We’re three months into 2017 and it’s already unusually crowded with great exclusive video games.
The PlayStation 4 is on a hot streak. Nioh, Yakuza 0, Gravity Rush 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Nier Automata have already landed to largely positive reviews. In the coming months, the console will also get, MLB 17: The Show, and Persona 5, along with a grab bag of big-name indie titles, including Nex Machina, Nidhogg 2, and Pyre. And Nintendo has The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, arguably one of the best launch titles of all time.
There have never been more third-party releases, and many of the best-selling games appear on multiple platforms. And yet in 2017, exclusives seem as significant to a hardware’s success as ever before.
Take Nintendo, for instance. Nintendo hasn’t exactly been great at making sure the latest mainstream titles are available for its consoles (something that will hopefully change with the Switch). But Nintendo stays afloat because while it lacks the option to play Call of Duty or the latest sports titles, it has a strong catalog of exclusive titles and continues to release excellent new entries. It’s a strategy the company is already leaning into with its latest hardware, the Nintendo Switch, which has had a great launch carried almost single-handedly by the stellar The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While sales haven’t officially been reported, research firm SuperData estimates that 89 percent of Switch owners have bought Link’s latest open-world adventure, to the tune of 1.34 million copies.
Perhaps the most revealing example of the power of exclusives is Microsoft’s Xbox One, the console that’s struggled to find its niche with first-party games. While Sony has recently offered a variety of games in a short window of time, and Nintendo has, well, Zelda, Microsoft hasn’t quite found its footing.
Instead, Microsoft has dealt with underperforming new entries in popular franchises, false starts to new properties, and a number of high-profile cancellations. And this isn’t a case of critical darlings failing to find an audience. The top 50 Xbox One games on Metacritic contains few exclusives: two Forza games (Forza Horizon 3 and Forza Motorsport 6), the original Titanfall, Ori and the Blind Forest, and a pair of legacy remake collections: Halo: The Master Chief collection, and the Rare Replay collection.
Highly hyped Microsoft exclusives like ReCore, Quantum Break, and Halo Wars 2 have been released to semi-positive reviews, but the company has been mum on sales. The few critically lauded Xbox One exclusives, like Halo 5: Guardians or Sunset Overdrive, have quickly faded from the spotlight. Worse, some of Xbox’s biggest franchises have struggled to match the sales of previous entries.
The Xbox One’s exclusive lineup has also suffered delays, setbacks, and closures. Quantum Break saw numerous delays before its release, and Crackdown, announced years ago, won't hit until later this year at the earliest. Scalebound, Fable Legends, and Ion were outright canceled, and Project Spark was shut down. And even Microsoft’s big-name indie titles Below and Cuphead have experienced delays.
Exclusives aren’t everything. Nintendo's inability to get mainstream third-party releases on its hardware has made its wares into a secondary console for many customers — hardware people buy after they purchase a console that runs Madden and Grand Theft Auto. Where does that leave Microsoft in the current living room landscape? Without unique games, the Xbox One is a slightly less powerful, definitely less popular PlayStation 4.
Without unique games, the Xbox One is a slightly less powerful, definitely less popular PlayStation 4
What’s strange about the Xbox One’s troubles is how it’s being bested by a playbook it wrote. The Xbox 360 basically pioneered indie publishing for consoles with the Xbox Live Indie Games program and Summer of Arcade. But Sony and Nintendo have since welcomed indie developers with open arms (and sometimes open wallets).
In recent years, major indie releases hit PS4 first, while Microsoft's baffling parity clause — which required that any games that released for other platforms had to launch on the Xbox One at the same time, or not at all — drove away a number of developers. Microsoft is finally softening its stance on that issue, which is why Xbox owners can finally play Rocket League and Shovel Knight months after the hype.
The Xbox One is struggling because video game exclusives still matter
