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Numerical Analysis of the History of Sony/Microsoft Third Party Exclusivity

GameStooge's Jordan Lund reacts to John Koller's claim console third party exclusivity is dead.

Excerpt: "Sony hardware PR man John Koller has come out and admitted that console exclusivity is dead - well, third party console exclusivity is dead at any rate. He correctly ascribes it to the high development costs of this generation. Third party developers simply can't sustain the costs if they solely support one platform.

This is most likely why two-thirds of all Playstation 3 games - 213 of 317 titles so far - also appear on the Xbox 360.

Of course, this is a problem the 360 doesn't seem to have. Those 213 multi-platform games are in a pool of 605 Xbox 360 and Xbox 360 Live Arcade games. This brings the total percentage of multiplatform titles down to just 35% of the Xbox 360 library.

So how does Microsoft get away with it when Sony cannot?"

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JonahFalcon - contributor
Published: 222 days 23 hours ago | Article | PlayStation 3 | Xbox 360 | Gaming | Industry News

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- Ghost of Sparta - - 223 days 21 hours ago

1 -

Reality - Microsoft paid millions for Ninja Gaiden 2, Tales of Vesperia, BioShock, and Eternal Sonata to be exclusives. What was the point the point in that? They're still arriving on the PS3 with exclusive content.

Sony on the other hand, doesn't buy exclusives. They buy developers. This is why they have more games. While Sony's buying developers, Microsoft are shutting down their down and buying DLC + expansion packs. R.I.P Ensemble.

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1.1 OmarJA | 223 days 12 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show

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Baka-akaB - 222 days 23 hours ago

1.2 -

How do people even disagree with you i wonder ?

If you're an xbox you're happy that MS put that much money there , as they maybe should ...

If you're a sony nuts , then you're either happy Sony focus on their own properties or cursing them for letting some games go away to be exclusive or multiplatform , and then it remains the truth .

And if you dont care about either side particularly and are neutral , then the magic this is , the statement remains true .

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soxfan2005 - 222 days 23 hours ago

1.3 -

"Sony on the other hand, doesn't buy exclusives."

I guess Konami, Ubisoft, etc. make PS3 exclusives for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

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Capt CHAOS - 222 days 22 hours ago

1.4 - Agreed, buying developers or franchies is a much better move then sinking silly

money into downloadable exclusives.

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darkride66 - 222 days 22 hours ago

1.5 - Um...what's this article about?

I'm not a dumb man by any stretch of the imagination but I'm having a bit of difficulty trying to figure out what the point is here.

First off, John Koller didn't say exclusives were dead. He pointed out "that console software “exclusivity” was a last-gen concept, and that higher development costs have forced game-creators to become platform agnostic."

Any arguments here? Of course not. Developers don't have a ready audience of over 100 million to sell to anymore (unless they're still making PS2 games) so they spend a bit more on multiplatform games to widen their customer base.

So, you then point out that 2/3 of Sony's library is 3rd party, multiplatform. Sure. Then you say that only 35% of the 360's library is multiplatform. Ok...that seems kinda off but whatever.
Then you start talking about this being a problem.

Ok, that's where I have to stop you and say "What?" How on earth is this a problem? You then start to analysis this "problem" and talk XBL Arcade, and lack of demos...what on earth are you talking about? I don't see what this issue is we're supposed to be buying into. Did I miss something?

You also mention PSN games not having an audience. Again, what? What gives you that idea? Where did you get the notion that there's something wrong with sales over PSN?

So, to recap, WTF?

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RememberThe357 - 222 days 19 hours ago

1.6 - ^^^^^^^

What he said.

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IdleLeeSiuLung - 222 days 16 hours ago

1.7 -

I could care less if a game is exclusive or not. What I care about is if the types of games I want to play is available!

Let's put it like this, on the top of my mind Bioshock (turned multiplatform), Rainbow Six Series, Call of Duty series, SF IV, Lost Planet (turned multiplatform), Resident Evil 5 and the list goes on. What is common about all these games? They are in my opinion all great games and all multiplatform. So I don't care if the games are multiplatform or not!

