This year at Xbox's Games Showcase, new CEO Asha Sharma made the announcement that Gears of War: E-Day would be an Xbox console exclusive.1 And that reminded me of an Xbox Gamescom announcement 12 years ago with another console exclusive—Rise of the Tomb Raider.

And because I am now old enough to have been blogging that long, my well thought out opinion on that matter lives forevermore.

"Game exclusivity blows. Today’s Tomb Raider news at Xbox’s Gamescom press conference was the straw that broke the camel’s back. How is this fair to the consumer at all? It’s not. Corporate puppet masters are pulling strings to raise profits as they strip a product away from select audiences. They are punishing consumers for not owning their game box.

And yet, I am a hypocrite. I love exclusive titles. The Last Of Us is my favorite game of all time, which is exclusive to PlayStation products. As I think about it, if Joel and Ellie made the jump to Xbox or PC, I would feel a tad betrayed. Then I realize that thousands more get to experience a game that moved my heart and soul. It is not fair that Xbox gamers can’t play The Last Of Us."

I can promise you I did not feel betrayed when both The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II came to PC outside of their poor performance each time. I concluded my piece with this sage advice:

"If we don’t buy it, companies won’t produce these exclusivity barriers. We can do it. Break down the walls of exclusivity and let’s help bring games to gamers."

I suppose congratulations were in order sometime during the last decade because both Xbox and PlayStation ostensibly gave up the platform exclusive by, at the least, porting major titles to PC. The last Gears of War game came to PS5. Halo arrives next month. We've seen cross-platform releases from Sony like Marathon, God of War, and Ratchet & Clank on PC.

And now, the industry finds itself back to the exclusive.2 Xbox's return to its roots is boldly declaring previously unannounced PS5 games to, in fact, not be coming to their competitor. That's why the likes of Halo and Fable are still making the leap. They can't take them back.

PlayStation has come to the same conclusion. You won't be seeing Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Marvel's Wolverine, or God of War: Laufey on any PC.

This is good news. The bit that Xbox, PlayStation, and 20-year-old Max had wrong was that making everything available everywhere makes your platform less unique and desirable.3 Having your online multiplayer live service title be cross-platform makes total sense—those titles live and die by their community—but those single player titles are the lifeblood of the console.

Nintendo is the obvious counter to the "no exclusive" argument. They build time and time again unique consoles that their developers leverage tremendously, despite usual power limitations. When the hardware sells because of its possibilities and exclusive libraries, the third-parties will follow (or not as with the Wii U), but the core Nintendo games like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda are never at risk of ending up somewhere else. If you want that next Mario game, you better pony up.

That's what PlayStation and Xbox need to do again and stick with it. There is immense value in having experts for your bespoke hardware. Extracting every ounce of power and efficiency out of your silicon for an experience no one can get anywhere else.

As for us, the consumer? We need to buy these exclusives. Don't just buy them all. Buy what interests you. Let these companies know what you want more of, which is hopefully beautiful, unique, rich titles that push the medium forward.

Footnotes

  1. Then proceeded to show a whole lot of games coming to PS5, but they tried to take them back too. ↩

  2. Well, two out of the Big Three. Nintendo never lost sight of this. ↩

  3. 20-year-old Max had a lot of other things wrong too. ↩