With Rise of the Tomb Raider, Microsoft and Square Enix partnered for a one-year console exclusivity period, meaning it won’t appear on PlayStation 4 until holiday 2016. According to Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter and DFC Intelligence’s David Cole, this could negatively impact the sales of the game long-term.
In an article on Gamasutra, Pachter says the timed exclusivity “probably cost only $20 million or so,” with Microsoft spending another $20 million to advertise Rise of the Tomb Raider over the holidays. It seems to have paid off, with Microsoft announcing earlier this month that RotTR sold “well over” one million in 2015, thanks to a big December.
As Cole explained though, the money Microsoft paid might not have been enough to offset the lost PS4 revenue, which he estimates could be around $150 million in the short term:
Unfortunately I think it was probably not enough to make up for the lost opportunity. Anything under $100 million is probably a bad deal for Square Enix, and I doubt Microsoft paid anywhere near that amount.
Weighing in on the effects of platform exclusives, Cole says Square Enix missed out on a major opportunity with the Microsoft deal:
The problem with exclusives in today’s market is you have a clear market leader. So if you are not on that platform, you lose a major market opportunity and it would take a lot for Microsoft or another competitor to reimburse you for lost opportunities.
While Pachter believes Tomb Raider will do well when it’s eventually released on PS4, he thinks the full year-long wait could result in a 40% loss of sales over what it would have seen launching at the same time as Xbox One.
Now that so many franchises appear on multiple platforms, Cole says the idea behind exclusives is driving hardware sales. He adds, “The problem is that one exclusive such like [Rise of the Tomb Raider] is hardly enough to make close to a dent,” and it’s becoming more expensive for Microsoft to secure impactful exclusives, while Sony “as a market leader has less need to pay for market exclusives.”
For Cole, the best exclusives are extras like DLC and levels (Call of Duty is an example of this), because “you aren’t giving away the whole deal, and thus neither party has as much at stake.”
[Source: Gamasutra, Aaron Greenberg (Twitter)]
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Now Loading...Games Coming to PC but Not Rival Platforms: Exclusives or Console Exclusives?
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Zarmena Khan
It's true that PC isn't seen as competition by console owners and manufacturers. Exclusive wars are Microsoft and Sony's staple. I honestly don't see an issue with using the term "exclusive" if the game is only coming to one console alongside PC. However, for clarity and because too many people whine about petty things, it's probably best to use the term "console exclusive" if a certain game is indeed coming to PC as well.
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Michael Briers
To the passer-by, deciding between which console would usually come down to that all-important price. But for many, exclusives are considered vital. Internet trolls may trumpet them as bragging rights, but Sony's roster of first-party and even second-party studios is enviable and there's something to be said about experiencing a game like Until Dawn that isn't available elsewhere.
But more recently, the term 'exclusive' has become much more lax, both in the way companies advertise it and, by effect, the way consumers view it. The Average Joe may not know that No Man's Sky is coming to PC, for instance, and I think it's crucial that both Sony and Microsoft be clear in their messaging. Differentiating between the two can help manage expectations prior to release. That's not to say console exclusives are inferior by any stretch of the imagination, but both Microsoft and Sony will ultimately sell more units through absolute exclusives, not games that are available to play elsewhere.
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Chandler Wood
There's a distinctly different crowd that plays games on PC. For the most part, console gamers are only going to care whether an exclusive is for their console versus another. It's also much easier to market that way, and Sony's figured out a clever way to differentiate total exclusives from console exclusives that will still hit PC by calling them... well... "console exclusives."
I think that Microsoft plays a lot more fast and loose with the term "exclusive" than Sony does, particularly when you think about the whole Rise of the Tomb Raider debacle. Sony at least clarifies exclusivity, and though it might take a little research, you can always find out what kind of exclusive it is.With all that being said, I'm a gamer. I like games. I like playing games. So when the game is coming to PlayStation, I'm not too worried about if it's coming to PC too. -
Alex Co
I honestly refer to games coming to PS4 and PC but not to Xbox One as an "exclusive." I used to game a lot on PCs back then, but I'm a console gamer at heart and I just don't see the PC as being part of the PS4 and Xbox One conversation.
Sure, the PC is the "master race" and all that, but there's a reason why people primarily game on a console and why games sell a whole ton more on consoles than on PCs.
In my mind, Street Fighter V, and the rest of the games appearing on PS4 and PC are exclusives. Am I correct in this branding? Maybe, maybe not, but if a game is coming to one specific gaming platform and can't be played on another specific gaming platform, then yeah, I think it is.
Think of it this way: a car made by Honda can boast that it has exclusive Android dashboard support for sedans, but Toyota has that same dashboard thing for its boats. Can Honda call it as an exclusive? I think so, no?
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Stephen Bitto
It's absolutely relevant to clarify the difference between console exclusivity and pure exclusivity. They are different. There are differences in how they are developed, funded, marketed, etc. From the standpoint of a gamer, the reasons a publisher would be motivated to bring a game to PC or not in addition to PS4/Xbox One should be interesting as well. So, it's a story worth telling. Finally, Sony didn't go out of their way to differentiate between the two because gamers don't care. Clearly they do and the clarification was resoundingly supported when they implemented it during recent game shows.
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Mack Ashworth
To me, the term "console exclusive" is best left unused. Hell, I'm not even sure what "console" means any more.
Ignoring the capabilities of the PC side of things seems silly, what with smaller form factor PC systems being produced, perfectly capable of sitting beneath a television and operated with a control pad.
An "exclusive" should only be launching on one system. Simple as that.