Why is it so important for games to be exclusive other than ammunition for fanboys?

On the other hand, there aren't too many arcade type games I like to play (they are abound on Xbox Live) so the list of games for the 360 is really smaller when you count them out. However, XNA should add a bunch of junk games as well... Is there even a good XNA game out?

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rockleex - 222 days 14 hours ago

1.8 - Sony cares about the gamers...

Instead of spending money to KEEP a 3rd party title from going multiplat, they rather let more people get to play that game... all the while spending that money on making MORE games for PS3 gamers to play.

Its not like FFXIII, Tekken 6, etc, became exclusive to the 360. PS3 gamers did not lose any games.

This means 360 gamers get more games to play, PS3 gamers don't lose any games, and PS3 gamers get MORE games to play too!

Why are people even complaining about this? O_o

Would they rather prefer Sony to spend money on keeping those 3rd party games exclusives? That means less PS3 1st party titles, which means both 360 and PS3 gamers get less games to play!

How could anyone possibly want that? Just so they can claim "Hah! We get to play Tekken 6 and you don't"?

Fanboy nonsense is beyond my understanding... -_-"

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Pennywise - 223 days 21 hours ago

2 -

A lot of those 360 exclusives came along when the 360 was the only console on the market. Even after the ps3 came out devs were already making games for the 360 that never made its way to the PS3.

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doctorstrange - 223 days 21 hours ago

3 - hmm

this article seems to think that only the games that are multi platform on the ps3 are multi plat on the 360. therefore the article presumes every game made in the year before the ps3 was released was exclusive to the 360 and that there were no multi platform games on the 360 that are not on the ps3 like gears of war or braid.

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fishd - 223 days 21 hours ago

4 -

What is the benefit in Sony spending money on 3rd party exclusives for us,gamers?

Sony could have spent some money to prevent say Re,DMC,FF from being on 360,but know with that money being put in 1st party devs we get RE,DMC,FF *AND* motorstorm, Killzone,Uncharted,etc etc

So that's fine in my book

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xabmol - 222 days 23 hours ago

4.1 - Exactly

That's why I say,

Sony + Games = Games + Sony Games

MS + Games = Games

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anzagi - 223 days 20 hours ago

5 -

Sony have done well here, I for one was gutted when Tekken went multiplat, when FF when multiplat - but as people are saying, Sony has invested heavily in Devs and we now have some amazing 1st party games coming out, which more than makes up for less exclusives. Good one Sony

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JonahFalcon - 223 days 20 hours ago

6 - Editorial, not "duplicate story"

How can an editorial be a "duplicate story"?

And flame bait? Jordan uses stats and impartial analysis.

Fanboys = death.

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Baka-akaB - 222 days 22 hours ago

6.1 -

It would have been impartial with all the data included . now beyond that i dont think it's done by malice , just not pushed further enough imo .

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Zeus Lee - 223 days 20 hours ago

7 - " So how does Microsoft get away with it when Sony cannot?"

Well,what they usually do is close down their first party studios.

I fully expect Microsoft to shut down Rare in the not too distant future.

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fishd - 223 days 20 hours ago

7.1 -

The fact that MS spend 375 MILlION $ for Rare just blows my mind!

with that money you can make 37.5 Gears of wars!lol

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JonahFalcon - 223 days 19 hours ago

7.2 -

Money well spent, since they actually earned income on their Rare licenses.

Sony, on the other hand, suffered losses with Heavenly Sword and Lair.

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TheHater - 222 days 23 hours ago

7.3 -

"Sony, on the other hand, suffered losses with Heavenly Sword and Lair."
Where is your proof that Sony lost money on those titles? Heavenly Sword sold over a million copy. I don't know how much copy LAIR sold.

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Baka-akaB - 222 days 22 hours ago

7.4 -

Dude RE5 or yakuza had a much bigger budget than heavenly Sword (and lair) , and yet within their first 500k pretty already gave them back their investment .

