The Console Exclusive Era Draws to a Close as Square Enix Joins Ubisoft in Simultaneous Release Strategy

[Cpt.Jank]

It looks like the single-platform exclusive era that has plagued the gaming industry since the 2010s is coming to an end. The writing has been on the wall for a while, with Square Enix already previously confirming that its games would be launching earlier on both PC and Xbox, but now, the game studio has confirmed that more of its titles will be launching to more platforms simultaneously. This comes after Ubisoft made a similar announcement regarding the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows after a delay and a bit of controversy.

The news from Square Enix broke in an interview with Japanese outlet 4gamer.net, with Square Enix's Naoki Yoshida confirming that the strategy has proven beneficial in terms of attracting more players to the company's games, further explaining that PC is the largest audience for gaming. The game Yoshida was specifically addressing in the interview was the upcoming Fantasian Neo Dimension—an upcoming CRPG developed by Mistwalker Corporation and published by Square Enix, with a planned multi-platform launch on December 5, 2024—but Yoshida seems to imply that this new policy will apply to more games going forward. It appears that both the announcement by Square Enix and Ubisoft are driven by commercial motivations.



During the interview Yoshida alluded to the fact that the simultaneous launch strategy has added more work on the development side of things, likely due to developing and porting a game at the same time, although he commented that the extra work has so far paid off due to the increased uptick in interest from consumers. Currently, Fantasian Neo Dimension has just over 2,000 followers on Steam, according to SteamDB, although this is likely due to the fact that it's a new IP in a niche genre. Yoshida expects the turn-based game to draw in the biggest audience on the Nintendo Switch.

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[FreedomEclipse]

When a PS5 costs $800 it sure as hell would make a lot of financial sense to make the game available for those that dont have an $800 console.

 

[Dr. Dro]

likely due to developing and porting a game at the same time

Games don't need to be ported to PC anymore, since they are being developed on Windows. This is true even for Nintendo's games. Anyone following the recent Game Freak leaks on Twitter now knows they actually had almost fully working internal PC builds of many Switch Pokémon games, and they even have a custom, private NVIDIA driver version that serves as some weird sort of DRM for the NX development kit.

Market realities are changing and the money that exchanges hands from console manufacturers to third party publishers isn't enough to fund the development of games anymore, as costs are rising exponentially with each and every release. Sony's own PC endeavor is purely because it's no longer feasible to fund a title on console revenue alone.

 

[natr0n]

 

[kapone32]

Games don't need to be ported to PC anymore, since they are being developed on Windows. This is true even for Nintendo's games. Anyone following the recent Game Freak leaks on Twitter now knows they actually had almost fully working internal PC builds of many Switch Pokémon games, and they even have a custom, private NVIDIA driver version that serves as some weird sort of DRM for the NX development kit.

Market realities are changing and the money that exchanges hands from console manufacturers to third party publishers isn't enough to fund the development of games anymore, as costs are rising exponentially with each and every release. Sony's own PC endeavor is purely because it's no longer feasible to fund a title on console revenue alone.

Yep that's why you can play Gran Tursimo 7 on PC.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yep that's why you can play Gran Tursimo 7 on PC.

I don't see the correlation between a game not being published on PC and being developed on one. The developers at Polyphony Digital likely have an internal build of GT7 that runs on Windows.

Even Red Dead Redemption eventually made its way to PC officially, it took 14 years, but it's here.

 

[kapone32]

I don't see the correlation between a game not being published on PC and being developed on one. The developers at Polyphony Digital likely have an internal build of GT7 that runs on Windows.

Even Red Dead Redemption eventually made its way to PC officially, it took 14 years, but it's here.

