The exclusivity debate will rage for all eternity, until we’ve moved on from consoles and slot a chip into our brains and step inside a game world for days on end. That’s the future I’m hoping for, anyway. The fights for and against the existence of exclusives have gone on for many years, and seem to have generated more traction of late, but is it really such an important topic?
According to Mat Piscatella, the head honcho at leading data firm Circana, exclusives aren’t as key to the overarching gaming market as you might think.
Should We Keep Talking About Exclusive Games?
In a recent interview with The Game Business, Mat Piscatella sat down with Christopher Dring to talk about everything related to data in the gaming market. For the longest time, Circana has provided number-hungry gamers everywhere with sales performance charts and key trends, breaking down the industry into cold, hard facts.
The conversation with Dring turned to the concept of exclusives, with a goal of ‘putting to bed’ that never-ending debate.
When the face of The Game Business asked if exclusives really matter, Piscatella explained:
Exclusives do matter, but they don’t matter as much as a lot of folks say they do.
I’ve been saying that for a while, and get yelled at about it sometimes, but it’s true. It matters to some folks and it doesn’t matter to others. EA Sports College Football, when that showed up in the US, was one of the biggest drivers of hardware we’ve seen in years.
That note is applicable because EA Sports College Football was not an exclusive game, and it drove incredible, unpredictable sales volumes. Piscatella insisted it’s all about perception and positioning, and that it’s more about marketing and branding than making money.
When it comes to what drives console sales, Piscatella says people care more about where their friends are, what kind of library they can build and access, and what the ecosystem looks like, rather than what exclusive games are available.
Of course, some exclusive games have moved consoles in the past. When a titanic release like The Last of Us drops, you’d best believe there are folks out there buying a PlayStation console to experience it.
The notion of PlayStation exclusives winding up on PC later was a non-starter topic, too. Piscatella informed Dring that PlayStation 5’s performance in the exclusivity stakes didn’t falter just because the games later ended up launching on PC as well.
We tend to get a little too in the weeds on this stuff when more than 60% of people who turned on their PlayStation last year played Fortnite at least once, and there’s no exclusive in the Top 20 games by that metric.
Do you think Piscatella is right and that exclusive games don’t matter as much as we might think? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Sony has suffered a huge Bungie-related loss
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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