Games Inbox: Do video game exclusives still matter?

Metro

5 days ago

The Tuesday letters page thinks PlayStation made a mistake relocating to the US, as one reader is surprised by how little Sonic the Hedgehog sells.
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Lost exclusives
I do wonder if we are making more of a big deal of exclusives than actually necessary.
The weekend feature said 'It's all pretty bleak and depressing really. Good games will continue to be made – this year has been great so far – but not by Sony, or at least not more than once a year or so.'
When you are initially choosing between formats, exclusives are pretty important, and particularly as launch titles near the start of a generation. However, once console sales slow and users have made their choice, how much does it matter who makes the games, as long as they are good?
I can see the logic that says it matters long term to the platform manufacturers, but you could almost argue that more multi-platform games are better for the actual game players and game developers?
Matt (he_who_runs_away – PSN ID)
GC: Sony games are very distinctive and nobody else makes anything quite like them. That's doubly true for Nintendo.
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Blue shelled
Mario Kart World is definitely not as good as Mario Kart 8.
The worst part of Mario Kart World is when you get swamped by the field and can't get out of the hole that is being constantly hit by shells or fireballs or boomerangs or whatever else the AI has up its sleeve. So upping that field to 24 is, in my opinion, not good.
The next worst part is one that this game has introduced me to: dull tracks with never-ending, impossibly wide straights. The best way to beat the rubber band AI in Mario Kart is being better round the corners, which this game has absolutely minimised in favour of long stretches of nothing.
Apart from the first race of each cup, which is on a proper track, most other races feel like a complete gamble, where you're just hoping for a well-timed blue shell against the AI two corners before the end, or a triple/super mushroom to boost yourself back into contention.
This entry, for me, is a bit of a swing and a miss. Or a turn and a spin in race car terms.
StellarFlux
Souls I like
I am nearly at the end of the magnificent The First Berserker: Khazan. For anyone not familiar with it, it's an awesome Soulslike/Sekiro hybrid. I really dig the fighting, the enemies, and all of the customisation available. I also quite like the relatively linear level design – it's like a gauntlet to each of the bosses.
It is up there with the most difficult games I've played and honestly much harder than Elden Ring/Shadow Of The Erdtree (which I found pretty easy with the right build and with the available summons).
There's also a lot of ongoing support from the devs – including a new patch coming soon, which will offer the ability to save loadouts (this is going to be super useful).
Overall, I would highly recommend, even if the story is quite generic and the central hub area is really average (it is functional but feels a bit bland).
Anyone else enjoyed it like me?
Tom
GC: We thought it was pretty good too.
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Between two stools
Nice review of Death Stranding 2 but I can't help but be disappointed that it seems so similar to the first one, except with the main gameplay apparently dumbed down by the use of vehicles. I don't know exactly how this work, because I haven't played it yet, but the balance and difficulty of walking through the terrain was the whole point of the first game.
I also don't like the idea of just shooting BTs, which seems to turn them into ordinary video game monsters. It sounds like the original will remain the best in my eyes and while I can see the desire to try and turn the game into something that's more straight-up 'fun' who exactly is that going to appeal to? It'll upset existing fans and new ones will be put off by the reputation of the first.
Much better to have just created a whole new game, I think, and I think Death Stranding 2's sales will suffer as a result.
Manny
Skynet's revenge
Does anyone else feel like the AI in Mario Kart World is a bit broken? I've managed to get gold in all the cups in Grand Prix mode but am struggling with Knockout Tour. I've still manged to get a couple of first place finishes but it's very tricky. It seems like the computer-controlled players are stupidly fast when you get to the last four and unless you've attained an unassailable lead going into that last section of the race it's near impossible. And if you're second or third you can forget about it, there's no catching up.
In better news, I fared better online and managed my first ever Knockout Tour victory the other day.
matc7884
World's slowest scramble
I think the most likely explanation for PlayStation's lack of activity this generation, rather than 'arrogance', is that they made a spectacular misstep with their live service plans and are still playing catch-up. It obviously helps the bottom line that they aren't being punished for their lack of first-party output, but I don't think they are treading water because they aren't being pushed by Xbox.
it's more likely that diverting pretty much all of their internal studios onto live service games (for at least a spell), plus the delayed hit from Covid, has left a gaping hole in their first party line-up that they're now scrambling to fill. So the reason they're not saying much is that… they don't have much to say.
Personally, while they might come good in the latter half of this generation, they've lost a lot of what made them a unique proposition in the gaming space. Consolidating the different business units (America, Europe, and Japan) and becoming more Westernised meant that some of their previous quirkiness was lost, while decimating their first party single-player output by pursuing (and failing at) live service has come at the expense of the prestige that they had as a developer of boundary-pushing games.
There's still loads to play on PlayStation 5, and I think the hardware is great (including how it looks, surprised it's so polarising!) but it does feel like a bit of a soggy explosive of a generation from PlayStation Studios so far.
Magnumstache
GC: We always said that centralising the PlayStation business in the US was a big mistake. It was one of the first things Jim Ryan did when he took over.
Where the money is
Seeing how little Sonic the Hedgehog games seem to sell I'm almost kind of shocked that Sega is still going as a business, especially before they bought Atlus (or rather their parent company bought Atlus and they were lumped together).
Sonic is the only game series I can think of where it makes more money selling T-shirts and lunchboxes than it does the games themselves. No wonder the games have been so bad for so long, I can't imagine that is much of a morale boost knowing you're less important and profitable than a colouring book.
Dench
Uncertain future
The PlayStation 5 generation being the most profitable generation makes for interesting musing.
The PlayStation 5 generation profit starts from 2020 and includes PlayStation 4 income. The lack of PlayStation 5 games taking advantage of the hardware has been a big complaint this gen. But having an extended cross gen period hasn't impacted negatively on income, console sales and profit at all. I expect the PlayStation 6 will have an even longer cross-gen period.
I think it said 50% of the PlayStation Store revenue is made up from a handful of titles, like FIFA, along with spending on microtransactions.
It's no wonder Sony want their own live service games, where they get 100% instead of 30% of that lucrative vein of revenue. That doesn't excuse though, the seemingly cavalier and incompetent manner they've pursued that.
Going multiformat by releasing on PC hasn't hurt them either, in console sales or profit. Former CEO Andrew House made the point that when budgets on a game get too high exclusivity becomes unsustainable. Some predicted a mass exodus to PC when Sony starting releasing on it. It hasn't happened.
In truth Sony's record profits come from traditional sources of revenue of services, game content, and third party. It's just those, now it seems, account for a bigger part of the pie than ever. The long-term effect on the first party single-player games I and the core fans want will not be fully known for a while.
If they don't return the same higher profit margins of game content, services, and live service while also being less important doing their original job, of making people buy consoles to make money from those other things, then you'll commit less resources to them.
I'm not hitting any panic buttons yet. But I've a few more lines on my forehead from the furrowed brow I get reading a lot of gaming developments these days. Inversely though I've got more excellent games than I can play in a lifetime, it seems. Who knows where it's all going to end up.
Simundo
GC: Very few of the Sony exclusives have been successful on PC, just Helldivers 2 and Stellar Blade (primarily in Asia).
Inbox also-ransI have many very happy memories of playing Mario Kart 64. I know that's partly nostalgia speaking, but I refuse to accept that it is a bad game. It's not even the worst Mario Kart, that is surely Double Dash!!
Onibee
We should make a list of all the times Xbox has done a U-turn on things they've said before. Although I have to say, I never had an Xbox VR headset on my bingo card.
Walters More Trending
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