Do Third Party Exclusives Have A Place in Gaming Anymore? - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 23 June 2011 / 5,384 Views
The console wars have been in existence for almost as long as gaming itself, with the one of the first instances resembling a one taking place between the Intellivision, Atari 2600, and Colecovision. Through each console we've had tons of hardware and system features exclusive to each platform; An unprecedented online service on the original Xbox, a Blu-Ray drive for PS3, Blast Processing for the Genesis (even if it didn't actually exist), motion controls for Wii, the list goes on. No matter how powerful the hardware or how feature rich a system is, it all seems to come down to one thing: the games.
In the past, exclusive third party titles could make or break a system. Atari had a huge line of exclusive arcade titles for their platform. Nintendo pretty much had a monopoly on the market and enforced rules that kept third parties on their platform with the NES. The Genesis and the SNES were almost on equal ground as both sides had massive exclusive libraries. The list goes on until you start looking at this generation. Early on, there was a clear third party preference on the Xbox 360. Over time, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have evened out to the point where almost every third party title is multi-platform right out the gate.
From the consumer perspective, that's fantastic. No longer do you have to plop down another $300 to pick up all your favorite third party content. From a console manufacture's perspective, it could definitely be concerning. The less reasons someone has to purchase your console, the more likely they'll go with another. Over the years, it seems they have been less willing to really go out and grab exclusives. A big part of it is probably the exceeding development costs, but mainly the growing market across both platforms, which would drive up the price of exclusivity. Really, their importance doesn't seem to be too missed as first party titles are filling that exclusive void.
First party exclusives have always been around, especially with Nintendo. These titles seem to be becoming a bigger part of the equation to a console's success, specifically with Sony. While they had some notable titles, Sony didn't have a big first party role on the original PlayStaiton. The system was pretty much ruled by third party exclusives. Over time they have built up multiple IPs and while they don't exactly have a back catalog of franchises like Nintendo, they do have some capable ones now with the likes of Uncharted, God of War, LittleBigPlanet and more.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had a heavy reliance on third party exclusives in terms of retail software, advanced releases, and downloadable content. Honestly, if it wasn't for that early bump from third parties, I'm not sure where the Xbox 360 would even be today. While they have Halo, they don't really have any real heavy hitting franchises. They definitely do have potential IPs with titles like Alan Wake and Fable, but they don't have a ring to them like first party titles on other platforms. The lack of third party exclusivity is becoming increasingly noticeable on their part, as outside of Kinect, there aren't really many exclusives in the pipe-line.
The role of the third party exclusive seems near dead at this point, outside of motion controllers due to differences in hardware. For us, that just means no matter what platform we have, we can enjoy most of what's out there. While it definitely was a great tool for console manufactures in the past, the rising development costs and growing markets seem to have outweighed the benefits. If anything, it pushes the first party publisher to create greater titles to help differentiate the console. That is a much better use of their money for us, rather than spending it playing a bidding game so the developer throws the other half of the market out the window.
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What are you talking about??? PlayStation 3 has WAY more exclusive titles than Xbox 360. They are better exclusives aswell.
@SONYisBP Gears of War is not a first party game, it is a third party exclusive, like Demon Souls on PS3, for example.
Gears are 3rd party and GOW 3 is the last one in series or at least last one exclusive.
If you have a weak first party like MS, then yes, very important ..
Saying Microsoft only has Halo is like saying Disney only has Mickey Mouse. Gears of War may not be 1st party, but it's exclusive and so is Shadow Complex. Epic Games is practically the Pixar to Microsoft's Disney. Forza and Fable are huge franchises that people love so they shouldn't be ignored when talking about exclusives.
I'm surprised any 3rd party devs make any exclusives. It's like declining money. Any games that sells on one console will surely sell as well on another, nearly ensuring double the profit. I'm also surprised that any devs agree to be 1st party. Why would you want to work for a company when you could just contract with them and keep more profit. Look at Bungie. They learned that MS while able to fund their projects also controlled too much. By tricking Activision into paying for their development they can do pretty much anything they want and when the contract is up they leave with everything.
