When Rise of the Tomb Raider first announced that it would be a timed Xbox One exclusive, the decision was met with mixed reactions. Particularly, everyone who had an Xbox One loved the decision, and everyone who didn't … well … really didn't.
In fact, as recently as this summer, articles swirled around the web condemning timed exclusives, in part this was because the folks at Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics had been completely mum on when the PS4 version was coming out. The other part was that consumers (PS4 owners) didn't see the appeal of limiting your game to half the available audience, even from a marketing standpoint.
I'll admit that I was right there along with them. I also think that, for the most part, timed exclusive games don't make sense from either perspective – unless you do it exactly the way Rise of the Tomb Raider did it.
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With Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration, Square Enix has offered a proof of concept for timed exclusive games. What we have here is essentially a Game of the Year Edition. That seems to be the standard for AAA games nowadays. You release your game, you release the DLC, then you release a GOTY Edition with all the DLC bundled in and throw a fresh new $60 price tag on it.
But GOTY Editions are never going to be money makers. Instead they function as last-minute milkers. When a game is at the end of it's profitable life, you throw out a GOTY and hope to pick up a few extra bucks, but you're not trying to reinvent the game. It's not a remaster.
What Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration, since it wasn't available on PS4, Square Enix has essentially given their game a second release. By all accounts, that release is going swimmingly. So, rather than releasing it on all platforms, then releasing a mildly profitable GOTY Edition, Square Enix gets to have its cake and eat it too.
Of course, for all the future games looking to cash in on this strategy (Dead Rising 4, for example), beware of the one area Rise of the Tomb Raider stumbled.
While I'm certain the exclusivity agreement with Xbox One sweetened the deal, financially, beyond simply sales, they didn't account for one major heavy hitter: Fallout 4. By all accounts, Rise of the Tomb Raider's sales on initial release were a disappointment, setting a very clear warning for future developers wanting to become a timed exclusive: do not release against a huge tentpole video game, unless you, yourself, are one. While the 20 Year Celebration did release against Gears of War 4, that game is a Microsoft exclusive, so there's room for both those titles to succeed.
While many PS4 owners might still be salty over the timed exclusive nature of Rise of the Tomb Raider, it ended up being almost a more consumer-friendly tactic for them. Now, instead of paying $60.00 for the base game, then shelling out more dough for the DLC, or waiting until the game is irrelevant to buy the GOTY Edition, you now get to spend $60 on the entire game and all it's post-release content while there is still reason to play it. In that respect, I'd say PS4 owners got a better deal than Xbox One owners.
And hey, it's not like this practice is going away any time soon. But, as long as developers follow the Rise of the Tomb Raider roadmap, that won't be such a bad thing.
