Multiplatform games doesn’t guarantee sales explosion. All it does it add more development time and limits the games technological potential.
People keep pushing this multiplatform utopia and ignore the other disadvantage realities. Exclusives games are more beneficial to game development.
“As they should be.”
No it should not. Leave it up to the developer’s choice and goals for the game.
FF7 remake and FF16 developers were more than happy the games were exclusive to PS5.
The consoles are form factor PC's running x86 tech. Games are developed on high end power PC's and then ported to consoles. Dev kits are literally used just to optimize them and not brick the box. There are no major advantages unless you're an internal studio because no third party publisher is going to waste more money, time and resources trying to squeeze out an extra 2% of what the console offers for minimal return. Also, both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are basically identical. One has a slightly better GPU/CPU at set speeds while the other has a faster SSD. The ONLY advantage for the exclusivity is for the platform holder, period. It does not benefit the consumer/player at all. Wow, I get to play it on my PlayStation 5 before Xbox, yay!! Wait, I still have to pay for it??? WTF is the difference then? The only difference is that 30% of the money goes to Sony instead of Microsoft. Big deal, who cares. And since so many games usually require multiple patches, you're not even getting your money's worth in the first place. I played FF XVI on PS5 day one in performance mode you know running at like 720P. Is that what my exclusivity buying me in 2024? 720p? LMAO
Also, developer's choice my ass. EVERY developer wants more people to play their game(s) that they spent years working on, NOT less. Publishers make the decisions, not the developers. And they usually make money oriented decisions. Problem is that most deals like Square Enix FF deal with Sony is a decade old and what looked like a great deal in 2015 probably looks like shit now a decade later. It's also NOT about just the sales. It's about getting the IP out there to see if you can interest others in your games. To get those who weren't interested before like me. Also, when you release your games everywhere, you may get people into your other franchises and what games you've released.
I'll sometimes get a publisher that releases a game im into and will then research what that publisher and development studio have previously released. While it's not all the time, I will at times find other games (obviously older) that im now interested in playing. If you limit your IP's to one audience of consumers, you'll never grow it which means eventually, the publisher will get turned off to that IP especially if it's under-performing in sales and engagement which means you may not get another one.
I want more games and them to be everywhere because it increases the chances of them being successful and in turn, gives me more of them later on. It's that simple for me.
