The End of the Great, Exclusive, Third Party Games?

With the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII being a multi-platform release, fanboys on either the side of Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 are lining up to voice their opinions.  Myself, I am somewhat disappointed.  But not simply because Microsoft is now getting a prior Sony exclusive.  Instead, I am disappointed because of what the game could be instead of what it will more than likely become.  Keep in mind this is pure conjecture as I have no idea if my assumptions will end up being correct (although I usually tend not to be wrong. )  

Considering that Square-Enix puts all of its publishing and polishing powers into Final Fantasy releases I was fairly certain they would be pushing the PS3 farther than any other third party we have seen to date.  However, now that the game is being developed for Microsoft’s console I no longer know if this is possible.  Admittedly, Sony’s console does have more processing power than the 360 at the end of the day.  With the massive teams Square-Enix puts into its FF titles, we would have seen the advantage of this extra power present throughout the new title.  Instead, we will now see a game that is hindered by a competing console for no valid reason.  (Well, I suppose money is a valid reason.)  No word has officially been announced if Square-Enix was ‘bribed’ by Microsoft to allow the game to be distributed for the 360 in America or Europe or if Square-Enix simply crunched the numbers and determined that a multi-platform release would be the only way to sustain profitability for the title.  Either way, I am sure the dollar signs made the difference at the end of the day.

That being said, there is still a glimmer of hope that the PS3 version still has its chance to shine.  There are two reasons for this.  1)  Japan still has FFXIII as a PS3 exclusive.  Of course, this makes sense since hardly anyone purchases a 360 over there anymore.  Having to at least focus on the PS3 for one region means Square-Enix has no reason not to polish the game as much as possible.  2)  As found on Joystiq.com (as well as any other gaming news site), Square executive Shinji Hashimoto has been quoted saying, ”As we have already announced, we will complete the PS3 version in Japan. After that, we will start the localization for US and Europe. Once localization is underway, Square will begin development of the Xbox 360 version, with the aim of releasing it in America alongside the localized PlayStation 3 version. ”  Which basically boils down to the Xbox 360 version will be the very last thing to be looked at.  This also means that this game has a LOT of development time left and the 360 announcement has probably pushed the unannounced release date even farther away.  I was hoping to play FFXIII sometime in 2009, but I think at this point I will be crossing my fingers for 2010.  With the main focus on the PS3 version, this means that the game could still be optimized for this platform and then ‘dumbed down’ for the 360 units.  

Overall, it will be interesting to see what kind of ripples this announcement will have on other third-party games.  Obviously games simply cost a lot more to make than they used to.  Final Fantasy VII was developed under a budget of approximately $45 million according to wikipedia.com.  Compared to a newer exclusive game such as Metal Gear Solid 4, this is a significantly smaller number.  While I could not locate estimated development costs for MGS4, I did stumble across a quote from MGS4 team member Ryan Payton who stated MGS4 “needs to sell over a million copies on the first day it goes on sale due to its costly production.”  Let’s just assume that would be a million copies at $60 a pop.  That would mean the game cost roughly $60 million to develop.  Of course, that doesn’t even include other things such as marketing and distribution.  For those keeping track, Wikipedia shows as of June 26th, 2008 that MGS4 has shipped a total of 3 million copies worldwide.  That means Hideo Kojima and co. have racked in twice what the game cost to make (or $120 million) in less than a month.  MGS4 does show that a focus on one system and pushing that system to the farthest limits anyone has seen to date can still be extremely profitable.  Although, I suppose if you can simultaneously manage to do this with 2 systems that would be even more profit.

Looking down the road, there really aren’t any third-party exclusive games I can see for either system that really have me too excited.  I can see Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, Killzone 2, and Halo Wars as some big exclusives for each system.  But, these games aren’t coming from the third-parties.  That being said, I think that MGS4 was probably the last great third-party exclusive we may see for quite some time.  If this was true how would it affect the systems and the games we would be playing?  I decided to go to gamerankings.com and take a look at this history of the PlayStation brand just to see how much the success hinged on exclusive third-party games.  Keep in mind, this is based just on the critical reception of games and not on how much money they actually earned.  During the era of the PS1 there was competition from the N64 and I guess the Dreamcast (it was released 16 months prior to the PS2.)  While duking it out with these 2 competitors, third party publishers managed to crank out 7 of the top 10 rated games for PS1.  Out of these 7 games, only 2 were multi-platform at some point in their lifespans.  The PS2 was quite a different story, however.  This is mainly because of the eventual ports of GTA games to the XBOX system.  During the era of the great PS2 system (really…has any other system in history had such that large of a quality game library?), 8 out of the 10 top games were from third-party publishers.  Which is great since this is an improvement over the prior era until you consider that only TWO of those EIGHT games were PS2 exclusives (God of War and Grand Theft Auto III).  This is a huge change in dynamic from the PS1 era…although I suppose completely explainable.  Simply put, the N64 couldn’t really easily handle ported PS1 games.  Two competing formats (cartridge vs. CD) just simply didn’t mesh well.  This is in contrast to the PS2 and XBOX which were are lot easier to port between.  So far, this generation has seen 7 of the top 10 ranked PS3 games being created by third-parties.  Of these games, only ONE is exclusive (the aforementioned MGS4.)  Overall, GameRankings reports that 6 of the top 10 games of all time have been sent out from third-parties.  Of these 6, only TWO are console exclusive:  Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast (although I guess this is technically no longer an exclusive thanks to XBLA) and Tekken 3 for the PS1 (oddly enough both published by Namco).  The Orange Box does eat up 2 separate spots in the top 10 for the PC and 360 versions…so that is kind of unfair to everyone else.

With this brief glimpse into history, it proves that third parties moving away from console exclusives isn’t something that should be considered a huge shock for this generation of systems.  Really, the days of the NES, SNES, and PS1 consoles with all of their great exclusive games have more than likely come to an end.  Instead, we will see each year bringing us a handful of first-party exclusive games which really do show off the great power of each system.  This probably helps to explain why both Microsoft and Sony are gobbling up the independent developers left out there so they can still continue to have some games which can only be experienced on their respective consoles.  The only other way I see to have an awesome third-party exclusive is if you have a system like the Wii with a control that is not easily mimicked without some huge patent violations.  Honestly, the Wii probably has the most third-party exclusive games of each current-gen system.  Which is pretty surprising considering it is the least powerful. 

However, I tend not to focus on the Wii and would instead like to focus on the war between Sony and Microsoft.  The movement of Final Fantasy XIII as a multi-platform release isn’t really a ‘death knell’ in the coffin that has yet to be made for the PS3.  (I do still consider it a blow for the potential technical excellence FFXIII could be showing us…but again I don’t know if Square will focus on optimizing for the PS3 or not).  More or less, this is really just the evolution of Square-Enix into a multi-platform company due to financial reasons.  This also shouldn’t be a surprise considering development of games such as The Last Remnant for both systems as well.  In the end, the gamers are the true winners since no console choice ends up to be a bad one.  Which is great unless you want to see third-party games which are optimized for your system of choice (and I do dammit!).

I guess until the next evolution for video games (such as ONE console alone with ZERO competition) we will always be forced remember the great third-party exclusives that were and will never be again.

As always, thanks for your time.