So bit of a wild leap but stick with me, I was trying to send packages back home today (from Japan) and it’s a pain because of the Trump admin’s “America first” push from those executive orders (executive orders that aren’t laws and it’s unclear what powers they have). I’m not prevented from sending my packages but it’s a pain, a little more expensive, and I have to keep more in mind. I just thought it’d be easier to send something to myself between two allied nations in 2026 or that if it were more difficult it’d be because of security reasons and what not. Nope. It’s really just politics and an attempt to “somehow” increase spending on American products. I checked the post office website and apparently they just recently started sending packages to America at all, so I’m lucky there.
That’s kinda I feel about everything in the world now including exclusives. There’s all these things that just shouldn’t be at this stage in the world. They don’t really make sense anymore and are people holding onto a past that was never actually that great. In a lot of ways it feels like we’re now going backwards and I think that’s just general dissatisfication from people who didn’t experience enough benefits fast enough from going forward and who are also attributing that to “going forward” and not the handful of rich people that greatly benefit from a lack of change.
With console exclusives it comes down to two reasons. One that people are saying and one that they are not saying (well actually they’re kinda saying this one too which also in of itself says a lot about gamers): there’s fear that without exclusives Xbox will die as a platform and then people will lose Xbox as a place to game entirely, and there is a desire to boost one’s self esteem by saying THEIR platform has this amazing EXCLUSIVE game. Then for the platforms themselves it’s just a fear of rocking the boat and doing anything that might negatively impact the business. Especially for the Japanese companies. Things are just done the way they’ve always been done and they focus on perfecting what has been done. That’s part of Japan’s culture. They have a very traditional mindset and in a lot of ways it can work, but it also means they end up behind the times in many more ways and change is much much much slower. Like I really want to bring “conservatives” in America over to Japan to see how they actually cope to living in a society that is truly slow to change.
I’d say I’m frustrated because there’s no actual reason to be so gung ho on exclusives. From prior generations hardware sales haven’t increased for Nintendo and PS anymore than Xbox, and rather those two have dipped more from their peaks or have been more inconsistent between generations. Xbox also currently has more third party support than ever and is continuing to build up their ecosystem while their games are also more successful than ever on all platforms. We do know how what has worked works and the answer is not that much. Doing things the old way at best hasn’t actually been that good. Consoles are only still doing well because the stagnant customer base are continuing to spend more and more on platforms. There’s no indication that reaching more customers with multiplatform releases will nuke everything. To me the fact that everyone says, “There’d be no reason to be a console without exclusive.” is a clear example of why they’ve failed to grow in decades. Consoles need to evolve. They need to offer genuine value and that value can’t be the privelege of being able to buy XYZ game in a walled garden and then going online to brag to random internet users.
Things are unfortunately slow to change because it’s hard to take that leap. People are fearful and people cling to what they think they know works. The people in charge are afraid to rock boats and do anything to risk their bottom lines or they just straight up benefit from less open systems and will try to maintain them for as long as possible (as long as say fans are willing to pay higher prices for hardware and games). In other cases the people up top don’t even actually care, but it benefits them to have the people beneath them arguing amongst themselves and fighting for scrapes. One of the things that broke me in university was learning how the elite in the USA purposefully pit lower classes in America against each other just to maintain power. Tribalism is a powerful thing and to them a good deterrent against collective force. It’s happened so many times in the past and has led to stifling progress on so many different issues. Eventually though it always fails. Eventually people get fed up enough and fear isn’t a sustainable emotion to build a business on. It’s also just not helpful to fragment people so much. Like going back to my thing, I know those policies can’t last because the USA benefits so much from the global economy and other countries benefit from the USA in the global economy. It’s to everyone’s greater benefit to work together. It’s unfortunate how a select few can make that more challenging or pit us against each other, but they can never do it forever. Video games make the most money when they’re benefiting from releasing on all platforms and gamers enjoy games the most when they can share gaming experiences with their friends or straight up play with their friends across all platforms. PS can try to backtrack now, but even they’ve been forced to acknowledge this.