PC exclusives and ports. 7 things that brought PS4 and XOne closer to PC
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Many surprising decisions were made with regard to publishing policy during the current generation. Many concerned PC releases of console exclusives, a lot has also happened in the opposite direction with releases of exclusive PC games on PS4 and XOne. The line between exclusive titles is slowly fading, although there is of course still a big gap between the ideas of Sony and Microsoft.
Microsoft quickly lost sight of the PlayStation. They lost the generation at the onset, through a series of poor marketing decisions and an architecture that was generally considered inferior. One of their ways of coping with that handicap was the introduction of Play Anywhere – a service that let us play the same games on a Windows-powered PC and Xbox One. As a result, Xbox exclusives such as Forza Motorsport and Halo were released on the PC, as well as games initially developed for exclusivity, such as Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break.
This was not the case with Sony, which still relies on releasing highly polished titles exclusively for its platform, trying to maintain a somehow elitistic label. It seems unlikely that any God of War, The Last Of Us or Gran Turismo will ever be released on PC. But even Sony let a few big games slip, including recent hits like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Death Stranding, or games from Quantic Dreams, exclusively associated with PlayStation since the beginning: Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human.
But overall, the traffic was much greater in the opposite direction, with numerous PC-only games and genres released on consloes. We've had classic isometric role-playing games: Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera, the latest installment of the cult hack'n’slash-Diablo or sim-racing Assetto Corsa. We also could play the latest installment in the Civilization series, as well as the 4X strategy Stellaris from Paradox, and the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator. End of the world!
Cross-play
A certain symbol of the greater openness of console games is the increasing popularity of cross-play, i.e. the ability to play a title together regardless of the platform. This feature was once considered a kind of threat to the "exclusivity" of a given console. Again, Sony had long defended the introduction of cross-play for games such as Rocket League and Fortnite. Hopefully cross-play will become standard in any network title in the future.
