I’ll start this opinion piece out by saying: I get it. I really do. Business wise it makes sense with the deals – for all parties involved. The only party who it doesnt make sense for is the consumer.
The developer gets a chance to finish or polish the game they are working on, by sony, microsoft or nintendo offering up an infusion of capital for the project.
The console house gets a title they can flag with to make their console more alluring to consumers.
The loosing part in this, is the consumers. We have to make guesses if the title we really wanna play is coming to a platform we have available. I do not see this as fair in any point of view.
The outlier here is when Nintendo bought the rights of Bayonetta, when SEGA scrapped the project due to budget cuts. That was the rights, period and no one was expecting that to change. Or for the game to release on other platforms – that seemed clear as day according to the announcements coming from both Nintendo and Platinum Games.
I get it, though. If an exclusive game were to get labelled directly as “timed exclusive” on launch with an expected date to hit more platforms, more people would wait and less people considering buying another platform. It’s to the benefit of the console makers. It’s not even to the benefit of the game makers, so sure as hell is on fire, there is a contract between the concole maker and the game maker that they are to not tell anyone that the game is on a timed exclusive.
This needs to change. Console makers and game makers needs to realise this needs to be more transparent for the consumers – a lot of consumers are protesting in their own way, even complaining. Most do it with other consumers in regular daily talk or in forums, and in comment sections to newspieces or opinion pieces like this one.
When a timed exclusive launches, or shortly after (maybe a month?), there needs to be announced a prospected or expected date of launch on other platforms. How that happens, is for the console makers to decide, since it is seemingly this party that is affected by this change. But it needs to happen. For the consumers.
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