Exclusivity Is Your Achilles' Heel Beyond $200M Budget, Warns Former PlayStation Exec

The video game industry is grappling with the implications of recent decisions by major players like Microsoft Corp. MSFT and Sony Group Corp. SONY to broaden their game releases beyond exclusive platforms.

"When a video game’s costs exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel," Shawn Layden, former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, told VentureBeat: "

Moreover, Layden talked about the significance of widening the player base, noting: "In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% of those people will never spend a nickel. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, getting more people in."

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The former CEO also discussed the necessity of reaching a broader audience, particularly for high-budget single-player games: "For single-player games it’s not the same exigency...but if you’re spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if it’s just 10% more."

Former Xbox executive Peter Moore echoed Layden's sentiments, suggesting that maximizing intellectual property value might involve releasing exclusive titles on rival platforms.

He said in a recent interview with IGN: "If Microsoft says, wait, we're doing $250 million on our own platforms, but if we then took Halo as, let's call it a third-party, we could do a billion… You got to think long and hard about that, right?"

In the meantime, Microsoft has announced plans to release some exclusives like Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, and Pentiment on rival platforms, and Sony has cautiously explored multi-platform releases.

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