Timed Exclusives, Annoyance for You!

I really loved Dragon Age: Inquisition. It was a fantastic game. It had a great story, a believable transgender character, inclusive and had, by and large, a pretty good combat system.

Then when I heard of the first DLC, Jaws of Hakkon, I thought "hurrah, some good DLC to keep my love of the game afresh". And then I learned that it would be a timed exclusive. I only had a Xbox 360 because money, while PC and Xbox One people got to play it. It was released for them on March 24th. Everyone else got it on May 24th. That is a long time to go without!

I get the last gen consoles perhaps having the time shifted back, while they go about porting it or whatever, but the only reason PS4 players had to wait was because Microsoft paid money to keep it away from them.

What do you think of the 'timed exclusive'?

I think it's a transparent strategy to get people to buy the latest consoles, or buy a particular console.

It's very annoying, but exclusives have been a reality of the gaming industry for many years now.

At this point, we probably just have to live with it.

But timed DLC exclusives make absolutely no sense. No PS4 player who has already bought Inquisition and loved it is going to go: "oh well the DLC is a timed exclusive to the Xbox One, I'm definitely going to go buy a console and another copy of Dragon Age: Inquisition".

Game exclusives, while annoying, do at least make some sense in that it drives competition and allows a console a particular selling point, even if it does mean you have to buy two consoles minimum to play everything you wanted. But timed DLC is just particularly insidious.

Timed DLC MIGHT persuade someone who was sitting on the fence to buy an Xbox One, particularly if they haven't already bought a copy of Inquisition for the 360.

I really hope this is a last gen trend that fades away. It's essentially paying a developer to delay content that was already coming to another platform and the data suggests it has little effect outside of depriving another platform's gamers. The irony is most, if not all, of the games Microsoft has these deals with end up selling better on PlayStation by a significant margin. Its currently rumored that the install base gap has widened so much that Activision has terminated the Call of Duty marketing and DLC deal with Microsoft.

Now that the console space is a Sony hegemony again, you'll probably start seeing a lot more real exclusives, like Bloodborne and Street Fighter V.

"It is an example of industry prickery" - Jim Sterling
"Microsoft added nothing [no value], it offered a ransom" - Jim Sterling

I totally agree with his view on this (best stuff from 3:26 onwards), especially the whole scheme of buying competitive angles rather than creating them; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH7g53NX1Rc

I recommend the watch.

I'm going through this right now. I was about to pre-order Batman: Arkham Knight on Steam, and then I heard that there's a whole slew of missions that will be exclusive to PS4 at launch, and that there's a whole slew of other missions that you can only get at launch if you buy it from Gamestop.

I mean I have a PS4, but it's still annoying as hell. Just give me the game. I'm paying you the same amount of money.

Timed exclusives are at least better than complete exclusives.

It's basically just console war fuel, for fanboys to be able to more easily shout MY CONSOLE GOT X FIRST SO IT IS BETTER AHAHAHA.

I wouldn't mind if someone just went ahead and executed every person that voted in favor of paying for timed exclusives. They deserve it for being utter dicks.

Timed exclusives are pretty annoying, but at least you know you're getting it eventually. For example, Rise of the Tomb Raider. I'm annoyed by the fact that I won't get to play it straight away, but I wouldn't go and buy an Xbox One for it when I know it will come to the PS4 at some point. If I did ever buy one then it would *only* be for exclusives.

It's stuff like this or pushing out DLC a month after release that make me glad I don't bother with 99% of the big titles that come out.