You are so funny. There are still Console exclusive Games whether you like it or not. I know that GTA5 changed the World when it came to PC but we still have the console as a space for some users. I am not going to disagree that GT7 could probably be ported to PC but if you think they have a PC version in the wings you don't understand Japanese Culture. Square is obviously whelmed about the sales of the Final Fantasy 7 remake and want to bring their Games with updated Graphics to the PC. Xenogears, Parasite Eve, Einhander and others come to mind as bangers that we could play again. You also have to understand that Chinese Harddrives with all Retro consoles are very popular and as such are having an effect on the market.

 

[Ruru]

Isn't it easier (since the last gen) to port games to PC, since consoles use X86-64 architecture and derivatives of PC GPUs (GCN on last gen, RDNA2 on this gen)?

Personally I'd say that Xbox Series S is the best choice from this gen, purely because of its price. Unbeliavable how PS5 is still so expensive.

Parasite Eve

Shut up and take my money!

 

[Dr. Dro]

You are so funny. There are still Console exclusive Games whether you like it or not. I know that GTA5 changed the World when it came to PC but we still have the console as a space for some users. I am not going to disagree that GT7 could probably be ported to PC but if you think they have a PC version in the wings you don't understand Japanese Culture.

What are you talking about... I said the games were being developed on PCs. Not that they are finished, shipping products on PC. This means there's no machine-specific code, and making a PC shipping build should be trivial enough. Most of the time anyway.

 

[watzupken]

Isn't it easier (since the last gen) to port games to PC, since consoles use X86-64 architecture and derivatives of PC GPUs (GCN on last gen, RDNA2 on this gen)?

Personally I'd say that Xbox Series S is the best choice from this gen, purely because of its price. Unbeliavable how PS5 is still so expensive.


Shut up and take my money!

I don't know the technicalities, but I do think you may have over simplified the challenges of porting. If it is just a matter of hardware, then won't all games run universally well on Linux and Windows? I've owned both Series X and S before, and in my opinion, I like the Series S for the portability, but I don't think it is the best in value between the 2. You are getting quite a lot less in terms of specs, including storage and bluray drive (which I still use). Series X was not that much more expensive in the first few years than Series S. But I think MS have increased prices, so I am not sure about its price now.

In this case, I welcome the move to not do exclusives on any platforms. However, it will become challenging for developers that need to simultaneously optimize games properly on all platforms. So I expect more bugs in the early stages of the game release. I believe one of the reason for the "exclusivity" on some platform is more to stagger the development work, like console first, then PC, vice versa.

 

[sepheronx]

I like exclusives. Exclusivity creates competition and that competition drove innovation in the games industry and to an extent, hardware. Since everything's been multiplatform, it almost correlates to shitty games and poor optimizations for the last decade. Maybe I'm overthrowing it in regards to that but I still stand by concept of exclusivity.

Squares been shit since squaresoft merged with Enix, right not long after that disaster of a movie spirits within. They either rely on final fantasy 7 series to go piggy back off of to keep afloat or come out with abysmal shit like 15, 16 and Flopspoken. Dragon quest 11 was good though.

Two failing companies following each other - Ubisoft and Square.

 

[Ruru]

I like exclusives. Exclusivity creates competition and that competition drove innovation in the games industry and to an extent, hardware. Since everything's been multiplatform, it almost correlates to shitty games and poor optimizations for the last decade. Maybe I'm overthrowing it in regards to that but I still stand by concept of exclusivity.

Squares been shit since squaresoft merged with Enix, right not long after that disaster of a movie spirits within. They either rely on final fantasy 7 series to go piggy back off of to keep afloat or come out with abysmal shit like 15, 16 and Flopspoken. Dragon quest 11 was good though.

Two failing companies following each other - Ubisoft and Square.

I liked FF XV. I was just going to try how my old 980 Ti runs it, ended up "testing" for ~80 hours.

 

[sepheronx]

I liked FF XV. I was just going to try how my old 980 Ti runs it, ended up "testing" for ~80 hours.

First 9 chapters were fine. But the game was rushed and unfinished. I still remember the loading screens talking about areas you can't even go to: caves that exist between tundra and desert were Shivas big sexy dead body was. Or about the city that your wife is from and areas to see but you never go there.

