Exclusives Are Dead - Can Nintendo Save Us?

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I’m a bit sad about the direction that companies are taking with game development. All I see now are cross-platform titles across the board with a few exclusives here and there. It’s starting to reach a point where 80% of the titles on a particular console can also be found on at least one other console, if not two, and that just looks to be getting worse in the coming year. Just looking ahead into the gaming horizon, you can see titles that not only will appear on all three next generation consoles but also on PS2 and PC. Come on! Is it really necessary to flood the market with every conceivable version of a game? And I’m not even bringing up the consistently popular PSP port and DS 2-D-ification. Well, I guess I did. That means that it’s feasible for up to 7-8 SKUs of a game to be out there at a given time and that is just plain ridiculous.

I’ve always argued with Chris Slate about Nintendo’s philosophy on game development and that just designing a system that costs less to develop for isn’t really the ideal answer to what ails this industry. However, I think that path of thought might help to alleviate the issue that I’m bringing up today. It seems that more and more companies are releasing the same title on every possible system and blaming the rising costs of development for that course of action. Granted, it does make sense to port games from a revenue basis as the overall cost of porting generally is considerably less with each successive port. Thus, the more versions of a game you make, the cheaper it is for an individual SKU and the greater the possible return on investment (ROI). Still, the downside is that the game generally ends up running best on the one lead platform and fails to be fully optimized or utilize the additional benefits/innovations of the other consoles.

So, here’s a thought: what if all three console manufacturers (and not just Nintendo) developed systems with innovation, rather than processing power, in mind. What if these systems did provide a noticeable increase in graphics, sound, etc. but it wasn’t in such a major way? What if they all cost less than $199? And what if it costs a 2/3s less to develop for them then it would the 360 and PS3? In this “dream world” would we tend to see more interesting game ideas and overall uniqueness? Above all that, wouldn’t there inherently tend to be more exclusives on each system since publishers wouldn’t have as much risk, financially speaking?

It’s just that I miss the days of console personalities. I definitely know I’ve talked about this before but it seems appropriate to bring up again. There was a time when each individual console had a certain “special” feel to it. If you owned a Saturn, you were a certain type of gamer or a Neo-Geo, etc. The consoles catered to different types of gaming personalities and I loved that. People would generally only own one system so there was always that friendly rivalry about who was able to play what. The Genesis would get some sort of exclusive and then Nintendo would try to one-up Sega with an even better SNES exclusive. We had some really good console wars on our hands. Now, it doesn’t seem to matter what console you get aside from the first party-specific stuff. Every system now seems to get every game and that’s just boring. Now, gamers (which now tend to own multiple systems, ironically) have to worry about stupid things such as if online gaming (X360), graphics quality (PS3) or gameplay innovation (Revolution) is the most important. What if they make the wrong choice? Isn’t it hard enough to just worry about what games one should buy, given how many there are?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I do truly miss the older days of gaming and the unique rivalries that console manufacturers had. They all fought hard to get those third party exclusives. Now all they seem to do is tout performance specs, online superiority or ease of development. If I’m a Microsoft fan, I want that company to be out there constantly trying to beat out Sony and Nintendo with a constant barrage of amazing exclusives. Show me why I must have an Xbox 360 and no other system. The same should be said of Sony and Nintendo. Earn my loyalty… don’t expect it.

At least for right now, Japan seems to be the last bastion of exclusive content but that certainly won’t last much longer. I see an eventual future where the only thing that separates console A from console B are a couple of first party titles and some minor hardware features and that is just plain depressing. Maybe Nintendo will come in strong and change all that. Maybe for that one reason, alone, they deserve all of our support. What do you think?