I can live with timed exclusives if it leads to good games.

I would say it’s no coincidence we’ve seen a drought of good singleplayer games around the same time as a drought of console exclusives.

Technology-wise, there’s no “reason” to buy any particular console. They’re all PCs. So, console makers have to invent that reason; and little things like a screenshot button, or family features, don’t pull people into the store. Exclusive games do.

And one key thing is, those exclusive games can’t be F2P microtransactions-laden casinos or live-service games. No one is spending $500 just to play something free; they’ll try to install that on a device they have. The exclusives have to be full, complete, well-voice-acted, well-written masterpieces respected by the gaming public - making anyone without that console envious.

But couldn’t devs just sell those games without making them exclusive? Perhaps not. Look at the credits for the latest God of War and you get a sense of how much they’re spending to make those types of games.

Yes, the game alone is still profitable. But A) It’s paying for a dozen failures Sony has also put out - no-name experiments they greenlit, and B) It might not be as profitable as many other reliable industries investors could put their money into. Why not just buy an index fund?

Thankfully, the equation works out better for indie studios; their games aren’t so massive as to need to account for millions in costs. So we’ll keep getting those. But big-budget singleplayer arrangements aren’t as likely when they’re not pushing some bigger product like a game console.