 

[lexluthermiester]

When a PS5 costs $800 it sure as hell would make a lot of financial sense to make the game available for those that dont have an $800 console.

Instead of a $2100(ish) PC?

I liked FF XV. I was just going to try how my old 980 Ti runs it, ended up "testing" for ~80 hours.

Funny how that happens, right?

 

[sepheronx]

Instead of a $2100(ish) PC?

You know, Microsoft would have had the slam dunk system if they would have allowed a desktop mode to its console.

See, since its a Windows OS modified on it and all games loaded are running in their own hypervisor, I don't think it would have been out of the realm of possibility of running a desktop environment where people could use their xbox series x as PC along side as a plug and play console.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Instead of a $2100(ish) PC?


Funny how that happens, right?

People with a $2100 PC ain't going to buy your $800 console for 1 game either.

 

[_roman_]

Does Square Enix or Ubisoft have any decent games?

making a PC shipping build should be trivial enough

I do not think so. Sometimes I struggle with git repositories which I want to compile on my gnu gentoo linux box. Just because there is some git code does not imply it will run on my box after the compiler.
Some stuff did not even compile at all, even after trying to fix for some hours.
Some stuff does not have any functionality or just crash at startup or randomly.
Git is a generic term for all those commands and repositories available which you can clone from the internet to your disk. I had several different "projects" i tried in the past years.
(I think a personal example will give a better point about code and compiling)

 

[Random_User]

Games don't need to be ported to PC anymore, since they are being developed on Windows. This is true even for Nintendo's games.

Wasn't this a thing, even then the consoles were using "Cell"? And when, when outside some pretty significant proprietary software differences, there's no excuse to not make all releases at once, since the HW itself is pretty much the same x86_64, made by AMD. And this lasts since "Jaguar", and Xbox One and PS4 era.
I also don't see, why there's not much more of older games being ported within PSN and Xbox ecosystems, and thus being finally released on PC.

There's huge amount of older games, that would overshadow any modern AAA projects sale, with almost free money. But stubborn Game companies and their owners, yet have too thick skull to understand this.
They should have test their audience, by what it likes and what dislikes. And then just listen to it, and do just what the player base wants. Not enforce own silly detached expectations and ideas.

Does Square Enix or Ubisoft have any decent games?

At least Ubisoft had. Actually they had many great stuff, being dug into the ground, long before they became Ubi.
Now, I don't see any chance for these games and their series being revived, and returned to the roots, with the overtakes by 10¢ and other aggressive and predatory companies.
This is just sad, that these dumb and greedy companies "leaders" sit on the huge legacy and do not even try to use it in good way. If something happens, they will just jump the sinking ship off, but the IP and ideas, projects, products will be forgotten, or misused. They don't even try to honor and value their heritage and achievements, and thus thousands of developers, and fan/modder's titanic work as well.


Also, it would be much easier to port to the PC(It was still developed on ordinary desktop PC to begin with), if µ$ didn't try to artificially distant their Xbox, and limit the compatibility, during XB/X360/XB1. Simultaneously degrade the desktop PC environment and platform, to the levels below Xbox ecosystem, in order to make their console look better and more "gaming" capable, than the "gaming inferior"/"working" platform, as PC was being positioned. The dumb API like DirectX, XAudio, and many other stuff, is the result of that. But even while having similar tools, the PC was still positioned as "incapable" of running console "xclusive" games.

 

[Vayra86]

One by one, the consoles shall fall to PC dominance.

All your games are belong to us.

So run, corporate, run to your on-demand streaming services now. Your last saving grace to mislead people into buying products they already had, by taking control away from them. Go Go! Lead the lemmings to the abyss, so you can lose your last shred of right of existence. In the meantime I'll enjoy my nigh infinite library of readily available games.

