When Death Stranding was first announced, the game was trumpeted as a PlayStation console exclusive. It still is. The game probably won¡¯t be playable on Microsoft¡¯s rival Xbox console anytime soon ¡ª but, in late August, the game did get released on the Microsoft-owned game subscription service PC Game Pass. Confused?
In the world of video games, exclusives have typically been a big deal. The term ¡°exclusive¡± means that they are released on only one console. There are usually two types of exclusives: exclusives that will never appear on other consoles and timed exclusives, which are released on one console for a set period of time. After that, the game goes ¡°multiplatform¡± and is released on other consoles.
¡°The emergence ¡ª or re-emergence, depending how old you are ¡ª of the PC as a mainstream platform has radically changed the outlook of console platform holders, who used to only worry about their own games for their own systems,¡± says Luke Plunkett, senior writer at gaming news site Kotaku. (Full disclosure: I was previously a senior editor at Kotaku.) ¡°Now, as both Microsoft and Sony have shown, you can release big console hits like Forza and God of War on PC and make some money all over again.¡±
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