My take on this:
Folks, look at it from a Developers perspective: Exclusives for most studios just don't make sense anymore cause the numbers don't make sense anymore.
So as much as some of you folks want to shit on what she's saying (and I very much understand why), she IS factually correct. I don't love the titles that she mentioned as basically being the end all be all (cause it worries me that that's then what they'll be investing into, which would be a really bad strategy), but consider this:
When we initially started on No Rest for the Wicked, we obviously negotiated with Microsoft as well and it would've made sense to make another game with Microsoft after our Ori games were incredibly successful. We were pretty deep in negotiations already, but when we ran the numbers, it just became utterly clear that losing out on PlayStation sales and Switch sales, etc. would be an incredibly dumb business decision for us at this point since the budget for No Rest for the Wicked was quite a bit higher than the budget for the Ori games. So we had to say no to Microsoft simply because at that point they still stuck to their exclusivity thing and that's how they lost out on being in bed with us. And we're a smaller elite team, not a MASSIVE studio with tons of outsourcers where the numbers make even less sense.
During PS2 times, etc., a Grand Theft Auto III selling 5 million copies was a HUUUGE hit. And that was fine, cause those games cost like 20-40m to make and sold for 60$ a pop. Nowadays the budgets have risen by an order of magnitude. The demands are a LOT higher as well.
I already predicted quite a long time ago on my X feed that we'll absolutely see Sony follow the same strategy as Microsoft in regards to Multiplatform because developers would just go on a strike if not - Sony didn't even have a choice and most gamers didn't quite understand that and got very angry with me for even suggesting that, but now that's the reality we live in and the writing was already on the wall even back then if you ran the business case. Nowadays, all the major titles like Spider-Man, Last of Us, Uncharted and God of War, etc. all got ported to PC's as well, likely not because Sony thought that's the best strategy to make PlayStation popular, but because developers saw that as a straight-forward way to increase their audience and get a bit of a safety-cushion.
So if Sony approaches an Insomniac today and pitches a fully console-exclusive game, a studio like Insomniac would likely just say 'Uhm, yeah, that's not happening unless you're willing to pay us for the potentially lost sales on other platforms', which the platform holders would likely not agree to cause they don't want to carry the risk either. But all our salaries and our studios fortunes are tied to number of copies sold and if you tie me down to one platform, you're drastically reducing the chance of me selling the amount of copies I need to sell to make our studio thrive. And yes, Insomniac is a first party studio, but the same thing still applies: If I'm the director of that studio and I'm being presented a business case where the chances that I sell the number of copies I need to are at a high risk even though our studios fortune is dependent on that risk being as low as possible, why would I agree to spend years of my life on this extremely risky proposition? I could just as well quit and make a deal with a third party and increase those chances dramatically. And we've seen that happen quite a bit with a lot of the old talent leaving all those beloved studios (which gamers usually never hear about cause publishers never want to run the risk of tying their franchise to a singular person). They've now been replaced by bozos who don't have that kinda experience and y'all are wondering why the games are suddenly bad - Well, this is why. Cause you had Spielberg, but you gave him a shitty proposition, so Spielberg quit and now you brought in fresh newcomer Steward Stewardson with barely any experience to continue running your prized franchise and - surprise! - that guy made a shitty game.
And you can't really bring Nintendo into this, cause their business model is entirely different. They're completely vertically integrated and the biggest reason why people buy Nintendo hardware is because of Nintendo software. That's historically not been the case for Sony and Microsoft.
So hate as much as you want, but given where we're at with the audience numbers per platform and the increase in budgets, exclusives just do not make sense anymore. And if you don't believe the CEO of Moon Studios, the Ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has recently said practically the same:
ign.com/articles/ex-pla...ch…
Exclusive games are "antiquated", says Xbox president Sarah Bond:
▪️Seeing people evolve way past locking down to one device or one store
▪️Biggest games in the world are available everywhere (Fortnite, COD, Roblox, etc)
Full Interview ➡️
youtube.com/watch?v=yDmwJ7tu…
#Xbox