One could talk about it for hours, but in the end, the ultimate goal of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo is to sell consoles and services. And the means to do so, inevitably, are the exclusives. These can come from internal studios, called first parties, or from agreements with external software houses and publishers, called in this case third parties. The formula has also been used for years in other sectors, such as the entertainment sector, with TV channels and platforms such as Netflix that play on the sense of exclusivity of certain sporting events, TV series or films.
Having ascertained that exclusives are simply a means of bringing money into the coffers of a certain reality, in the field of video games how much can an exclusive be really worth? It depends on the points of view, but the case of Persona 5 helps us understand the dimensions of this phenomenon and above all how much money a developer "risks" of seeing late. Before launching on Xbox consoles, PC and Nintendo Switch, the Atlus J-RPG had sold around 5 million copies. Just over a month after arriving on other platforms, the total count now rises to 6 million. Certainly important numbers, which arrive 6 years after the original release and which obviously include the Royal version, launched exclusively on PS4 with an adaptation in several languages and not just the English one.
It is obviously difficult to make the accounts in the pocket of Atlus. We do not know how much Sony will have paid for the exclusivity of Persona 5 on consoles, nor what are the various investments made on the brand. Surely, however, the availability of a game on multiple platforms helps the developer to collect more, but obviously it depends from case to case. In fact, it is not strange that very often the concept of "exclusive" has gone from simple software to additional content (as happened, for example, with Call of Duty).
The speech is long and deserves to be addressed separately. The fact remains that Persona 5's numbers are certainly encouraging and demonstrate how simple exclusives can retain the true potential of a product. Going from 5 to 6 million copies sold certainly does not make the Atlus-branded game a best seller, but it does give an idea of how often certain games (especially niche ones) risk being held back by such contracts.
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