So how the hell would heavenly sword make them lose money with the amount sold ?

And we know Sony doesnt use the "halo" budget for advertizing so far . At least certainly not on heavenly sword . So i'd say it's pulled out of thin air .

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Gamer6056 - 223 days 20 hours ago

8 -

This better not be approved!

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JonahFalcon - 223 days 20 hours ago

8.1 -

Why?

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AclayPS3 - 223 days 19 hours ago

9 -

Sony didn't "kill" 3rd party Exclusivity, they just didn't commit to it because they knew that this time around, 1st party was going to play an even more important factor... and I think Sony realized that once the 360 was the first to market. During previous generations Sony didn't throw money at 3rd party developers, 3rd party devs. came to them.

"So yes, when Sony says that third party exclusivity is dead for them, that’s correct."

No, that's not correct. Sony was saying that 3rd party exclusivity in GENERAL is becoming a thing of the past, not 3rd party exclusivity for them was gone. Heck, just look at Tecmo, right now they are working on 2 PS3 exclusives: Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and Quantum Theory, so obviously 3rd party exclusivity on the PS3 isn't dead (as well as MGS4, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Wardevil, etc...)

This time around, the market is much more split, and many developers can't really side with one console for the duration of this lifecycle if they want to make healthy profits like they did during Last Gen. and the Generation before that.

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jordanlund - 223 days 19 hours ago

10 - jordanlund

@doctorstrange

The way I found exclusives vs. multiplatform is pretty easy. Going to Metacritic you pull a list of all PS3 games and Xbox 360 games and paste them into Excel.

You then use the =countif() function and compare the list of Xbox games to each individual PS3 title. If there's a duplicate it returns a "1", if it's unique it returns a "0". You then check this by doing the same thing going the other way, the numbers should match.

Now then, if you want to exclude all the games that came out in 2005 and 2006 (before the PS3 went on sale) that's pretty easy to do.

The number of multiplatform games drops to 196 / 317 on the PS3 or 61.82%.

The number of multiplatform games on the 360 drops to 196 / 467 or 41.97%.

In these calcs I was trying to be overly fair to the PS3 by including the 21 titles released in 2006 while at the same time removing all titles for the 360 from both 2005 and 2006 (Metacritic only gives the year so it's not possible to tell which 360 games overlapped the PS3 in 2006 and which did not.)

So even with this disparity in favor of the PS3 they're still behind on exclusives by 20%.

If you remove the 2006 PS3 titles as well so you're only comparing games released from 2007 to 2009 you get:

PS3 - 180 multiplatform out of 296 titles. 60.81%.
Xbox 360 - 180 multiplatform out of 467 titles. 38.54%.

So no matter which way you cut it, Sony's antagonistic attitude towards exclusive content has harmed their library depth.

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fallingdove - 222 days 21 hours ago

10.1 - The only thing is...

You aren't considering development momentum.

With the 360 -

Every developer had more time to research 360s technology, and create workflows and engines/tools.

This being so, you can really only compare Sony's second year+ on the market with Microsofts data. It was very rare for companies to go multiplat when the PS3 was first released, this was due to the fact devs were still investigating the platform.

Now-
If you look at the games coming out, more often than not, the third party games are multiplat.

You are always going to have more 3rd party games exclusive to the 360 because Microsofts business model depends on it. - They would be incredibly stupid to rely on their small, and in many cases, sub par internal studios.

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maxx1223 - 222 days 20 hours ago

10.2 - Numbers game...

Im kinda confused why you chose the metacritic method to determine which games are multiplat between the systems, because obviously some fall through the cracks.

Its easiest to just pick out the DISC based games, and going by NA release only (because hey its easier to get numbers quickly this way).

Looking at the 360 game list wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... you can see the following for their disc based releases.

69 (+27 pc/console release)/403 are not multiplatform. ~ 17% (or 24% if you include the pc/console releases)

Yes, 17% (or 24%) EXCULSIVE. aka 83% (or 76%) multiplatform.

