PlayStation And Xbox Are Getting Back Into The Business Of Console Exclusives

For several console generations, the hardware we’ve dedicated our time and money to has been determined by the sort of games there are to play on it. You’d pick up the new Nintendo console for beloved properties like Zelda and Mario, while for its entire existence it has been widely recognised that Xbox is the house that Halo built. Meanwhile, PlayStation became known for a constantly growing slate of iconic yet experimental properties that arguably put its competition to shame.

But as triple-A video games become more expensive and major developers and publishers seek to broaden their revenue streams, this once traditional picture has begun to fade away. For years now, Xbox has adopted a ‘Play Anywhere’ strategy that sees its exclusive library launch simultaneously across console and PC, with cross-play and cross-save becoming a standard suite of features that the majority of its games now support. This strategy is then further buoyed by services like Game Pass, which expect players to invest in a vast and rewarding ecosystem that relies on multiple different platforms to exist.

That was the initial intention at least, but with Xbox lagging significantly behind PlayStation in terms of console sales and user retention, it has had little choice in recent years but to take a multiplatform approach in order to claw back profits. In recent years, we have seen titles such as Hi-Fi Rush, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Gears of War, Forza Horizon, and others make the jump to PlayStation despite being developed and funded internally at Xbox. However, this all happened under the leadership of previous boss Phil Spencer. Now, it seems that strategy might wind up changing once the likes of Halo: Campaign Evolved and Fable, whose deals were secured under Spencer’s reign, are squared away.

With Asha Sharma and Matt Booty now leading a rebranding of Xbox, they seem to understand the value that exclusive titles hold. That’s why the controversial This Is An Xbox slogan was immediately axed. Even if Microsoft is lagging behind the competition, it remains vitally important for its hardware to offer something that can’t be found anywhere else. After spending the past several years also releasing its games on PC, PlayStation might soon follow in its footsteps and revert to its tried and tested exclusivity policy. Things are changing, and I can’t lie that it’s a bit exciting.

Why Is PlayStation Leaving PC Ports Behind?

According to Bloomberg, Sony sent out an internal update earlier this week stating that its future first-party narrative-driven titles would no longer be launching on PC and will remain exclusive to PlayStation consoles. This likely means that while multiplayer titles like Helldivers 2 or Marathon will continue to be released and receive support on PC, any experience along the lines of Ghost of Yotei or the upcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will be console through and through.

This shift in strategy has been rumoured for some time after releases like Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart underperformed, likely bringing up whether the resources required to port exclusives over to PC was worthwhile. In this era, is it not better if more attention was instead paid to how titles like this can shift console hardware?

The most popular PlayStation PC port is Ghost of Tsushima, which peaked at over 77k concurrent players upon its release — far lower than the biggest PC hits. Since then, it’s been a case of diminishing returns.

While I have always believed that ensuring your games are on as many platforms and can reach as wide an audience as possible is a good thing, the shift in strategy here, given the current video game landscape, makes a lot of sense. Spending loads of money on porting efforts only to serve a few thousand players when your potential console audience is made up of tens of millions simply isn’t worthwhile, especially when a lot of PC consumers often are made up of double dippers like myself.

Console hardware is only becoming more and more expensive, with this being the first generation in history where prices have risen at a consistent rate rather than dropping the longer machines sit on shelves. That isn’t going to change with the PS6, and Sony is going to need to give us ample reasons to invest instead of walking away or playing all our favourite live service games on phones instead.

Yes, it’s a shame that stellar PC ports from Nixxes will no longer be available to push great games to their visual and performance limits, but I can’t imagine this will negatively impact the vast majority of consumers. Ghost of Yotei is a good modern example — it sold several million copies on PS5 alone and has become another compelling reason to own the console.

As the next blockbuster from Naughty Dog, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Intergalactic shift plenty of units as well. Sony had previously set a precedent for PC players that if they were willing to wait long enough, a port would eventually come along. That isn’t the case anymore, at least for the prestige experiences that make PlayStation worth caring about.

Console Exclusives Are Coming Back Into Fashion

So, it seems that Xbox and PlayStation have the same incentives right now to push classic exclusive experiences more than ever. I imagine the internal research has been done to not only prove that the profits simply aren’t there compared to the resources required to ensure these ports become a reality, but it isn’t worth tearing your potential audience apart either.

In the case of Xbox, a lot of recent ports to PlayStation felt like a desperate move from a now defunct leadership trying to make as much money as possible. Game Pass subscribers were way below expectations and launching triple-A games that cost millions of dollars and years to make onto a service a lot of people were accessing for pennies wasn’t sustainable.

Now, the platform holder has to ask whether it’s smarter to rebrand Xbox into the big hitter it once was or fade sadly into the night. Asha Sharma is going for the former, and only time will tell whether this gamble on the next-generation hardware will truly work out. Nintendo is simply doing its own thing, but in the case of PlayStation and Xbox, it’s safe to say that exclusives might be coming back into fashion.