FFXVI only PS5?

[Absimiliard]

Being on a forum where every other complain is coupled with the usual "if SE don't listen to me then it's certainly doom" can do that for you. Hyperbolic statement just trigger me. Also, did you miss the very last part of the post where I said "including myself"? So let strike a deal: you stop using hyperbolic grand statements, and I'll stop poking at you for it, deal?

Except nothing I said was hyperbolic or an assumption. I meant exactly what I said as I said it. You may claim it's hyperbolic if you wish, but that does not alter my own intent in the least. As I said before, I in fact have a vested interest in the gaming industry. It is my source of stability.

So, allow me to reiterate one more time, noting there is no hyperbole at play: timed exclusives are bad for the industry. This isn't exactly a new and shocking concept, given how many economists, gaming companies, and even governments have been and will continue saying the same thing for who knows how long. It is far from the only poor business practice currently widely employed, and it's not going to cause any kind of market crash by itself. Lots of things go into making a market crash. No market, no matter how large or strong, is immune to experiencing a crash. And no, you don't need a global catastrophe for this to occur.

Now, if you wish to question my use of the phrase "industry-destroying," that had no hyperbolic intent either. I firmly believe there will be long term consequences from the continued use of predatory exclusivity practices. There are ways to go about it that work, that I won't try to dispute, but the majority of companies engaging in it do so in a manner that is just outright predatory at this point. It's proven the death knell of many a small company, and it will doubtless consume many others along the way.

Incidentally, you could probably even call timed exclusivity self-defeating in some cases. I'm not sure how familiar you are with how those things work, but there's rarely a clause in the contract for if sales exceed what was initially projected. I.e. the entity holding the rights to sell or platform the game is in no way required to compensate the IP-holder in the event this occurs. It's a practice typically engaged in by those looking to ensure they'll still turn a profit even if a product bombs. SE's frequent contracts with Sony indicate this is not necessarily their purpose, but smaller companies are often taken for everything they're worth in these deals just to be able to get their product on a platform at all. Then you've got platforms like Epic, which I am pretty sure even you won't try to argue don't engage in excessively predatory practices.

I feel like the notion of another crash in today's environment is ludicrous.

The gaming industry in those days was much smaller. Gaming since then has been very digitalized, and far more accessible (not to mention that it's now far more socially acceptable to be playing games too). After seeing how the gaming industry basically escaped unscathed in terms of revenue during COVID lockdowns (though actual development took a hit for reasons we all know), the so-called economists predicting another gaming crash sound more and more like doomposters trying to will one into existence because reasons.

The only way a gaming crash is happening at this point is if a society-altering event happens at a level far worse than what COVID did, and at that point, we have far worse things to worry about.

Larger markets have crashed than this one, and a lot of them didn't require a society-altering event for it to happen.