A Beginner's Guide to Get Started on Gaming — Part 3: Exclusivity

If you've read the other two parts of this beginner's guide, you'll have already heard the word "exclusive" thrown around, but you might not know exactly what it means and entails as a whole. In this part of the guide, I'm going to be talking about exclusivity in gaming, including how it happens in consoles and within PC.

Learning about exclusivity is important when starting your journey through gaming because it is something that affects every gamer. It is becoming both more prominent and less so as consoles start offering their exclusive games to PC, and PC keeps making new launchers to create exclusivity within the platform.

What are exclusives?

First and foremost, exclusives are games that are only available in a certain launcher or platform and cannot be acquired anywhere else. As we spoke about in Part 2, the Nintendo Switch has 149 exclusive titles that can only be played on the console, and this is something that has been — and will continue to be — part of the industry.

Exclusivity, both console and platform, means that unless you own pretty much every platform, there will be games that — plainly put — you can't play. This frustrating practice has been (mostly) stopped by PlayStation but continues to be prominent by Nintendo. No matter what platform you choose, even with the PC's staggering 50,000+ game library, you will find a game you can't play.

How does exclusivity happen in PCs?

The gaming platform, Steam, has been mentioned before in this guide. This one-stop shop for all things gaming means you create an account, browse a store of thousands of games, and boot them all in one neat, compact launcher. Having everything in one place helps with being organised, keeping track of what you already own, and being able to visit your entire library without having to go out of your way to find it elsewhere. It's kind of like having a closet for your clothes, but you also have a separate closet in another room with different clothes and then another with more clothes.

Exclusivity within the PC industry has been growing exponentially thanks to Steam's newest competitor, the Epic Games store. New titles coming out don't always come out on Steam, as it used to happen a couple of years ago, and it means that your once neat library has become two (or sometimes three and four) different ones with plenty of games you might want to play.

As a newcomer to gaming, this exclusivity won't affect you nearly as much as us stubborn old-timers who refuse to move out of Steam due to principle, but it's worth keeping in mind. With the growing popularity of new publishers creating their launchers, this might become a prominent issue of having various launchers so you can play all your games.

How does exclusivity affect you as a newcomer?

The biggest thing that will affect newcomers to gaming will be the exclusives outside of any given platform. As seen in the first part of this guide, I strongly suggest going for a PC (or a Steam Deck if you want to go the economical route) because of the sheer amount of games released on the platform. You'll want to be careful about which games you are going to miss out on by reading about exclusives. Knowledge about these exclusivities will help you know which console to get.

PC exclusivity won't affect you nearly as much (so long as you went for a PC instead of a console). Some games or publishers have their own launcher (like League of Legends for Riot Games or World of Warcraft for Activision Blizzard), meaning you won't be able to stumble upon these on the Steam or Epic Games store as exploratively as you might otherwise.

Sticking to both Steam and the Epic Games store will give you just about every game you could want, but learning about new titles outside of your comfort is never a bad idea once you've gotten into the groove of gaming. If you can avoid obsessing over one platform (basically not getting obsessed with Steam), you will have a wider range of games to enjoy.