I'm pretty tired of these console ware. It was fun back in the 16bit era when the SNES and the Genesis were too very different machines with their own pros and cons and very different libraries of games. Now the games are all pretty much the same and if you want to play the best games, ie Halo, Mario, Uncharted, etc, you have to buy everything or pick a franchise and buy it's hardware and hope the 3rd party stuff can keep you occupied in between 1st party releases. At least all three have been good about releasing AAA games nearly on a monthly basis.
This is Capcom's fault, lol
I agree with this article. However things could turn out ugly for MS if developers start making more use of the ps3 hardware, especially Blu-Ray. For example what would happen if a huge franchise like GTA5 would no longer fit on DVD anymore? Multiple disks are usually the answer but not sure if that would work for a game like that. Still 99% of the games out there should be fine on multiple dvd's.
3rd party exclusives are pretty much dead these days, they are starting to realise that making your games multiplat is where you make bigger profit
The article is talking about 3rd party exclusives such as Agent made by Rockstar, not first-party such as Uncharted
No economic analysis at all? Economics is likely one of the major factors that drives 3rd party exclusives.
Also there's tons of PSN games / Live games that are 3rd party exclusives. Pokemon and Dragon Quest are also exclusives.
Most forum posts are better than this article :(
Agent will change that trend
Can anyone tell which is the bleeding difference between a 1st and 3rd party exclusive? For example I see that both Halo and GoW are published by Microsoft Game Studios. So why should Halo belong to MS and not GoW?
It all changed and became irrelevant as soon as Microsoft started paying off 3rd party developers to put once exclusive to PS franchises on Xbox and even snatching up Rare from Nintendo.
personally i think they don't because :
this gen has resulted in higher dev costs meaning that sales are even more crucial than before for devs, having a game available to a wider group of people gives them a higher return on their investment which may then lead to them creating better games
making the game more widely available is an advantage to gamers as a whole because more gamers can get to experience the game obviously
i think that at this point first party games are all thats needed to contribute to the image and reputation of a console like mario for nintendo, halo for 360 and uncharted for ps3
@Justp94
Dude... PS3 has "few" more exclusives than the MS console but not "way more" and it makes no difference at all for the end consumers so far (Bluray is, lot of people bought a PS3 as a Bluray drives and did buy only one or two games).
It is like that Sonyisbsomething user who "explain" us that the last sale boost for MS is because of Kinect, so what? Looks like a success to me.
Also for other Sony boys, just bashing Halo, Gear of Wars or even Kinect does not change the fact that they are top selling games/devices and just coming here saying those games/devices sucks will not change that fact. People bought a 360 for that. Same for the PS3, people tends to buy it because of the Bluray drive or a game they saw on this system. Nothing is wrong here.
These 3rd party exclusives must have an end.
3rd party exclusive just means that the big 3 are not willed to make games on their own and go the easy and lazy way-pay to be exclusiv.
Give some money to avoid that people who don"t own their system can"t play the game isn"t the right way imo.
It also is dangerous because the companies opens themselves to blackmail.
Exactly that happened with MS and Epic when Epic said Gears may appear on PS3-this was a warning shot,and what they(epic) really said was."well -we can sell 4 mio copies on PS3 .4 mio copies means=100mio$ more for us.Hey MS-Try to convince us not to make a PS3 version"
I don"t know what exactly happened than,but I"m pretty sure Cliffy B is not as pure as he was before his PS3-statements.
3rd party exclusives are what made the last two generations way more interesting than this one.
@SONYisBP I guess all the retards missed your point....
"While they have Halo, they don't really have any real heavy hitting franchises."
Hmmmmm.
There may be various reasons why we do not really have 3rd party exclusives anymore.
