Elden Ring, Witcher3, RDR2, Skyrim, Minecraft, Tetris, GTA are proof! non-exclusive, acclaimed, among the best-selling & greatest games ever..
Funny list there, if you go through the history of those franchises...
- Elden Ring: new game built for the audience into Dark Souls, which caught its first momentum with Demons Souls, a PS3 exclusive.
- Witcher 3: third game in a series that started on PC and built momentum with Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 as well as PC again.
- RDR2, third game in a series that started as a PS2 exclusive.
- Skyrim, part of a series that lived on PC until it expanded and shot for mainstream appeal with two exclusive games on Xbox hardware (later Oblivion was ported to PS3, Morrowind you can still play today on any Xbox.) That franchise is now potentially going back into exclusivity with the Xbox/Bethesda purchase.
- Minecraft, that's was first brought to consoles (after gaining popularity on PC and mobile) through an Xbox 360 version which important to the increasing presence of Xbox Live Arcade; the series was later bought by Microsoft (although they have kept non-exclusivity as the business model.)
- Tetris, of course, began life on Nintendo platforms... which is not true, it was originally an Arcade game and a series of PC releases, but once Nintendo got involved they were so rabid about exclusivity that there was a huge lawsuit which killed the Tengen NES version and also scared SEGA off from releasing a Genesis version.
- GTA, we are I assume not talking about GTA1 being among the greatest games ever (although on consoles those first games were exclusive to PlayStation beyond the PC release,) but then the GTA3 series that launched this franchise big of course came home first as a PS2 exclusive.
In all of these cases, being exclusive on certain consoles (if you don't mind me being picky about "console exclusives" when there were often also PC versions out there,) helped these franchises gain a solid foundation to build upon for bigger franchise plans. Maybe, probably they would have been hits without having started in one gaming tent or the other, but this is how things worked out.
Exclusivity is a brand strategy that, in the past, has been very, very, very successful for game publishers and the console manufacturers who do business with these publishers. Whether or not it's the best route to take for today's gaming audience, that's a complex equation that I haven't seen the math on, but obviously publishers are still doing it so there must be money in it.
...Whether I like it or not as a gamer, that's a different question, but when I look at my gaming shelf, I've got a whole lot of games made (or originally made) exclusively for the box those carts/discs play on, and those tend to be among my favorite games, so the equation tends to work on me.
Revolver was on Xbox, too. (you still got a point though)
Dagnabbit, you're right!
I forgot that RDRevolver was also on Xbox... but I think I've still got an ace up my sleeve:
Revolver originally was only spoken of as a PS2 game when it was being made for Capcom; then when T2 acquired Angel and recued the game from cancelation, that's when an
Xbox version joined the caravan.
(Rockstar had by that time expanded from being primarily PS2-exclusive to putting games like the GTAs and MC2 on Xbox, although they still launched first on PS and shortly after on XB; Revolver appears to have been their first simultaneous launch?)
So, I'm still all-in with my theory that exclusivity helped these game series get attention on their way to being named the greatest games ever.