Then comparing to the ps3 game list wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... you see the following

67 / 274 are not multiplatform. ~ 24% .. or again 76% multiplatform.

So it appears that 360 is lagging behind, or roughly the same if you want to count pc/console releases.

Now at this point if you want to throw in all of the XBLA and PSN games, by all means it may be that there are more exclusive XBLA vs PSN games. But just be sure to mention that.

Also it appears that the PSN+PS disc based game released numbers are a bit off, as on wikipedia it list roughly 270 ps3 disc based games + 100 psn based games being released as of april; 360 appears to be roughly 400 disc based + 200 XBLA games released as of april.

All of the above numbers are over lifetime of the console as i dont want to bother doing any sort of filtering as this is a cheazy comment on a gameing site that im not paid for..hohO!

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JonahFalcon - 223 days 19 hours ago

11 - So, how is the article wrong?

Does it use misleading information?

Does it lie?

Does it not use factual sources?

Or, is it just an honest analysis of the situation of third party development, and you don't like hearing ANYTHING negative about the PS3?

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TheHater - 222 days 23 hours ago

11.1 -

This article is garbage because you factor in Xbox live arcade because those games are being reviewed on metric. Why not factor in all the Playstation 1 classic on the PSN store that you cannot find on xbox live? You fail at "journalism."

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Baka-akaB - 222 days 23 hours ago

11.2 -

And bingo , if you account for everything for one side , they do it for the other too ... that is if you even care .

Funny thing is it wouldnt matter much to those numbers , but at least it wouldnt smell like the usual propanganda to some , wich i dont believe it is , in this case

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darkride66 - 222 days 22 hours ago

11.3 - I don't understand how what you've said is a negative?

So wait...I still don't get it. How is this negative to the PS3? Or the 360? I don't understand the point you're making!
2/3 of PS3 games are on the 360. Sure. I'll take your word for it. Fantastic, more people get to play more games.
35% of 360 games are on the PS3? Is that what you're saying? Again, great! More people playing more games! It's a great time to be a gamer.

How on earth are you trying to spin any of this as a bad thing? I don't know what point you're trying to make in pointing out any of this. Is it a problem that some PS3 games are on the 360, or vice versa? What's the issue here?

Even if you're right about whatever it is you want to be right about...who cares? If 100% of PS3 games were 3rd party, or 100% of 360 games were first party - what on earth difference would that make to a gamer as long as there's quality games to play...which there are...on both platforms?

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-PINNER- - 222 days 23 hours ago

12 -

anything can be spun the direction you want it to go

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dagreatest41 - 222 days 22 hours ago

13 -

The article is utter garbage as it fails to point out the most important reason why Microsoft seeks 3rd party support more than Sony does...

it's because Microsoft's first part games aren't nearly as great(in terms of quality and quantity) as Sony's first party games.

The 360's best games are 3rd party (except a few rare gems like halo3) but Sony's best games are first party (LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, Killzone2, God of War3, Motorostorm, Uncharted, Ratchet&Clank, Heavenly Sword, etc.)

Why would Sony spend $50 million to secure an exclusive (like MS did with GTA: L&D) when they can develop games internally?

And besides, most 3rd party games eventually find their way to the PS3 anyway (Bioshock, Ninja Gaiden, etc.)

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v1c1ous - 222 days 21 hours ago

14 - what everyone forgets

is that when sony was king for 2 decades they didn't have to buy exclusive games. they bought whole studios.

microsoft is still in their second console. microsoft was never #1 for 2 generations. MS didn't have a console where EVERY HAD NO CHOICE BUT RELEASE FOR IT TO HAVE A CHANCE FOR PROFIT.

sony bought 1st party studios during their reigning years. dont use that as some sort of leverage that they suddenly realized to do during this gen. its profiting for them this gen yes, but they didn't foresee a lot of what was going to happen.

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punisher99 - 222 days 21 hours ago

15 -

Hmmmm. I wonder how many of those titles were titles released on the 360 before the PS3 was even released?

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