Così as consoles live from generation to generation, changing over time and adapting to the preferences and attitudes of gamers, both the “old” ones and the fresh new generations, so too does the approach of the latter undergo significant variations, epochal changes that lay the foundations for new ways of enjoying the medium.
Di recente, I had the opportunity to read an interesting piece on this topic by Mat Piscatella, one of the leading analysts and head of the video games sector at the data analytics company Circana.
Beyond the clear analysis of the modern video game market, what struck me most was the discussion regarding the inexorable advance of the multiplatform concept, at the expense of console exclusives. I am reporting his words below.
“For about a year now, every month there’s a game that comes back into the charts after a long time. Why? It was released on another platform. Today, people buy hardware for the ecosystem, for the friends list. You’re no longer going to convince people to change consoles for exclusives. We’re well past that point.”
Facendo some research online, you can verify the truth of what he states: titles like Forza Horizon 5 and Stellar Blade, for example, were reborn into new life at the moment of their transition to PlayStation 5, the former (initially it was available only on PC and Xbox), while Stellar Blade experienced the opposite, first as an exclusive for Sony’s flagship console and then arriving on PC and from there climbing the charts to the top. But all this also includes older titles, mind you: Fallout 4, Bethesda’s 2015 masterpiece, which with today’s dates and parameters would correspond to the Stone Age in video game terms, has returned to the spotlight in recent years thanks to a skillful campaign of updates for the PS5 and Xbox Series next-gen.
It is as if the old rules, in effect, no longer applied.
“People are now entrenched in their own system,” he continues. “Bringing content to them is the only way to win. And this is what everyone is doing, except Nintendo, which tends to follow its own path.”
This is a crucible of ideas that could range from the philosophical to pure marketing: I believe it is right to find the classic middle ground and analyze Piscatella’s axiom from another perspective. It is evident that the portrait of today’s male and female gamers is a pale reminder of that of the last millennium, where the race for the console of dreams and the Christmas season went hand in hand.
Entering the store with a very clear idea of what you wanted to take home, you already knew how things stood and the exact point where the divide was marked: on one side Sega with Sonic and on the other Nintendo with Mario.
Those were the exclusives of the time, which later became a gray world, layered as the years went by (Crash Bandicoot for PlayStation, as well as Kojima’s legendary Metal Gear Solid and so on), but still bounded by clear borders, impossible to confuse. And to cross.
Eccezion fatta per Nintendo, today the concept of exclusivity no longer has the intrinsic value it once had.
Perhaps the traced future sees the cross-platform system as the only way to survive in the market, but if there is one thing my experience as an “old” player has taught me, it is that nothing is worth as much as the feeling of playing something you chose yourself and that was not selected, harnessed, and regulated by someone else who controls your fun.
The average gamer prefers to skip the limited edition of that title on that platform and wait for the publisher to bring that game home to them, incidentally in digital form often and reluctantly, with the frenzied porting we are getting used to.
I live service are all the rage and, when all is said and done, I wonder, what remains of the beauty of the physical 'piece' boxed up and full of special content, the kind that, let’s admit it, made us feel a little special too?
