Exclusivity: Good or Bad?

Since the beginning of the console war between Nintendo and Sega killer apps and exclusive titles have been a huge selling point for individual consoles and that has become even more prominent in today's market with the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii all trying to keep the best titles for themselves. The logic behind an exclusive deal is clear, if a game is really good and you can get it only on one console you will be more likely to buy that console over others. So console manufacturers have their own game studios to create exclusive games and they strike deals with third party developers to keep certain title exclusive to one system over another.

This trend in gaming is something that makes complete sense from a business standpoint but what about the gamers? I believe that all this does is alienate certain gamers and cause hatred for certain games because they aren't on "your" system. How does this alienate gamers? Well it is pretty simple, especially in today's economy, most people can't afford to buy more than one console and multiple games so a choice has to be made and this inevitably leads to a consumer picking one console for a specific game but losing out on all the exclusives from the other systems. So a person who can't afford a PS3 buys an Xbox 360 and now can't enjoy games like Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, God of War III, or Heavy Rain. Or on the reverse if a person buys a PS3 for those titles they miss out on Gears of War, Halo 3,Mass Effect, or others. Now for that person (who represents most of the gaming community) buying two systems is not financially possible so they will miss out on some great games no matter what they do, it is catch 21.

Another unfortunate side effect is that gamers on one side of the spectrum will start to resent exclusives on the other end because they can't play them, the mentality is that "if I can't play it on my system then it sucks" This just leads to animosity towards games that just don't deserve that and if the game was exclusive to that person's system they would love it. When you make that choice of what system to get you are inadvertently entering a world of fan boys who will stop at nothing to prove their console is better than the rest because they don't want to think that their choice was wrong. It's like becoming a fan of the Yankees, you get thrust into this ridiculous rivalry with the Red Sox and are taught to hate them.

If there were no exclusive titles this wouldn't happen as much because everyone would be able to enjoy multiplatform titles and they would appreciate a game for what it is and not what system it is on. But you will have people like Jack Tretton and David Cage saying that certain game experiences can only be achieved on a certain system but I call BS on that, Tretton went as far as to say that Home was only possible on the PSN, I'm sorry but seriously Xbox Live is way better than PSN and Microsoft could make a virtual world if they wanted to, those statements are just false.

But I will acknowledge that even if there were no exclusive titles people would still argue over what system's graphics were better and stuff like that but at least games wouldn't be hated for no good reason and everyone would be able to enjoy any games that they wanted on their own system. Will exclusivity go away? No but I really don't like it because I want to play a game like Heavy Rain without having to buy a PS3 (and I don't care what David Cage says that game could get ported to the 360 there is nothing SO special about it that the Xbox couldn't handle it)In short I believe exclusivity to be bad for gamers but not much can or will be done so just get whatever console you think is best and try not to hate on the other ones for no good reason just enjoy what you have and you will avoid fan boy BS.