For example, the ps2 dominated last gen, while the other consoles did absolutely terrible. Perhaps why there were so many console exclusives then, is because porting the games to the other two consoles did not offer any return in sales or so little that it was a waste of time, which they could put forward to make new games. The same could potentially be said for the psx era too. The n64 was so drastically different, and did not sell as well, therefore the cost of porting could have outweighed the return. Now this gen on the other hand, the ps3 and the 360 have similar sales. Couple this with high development costs, and it is logical that devs now bring experiences to multiple platforms. Perhaps if there was a great difference in sales between the 360 and ps3, we might see more 3rd party exclusives. Now that I think about it, early this gen, when the 360 was outperforming the ps3, it did receive 3rd party exclusive support. Is this coincidence? Or am I making this up as I go along?
FIRST! Well third party exclusives are practically non existent now days, besides the 360 getting early release nonsense, but does that really count?
exclusive third party are not or very rarely there anymore. when the Wii U is released we will see ports of all third party accross all three systems. But games like portal 2 which is known for its popularity on the pc of the original portal being delayed cause of valve putting it onto the ps3 made alot of valve fans very upset. why delay a game for a console where the game was so immensly popular on the pc? If anyone hasnt noticed the pc version is outselling the console versions and will for some time. now 3rd party alot of the games are now on pc as well but yet vgchartz dont count the pc sells on these games.
Ive been told numerous times by console owners that "you need to upgrade a pc every year to keep up with the graphics and such" which i comepletely false my pc i built by hand cost less then the ps3 when i built it and that was in 09 in feb and the tech i used as in motherboard and processor was already a year old. but guess what ive yet had a brand new game even portal 2 drag it down at all. but that is for another time. i think all these discussions need to start including pc games as well
@scorptile Portal 2 for PC is outselling what? This very site reports 1ml sells for X360, 0.75 ml for PS3 and a mere 0.26 for PC. Even if you double it because it is from valve and you wanna assume that many bought it from steam the PC version is still inferior in sales than the PS3 alone. The PC argument is outdated. Many (honest) gamers buy the games for consoles. That's what the numbers report.
Wow Finally someone else has noticed this
personally this is something i have been bitching about for years and was also the reason why I did not buy a ps3 or 360 at launch (that and the RROD and YLOD)
Multiplatform games are killing the gaming world in my opinion and its been getting on my nerves for years
I have no problems with massive titles like Call of Duty being multi plat as long as the majority of the consoles games are exsclusive and while im at it games like CoD should have cross console online play (yes its possible)
my biggest problem with multi plat games is that one system always holds the other back
in the current Gen were seeing games like Bioshock infinate that will include a free copy of the origional game on the same disk exsclusivly for the ps3 version.. why? because the game is soo small and sony want to fill up the massive bluray disk
go back to the days of the Megadrive and SNES
both those consoles had a great lineup of games and best of all they were pretty much all exsclusives and this is the best part about them
It give you a reason to own BOTH systems
personally I feel the current gen systems have been a massive let down mostly because of the multi plat market
some of the games have been great even some multi plat games have impressed me
but it makes you think
what if a game like Red Dead Redemption for exsample was a ps3 exsclusive and fully took advantage of that 50g disk? imagine how big that game could have been
also should note that this isnt a rant agaisnt the 360 in any way
if anything im slating the ps3 more for having so much wasted game potential although lately sony seem to be trying to change this
This is probably why people fail to see why the Nintendo Wii was such a massive success
no Hd, shitty online play, basic motion control, bad third party support yet its been the dominating platform this gen
and if you ask me why I'll simply say
Because its exsclusive games were many and the majority of them were awesome
if the next gen xbox and playstation keep up this abomination of multiplat titles then we as gamers are once again gonna have to face another 10 or so years of dissapointment
yeh cause gears of war doesnt have over a million pre orders or anything right now... oh and its a 3rd party exclusive
the person who wrote this doesnt even mention gears of war which i think is as big if not bigger than halo for M$. Not to mention the "bump" M$ got was because of kinect, like it or not.
As far as exclusives go per console, only the consoles win and the gamers lose. It is expensive to enjoy games across platforms with this or that, not allowing the console to carry itself with quality but with quantity.
no it dosen't.
