Developers Believe Exclusivity is Fading, Early Access Remains Viable, More - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 August 2025 / 3,185 Views
Gamescom is set to start next week and the survey sent to developers as part of the devcom developer conference has revealed some interesting information on the gaming industry.
32 percent of developers believe "exclusivity will become less common altogether," while the majority believe limited (28%) and timed (34%) exclusives will become the norm. Only six percent believe "exclusivity will remain a core strategy."
96 percent of developer believe Early Access remains a viable strategy. 59 percent said it works within specific genres and communities" and 37 percent said it worked "broadly."
Digital and physical premium games remain the most favored business with 27 percent of those surveyed. 20 percent said paid subscriptions and 18 percent said Free-to-Play with in-game purchases.
When it comes to AI, 33 percent of those surveyed prefer minimal AI involvement, while 32 percent said it is most valuable in code and production and 11 percent said in art and animation.
The biggest concerns in the video game industry include "economic and political uncertainty (56 votes), market saturation (53 votes), and rising development costs (44 votes)."
54 percent stated large-scale digital showcases are worth it, however, 21 percent felt the "costs outweigh benefits," and eight percent said "they're too crowded for real impact."
Digital format comes out as the preferred buying habit with 59 percent. 22 percent said physical editions mainly appeals to collectors, while 19 percent chose physical as the default.
Nearly half of those surveyed (46%) see a shift toward cloud and digital-first services, while 45 percent think console and PC will remain dominant.
The survey was answered by 100 devcom speakers.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Headline should read "developers state the obvious".
I look forward to a more open future.
Nintendo is almost single handedly keeping exclusives alive, and there are some here and there on PS5.
Exclusivity has been decreasing every generation since the 6th.
Congrats to those six percenters for remembering that Nintendo still exists.
The reason in question is Nintendo audience is increasingly disconnected from the rest of gaming market and seems to be more and more playing exclusively Nintendo games
Then you'd think these guys would take a page out of Sega's book back in the day and go, "Hey... what they do works, so let's do it, too!" instead of, "Let's go do something else!"
Clearly, Nintendo has figured it out. Perhaps these guys should follow their lead.
What works for Nintendo also worked for Sony until PS4 era when they decided to diversify their revenues and now they are doing a mixed approach
But I don't see how developers who are not platform holders would be able to repeat Nintendo bussines model
There are plenty of games with the scale and budget of Nintendo games though? Not every game has GTA-level of production value
As for Style I don't see why anyone should copy Nintendo Style. Every company needs their own style
Then what do you propose they do? Because Nintendo keeps out-doing themselves and dominating the industry, while everyone else is going third-party and complaining about rising costs. What is your solution?
I mean everybody else is an overstatement, many publishers are doing great (Capcom, Sega, Epic, Take Two, Bandai, Sony, Tencent) while others are struggling or having mixed results (Square, Ubisoft, Microsoft, etc)
So it's really case by case. Nintendo dominates the console market in terms of profit, but majority of publishers are more media/multiplatform, but they are still really healthy in what they do
As for using Nintendo strategy, as I said plenty of publishers release smaller games. Shujinkou, Split Fiction, Clair Obscure, The Talos Principle... none of those are big budget AAA games
So what is your solution for both the platform holders and third parties?
If you're all right with Playstation slowly losing exclusives, or eight years (and in some cases, over a decade) between AAA titles, or less innovative AAA games because they cost too much to make, then no. Everything is going splendidly, I suppose.
But I mean, Xbox is dissolving in front of our eyes, Shu is sounding the alarms, saying Sony is going to have to change or else, and Playstation's current leadership is starting to sound more and more like Phil.
I don't know about you, but none of that sounds positive to me.
Only if you have a really short memory. Nintendo has made many major missteps. While they've had some of the most successful platforms, they've also had the least successful, at least among the big three. Nintendo has the benefit of nostalgia. It's not possible for anybody else to get that except in the very long term.
In other words, copying Nintendo may or may not be a good idea. But it doesn't matter, because it's not possible.
saying you think exclusivity will become less common doesn't exclude to know that Nintendo games will still stay exclusive.
I think it's a mistake to assume that this will always be the case. It certainly will be for the foreseeable future. But, we'd have said that about Xbox and Playstation franchises a decade ago. And we turned out to be totally wrong.
I don't think any of them aren't factoring in Nintendo with that question, they're probably just saying that Nintendo will be one of the only big companies still making exclusives in few years.
It's ridiculous that people are getting bent out of shape because of a perceived slight to Nintendo when the question is clearly about the entire industry and is most likely being asked of third-party developers who are thinking terms of their own situations.
Nintendo games are still mainly exclusive to Nintendo hardware, thankfully.
so mario on playstation one day? lol
