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. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Sony Group Corp. (NYSE: 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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