Recently Sony announced that they managed to sell 53 million PlayStation consoles, with around six million of those being sold in the last holiday month. However, their biggest exclusive only managed to sell around eight million copies in nine months, most of which were included in the biggest bundle of the year which reached as low as $200 on Black Friday. This begs the question: do exclusives matter? Just for reference, Halo 5’s player count was around 16.5 million a few months ago before the free PC version came out.
Power
When the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launched in 2013, both consoles had rather tepid launch libraries, with the Xbox One beating out the PlayStation 4 by a hair thanks to Knack launching on the PlayStation 4. The main narrative during this launch was all about power, and at the time the Xbox was slightly underpowered in relation to the PlayStation 4. Since then the gap has been narrowing, and Microsoft has since set the targets for all games launching on Xbox One to 900p and 1080p.
However, regardless of how much the Xbox One improved over time, the PlayStation 4 remained the go-to console for many around the world helping keep Sony above water during trying financial situations. The narrative was so much in favor of the Sony console that Sony, soon after the launch of the PlayStation 4, started work on the much more powerful PlayStation 4 Pro. The device recently launched to very tepid uptake, mainly because Microsoft preemptively struck down its impact with a reveal at E3 2016 called Project Scorpio. The upcoming Project Scorpio console will most likely feature a Ryzen and Vega custom APU reaching 6 TFLOPS, making it the most powerful console ever released, beating out the PlayStation 4 Pro at an eyewatering 50%. Recently the Ark developer stated that the upcoming console from Microsoft was so powerful that it can run virtual reality games, and make them look good, a subtle stab at the rather tragic PlayStation VR release.
Because of this, and the failure of the PlayStation 4 Pro, proves that the main selling point for consoles amongst consumers bar all the negative outdated narratives around the Xbox One, is power. When consumers opt for one or the other, they will mainly go for either the console that is the most powerful, or the console that is the most popular. Thanks to the 2013 launch of these consoles, Sony had both these on lock until the end of 2017.
Play with Friends
Thanks to Sony striking it lucky in 2013, the PlayStation 4 has become the most popular console following the PlayStation 2. Like the PlayStation 2, it has become the standard amongst casual gamers, as kids around the world feel like they want to be a part of the great network—or lack thereof—called PlayStation. Every media outlet and gaming store employee will recommend the console to the detriment of the consumer if it came to that. To the majority of consumers, there is only one option.
Since everyone and their mother owns the PlayStation 4, it stands to reason that thanks to peer pressure and humans usually going for the one that is popular, the PlayStation would be where your friends play most likely. This further solidifies the position in which the PlayStation finds itself, being recommended to everyone, even people who wouldn’t play games. This ties into the reasoning that because so few people who actually own a PlayStation 4 can actually afford to buy games, or whom actually plays games; so rarely buy its exclusives.
Games
When looking at what is most popular on either console, it becomes utterly clear that on neither of the consoles exclusives remain relevant. The best-selling titles on PlayStation and Xbox remain multiplatform games, and they can stay on the best-seller list for years on end. Take GTA 5 for example. It launched in 2014 to massive praise on consoles, then on PC. The game has remained on the top-selling charts on both consoles and PC since then. Call of Duty, another multiplatform game, continues to grab the top spots on all platforms excluding PC—because they might have more brains—even after dropping a massive 50% in total sales against the previous iteration.
Exclusive games, when not bundled together as a mandatory purchase when buying a console, might grab the number one spot for a week, then slide down into obscurity, the speed of which is determined only by how hyped everyone was for the game, and if it is on special. Uncharted 4 managed to sell to 16% of console gamers on PlayStation 4, which would mean that it sells fewer copies in nine months than Sony can push out consoles in that same time frame. Having it in a bundle barely helps. This means that to each one of the buyers of the console, the biggest exclusive—and the only one that actually launched in 2016—wasn’t a buying factor for them. If they received it included with the console, it just means it’s a free game and they would buy the console regardless.
Dying Exclusives
When studios aren’t going bankrupt and closing down, they are most likely opting to go multiplatform. Microsoft in recent years has forced all their exclusive games to launch on both Xbox One and Windows 10. On the Sony side, games that don’t start with a U have been met with massive failure including Driveclub and The Order. Each exclusive that has launched on either console has seen tepid uptake, with most of them barely making the best-seller list by the end of the year. Sony has since then spent more money on trying to fool people into thinking the third-party multiplatform games were exclusive than trying to make the 53 million so-called gamers on their platform spend half the retail amount for a game that is exclusive.
This begs the question; when so many gamers fight over which platform has the most exclusives, to the majority of gamers on their own platform these games might as well not be; because nobody will buy any of these games outside of a very small niche and the studio might go bankrupt or push the game out as a multiplatform release to very little success. If multiplatform releases like Call of Duty are experiencing a 50% decline in sales, with Titanfall 2 basically flopping, what makes you think an obscure game such as Detroit, or Dreams will make any difference? The only reason Gears of War did well in the Xbox 360 era was because it launched on the Xbox 360. Gears of War 4 launched this year and barely managed to rake in comparable sales, and the only reason Knack got itself a sequel was because the main architect of PlayStation designed the game. Most gamers on these platforms opt to spend their money on big games such as Mass Effect, Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption. Exclusive games have become console war fodder, and most people don’t pay attention, much like how nobody cares about the billion “exclusive” Greenlight games on Steam.
So what is left for console makers to differentiate themselves? Power and popularity. If Microsoft takes away anything from this generation, it is that to become successful, the Scorpio will have to be a big enough of a jump for gamers to take notice, and at a price point that will make the average consumer consider it over the cheaper options. This is the only way Project Scorpio will win because showing off exclusive games ad nauseum will only get you a tiny bit of hype, and no sales. Just look at the disaster that is the PlayStation 4 Pro. They need to show multiplatform games running at much better resolutions or frame rates (or with immediately noticeable enhanced effects) to send the right message about Project Scorpio. That’s how you sell the console in a time when power matters more than exclusives.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.