Apple and Google are scraping it out for platform exclusive games and they are doing it by offering those games that choose to be exclusive heavy promotional on their respective marketplaces. With the issues of discoverability in both marketplaces being alive and well, this kind of promotion would almost certainly make those chosen game a hit, although maybe not for the right reasons.
This fight has already begun according to people who are quite ‘familiar with the situation’. In other words, Google and Apple have already begun promoting exclusive games heavily on their app stores. These people citing examples of both Plants vs Zombies 2 and Cut The Rope 2 as prime examples of Apple winning their exclusivity in exchange for heavy promotion on iTunes. This would be why Android didn’t have either game released until awhile after the iOS version was released.
We should be used to this though, especially with Amazon offering this sort of thing to developers for temporary exclusives for the Amazon AppStore. Gameloft almost went the way of exclusivity on iOS but decided against it, opting to continue to release games simultaneously (almost that is) on both platforms.
It’ll be interesting to see how this new fight turns out and how this will affect both marketplaces and ultimately how it will affect us gamers. We never did look kindly on being isolated with exclusives.
Website Referenced: Wall Street Journal
