demo of FFXVI on my PS5 but I plan to play the complete edition on Steam in the future.

Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, XV, XVI Demo, and FFVII Remake Intergrade - I'm fully hyped for the next mainline FF game along with any other spinoffs and the third part of the FFVII Remake trilogy.

FF XV become MUCH more enjoyable after the DLCS and updates (Royal Edition for consoles and Windows Edition for PC), I recommend play on PC with some mods that change the game a LOT (I'm doing this right now), I used a guide to put all the crucial mods and the game becomes incredible.

Oh I know, I love FFXV.

I gave my playthrough of FFXV on PS4 a 89 out of 100 (thats before I played the DLCs on the PS4 version).

I've watched the Brotherhood anime and the Ardyn OVA, the movie, played A King's Tale FFXV, and even bought the companion book.

I'm planning to play either the PC version or the Xbox version (since I have both) sometime in the future.

Also need to play FFXV Pocket Edition which I have on both PS4 and Switch.

Yeah, multiple popular platforms means that whoever making an exclusivity deal will have to pay a lot. That's just common sense. But exclusivity deals still exist and will continue to for a long time.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake likely sold between 8-9 million so far, and might end up exceeding 12 or 13 million lifetime with Switch 2 and Xbox versions. It's not "capped at 7 million" lol. Rebirth and the next game being sequels will probably lead to weaker sales. Final Fantasy sequels never sold as much as their predecessors and the same unfortunately seems to hold true with the FF7 trilogy.

If they released FF7Remake on all platforms simultaneously, platform splits would have been different and the sales would have been even more frontloaded. SquareEnix would have missed Sony's money. Assuming Sony "only" paid as much for FF7R exclusivity as Microsoft did for a 1 year Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity, they effectively covered the sales of 2.5 million copies at full price. So that's a potential 12 million seller + 2.5 million copies in cash from Sony, not counting how much Microsoft will pay them down the line to put their stuff on GamePass. FF7R is also holding its price better than older games from what I noticed.

Monster Hunter Wild is a technical mess btw, word of mouth definitely damaged its short term legs. It could've arguably been a better game if Capcom targeted a fewer platforms at launch, then released the PC version months later at a better state. Worked for them with World.

I don't know why you keep making this about how bad Playstation has it! I don't have a PS5 yet and most likely never will, because I have a PC and a partial access to my brother's PS5. PS5 indeed doesn't have enough exclusives for even me, an actual Playstation fan, to get one at the price it's at. But none of that has anything to do with explaining why timed-exclusives aren't a doom spell, and why they will still exist if at a fewer quantity.

No if anything Capcom should make the PC version the priority ... it's the no.1 platform for the game, lol, this idea that PC should be given the short end of the stick is stupid. You go where the audience is. That will sell likely several million more copies on the Switch 2 if/when Capcom ports it also. 

FF7 Remake would clear 10 million on its initial release if it had been a multiplat release. Not doing that cost Square-Enix 3 million sales probably easy. 

The economics of this are also utterly, utterly stupid, there's no way Sony was given Square-Enix enough of a money-hat to cover a lost 3-4 million in sales. At even a conservative $25 net margin per copy for SE, that's 75-100 million dollars lost, Sony paid them 75-100 mill? I doubt it. It was probably some dumb marketing deal in the ball park of maybe 20-25 million total. Square-Enix is stupid to have accepted, what they thought was now that the PS3 era was over (where they had to go multi-plat to the XBox 360) and the PS4 had dominated the XB1 was that everything would go back to how it was in the 90s/2000s. 

But that's not what has happened. Yes the Playstation has beaten the XBox, but its stagnating as a brand and hit up against a roof with no growth, not even as the XBox brand declines. Instead what has happened is the Switch and Steam/PC ecosystems exploded especially since 2020 in unprecedented ways and that was what Square-Enix didn't bank on. That and thing like a lot of the core Playstation 1 audience that bought FF7 back in the day has no interest in a PS4/5 and instead prefer the Switch's more modern take on gaming.