Eventually, the only ones left standing will be the companies that keep pushing out solid, new, content, because they actually have something left to sell us. The rest of the market is oversaturated already. You can get games anywhere, on anything, anyway, and even at any price you want to pay.

Microsoft and Sony are hoping to corner the market by taking all the content producers, but they're only buying the ones that were already making content, not the ones that serve the emerging gaming markets. Sony had a lot of unique IP tied to their console, which is no longer the case. Microsoft never had a lot of unique IP, but at least had some IP tied to Xbox. Why would I care about them any longer? So I can keep playing CoD and another shitty rendition of Elder Scrolls? Lel. Every time in the last ten plus years, the big gaming surprises came from anywhere BUT these big publishers and studios. That ain't gonna change.

View attachment 370314View attachment 370318View attachment 370319View attachment 370320

It took me a while but I got there. Lmao

 

[lexluthermiester]

People with a $2100 PC ain't going to buy your $800 console for 1 game either.

Not true! If the PS5 wasn't such an ugly as hell console I would have bought one already. But it is as ugly as all hell so no, the PS5 will not be in my collection of systems. I'm happy with my PS4Pro anyway.

 

[Vayra86]

Games don't need to be ported to PC anymore, since they are being developed on Windows. This is true even for Nintendo's games. Anyone following the recent Game Freak leaks on Twitter now knows they actually had almost fully working internal PC builds of many Switch Pokémon games, and they even have a custom, private NVIDIA driver version that serves as some weird sort of DRM for the NX development kit.

Market realities are changing and the money that exchanges hands from console manufacturers to third party publishers isn't enough to fund the development of games anymore, as costs are rising exponentially with each and every release. Sony's own PC endeavor is purely because it's no longer feasible to fund a title on console revenue alone.

This is not new but also not tied specifically to a specific console (version). The whole ecosystem is just more unified now because the APIs are much better and that happened because the hardware underneath is also more unified. The OS isn't a player here. The major issue that Cell suffered from was that there wasn't a straightforward API between the PowerPC and development kits, and/or the dev kits were quite arcane in how they could use the PowerPC resources best.

Ergo its not very relevant what gets devved on, what matters more is what abstraction layer you can put on top and what the resulting performance is. In the end its just a software package with the same functions you're trying to run in different environments.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Instead of a $2100(ish) PC?

$1200(ish) PC is a personal choice. No higher authority is mandating that you spend that much building one other than yourself.

 

[Vayra86]

Instead of a $2100(ish) PC?

You can build a very solid gaming rig for half that amount. Even here in overpriced Netherlands, so I bet it should be doable for under 1k in dollars, too.

You know, Microsoft would have had the slam dunk system if they would have allowed a desktop mode to its console.

See, since its a Windows OS modified on it and all games loaded are running in their own hypervisor, I don't think it would have been out of the realm of possibility of running a desktop environment where people could use their xbox series x as PC along side as a plug and play console.

Yep, but then how are they going to feed us Windows licenses? They don't want to tie those together because it potentially kills a business line. If you have the choice of selling the same customer one Xbox and one Windows, why would you limit yourself by fusing them together while not making any money out of it? After all, if you inflate the price of the console to get that money, it competitively falls in the water.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I do not think so. Sometimes I struggle with git repositories which I want to compile on my gnu gentoo linux box. Just because there is some git code does not imply it will run on my box after the compiler.
Some stuff did not even compile at all, even after trying to fix for some hours.
Some stuff does not have any functionality or just crash at startup or randomly.
Git is a generic term for all those commands and repositories available which you can clone from the internet to your disk. I had several different "projects" i tried in the past years.
(I think a personal example will give a better point about code and compiling)

I mean the problem is not the repository in itself but the code within it

 

[lexluthermiester]

You can build a very solid gaming rig for half that amount. Even here in overpriced Netherlands, so I bet it should be doable for under 1k in dollars, too.

That's fair. A PC that competes with a PS5 specs though? I haven't actually tried it, but if I had to guess, at least $1200. Just a guess though.