[Three of Seven]

Exclusivity, it happens in a lot of areas where things are sold, such as games, films or even toys, what do you think of exclusives? Do you think they are a good idea or a bad idea?

To me, any form of exclusive is bad for the consumer, those who don't have much money or use a different service end up losing out. Console exclusives are a good example, Red Dead Redemption, never came out on PC and it looked like a game I might have played, but I wasn't going to buy a console for one game, it's not worth it nor could I afford it. The new Star Trek series is another, there are exclusive contracts for different streaming services around the world, while better than the original model, still bad for the end consumer.

Also, as someone who buys a lot of the TY Beenie Boo cats, some are exclusive to American stories, this isn't useful at all for me!

Where do you stand?

[vonLuden]

As a consumer I have been aggravated in the past by exclusive or limited edition offers which prevented me from buying things I wanted.

On the other hand, I don't think I have the right to tell someone they can't use a particular sales scheme.

[ODST General]

Well I hate to see exclusives with anything really. Obviously creators of this various content have a right to say they only want their product in one place. However these decisions are often not justified by some for of artistic or technical reasoning and rather justified by a large check for the rights to distribute a product. But there are instances in which exclusives are justifiable, take for instance Arma or Star Citizen which are both PC exclusives and think on how well they may translate to console be it due to gameplay mechanics or hardware requirements. However with say DLC or a certain Sci-Fi franchise that is going through a certain paid service for a couple of countries.

In short I don't really like it in any instance but sometimes it is truly justifiable.

[Three of Seven]

I wouldn't be too surprised if Star Citizen did come to console as well eventually, at the moment it isn't a finished product, but they have the money for the R&D.

[Mark Okuda]

Well titles being exclusive is a good strategy for companies. This may not be a good example but I loved playing Final Fantasy 2 and 3 on my SNES. Now when Final Fantasy 7 came out it was on the Playstation. I wanted to play FF so I got myself a Playstation so I could play it and then even when FFX came out on the PS2, I got a PS2 to play it. So obliviously the Strategy worked for Squaresoft in driving consumers to buy there product and in turn helping out Sony with the selling of thier hardware.

[Intrepid]

This is all predicated on the assumption that 'exclusives' stay exclusive.

More often than not these days, at least with consoles you get it opened up to other platforms a few weeks or months later anyway.