"As it was...as it is...as it ever shall be..."

Back in the Early Nineties, there were really only two videogames companies that received any attention from the mass media and the general public. Those two companies were Nintendo and Sega. A great deal �if not all, of the positive press surrounding these two companies was centred on their two platform-exclusive characters: Mario and Sonic.

There were toys, there were cartoon series, sweets, cut-out masks in magazines, you name it they had it and it was big. But the real point of contention between these two characters was that they were limited to their respective consoles and their consoles only. In lunch-break scenes across the world, gamers were polarised into two camps reminiscent of the fiercest football derby rivals. Gamers got behind their mascots and fought out their own little wars, each picking a side and searching fir their opponents weakness like that last elusive Chaos Emerald.

Fast forward nearly twelve years (God, am I that old?) and very little has changed. While you can argue that Sega's myriad of foolish marketing and development decisions have relegated them to the less prestigious role of cross-platform publisher, the effects of system-exclusives are still the same. Mario VS Master Chief VS Grand Theft Auto. Why is this important?

If you're looking for an extended debate on console rivalries: look elsewhere -or better yet wait for a month or so when I cover that in my next feature. This is all about how important platform exclusive titles are for gamers and console manufacturers.

Firstly, let's talk about profitability. In virtually any other market, creating a product exclusively for a limited and fickle user demographic is considered financial suicide: imagine expending millions of pounds on developing a new car and then limiting its' sale only to people who have been driving for more than fifty years -that is a very quick way to go bankrupt in anyone's book. Surely the very best idea is to open up the sale of your product to all and sundry in order that you may make the most money possible?

In videogames terms, it's not always the best idea.

Console manufacturers will pay you, the developer, good money to limit your game only to their console. Why on Earth would you take up that kind of offer when you could be making money across all platforms? Well, that's just the problem you COULD make the money across all platforms, or the game you made could bomb completely and you'll have to lay off half of the staff.

On the other hand, if a manufacturer offers you a big cash lump sum to keep your game exclusive to their console, then it makes a whole lot of sense to take them up on the offer �especially if the money is enough to cover most of the development costs. In that way, any games you sell on the platform are going to pull you into the profit-making zone, and that will keep your investors very happy indeed.

On the part of the console manufacturer, the answer is obvious: exclusive games sell consoles. When The Wind Waker came out there was a huge spike in worldwide Gamecube sales, so much so that it outsold its rivals for a few weeks, the same happened on the release of Pokemon Coliseum. Other platform exclusives on rival consoles show similar jumps in sales.

That is what is most important in the business, consoles don't make much money, but once people have them, then you can start to make money from all the games that they'll want to buy for their new machine. That is assuming you have the library of games to back-up continued sales however, and there are always plenty of non-exclusive games out there that appeal to lots of different people, the developers of which will have paid you money to make the game available for your console. If you can get the consoles into peoples' homes, then you've won half the battle.

The other important aspect of console exclusives is getting people to jump ship and buy your console. If you as a manufacturer can secure a killer game is available exclusively for your console, then the average consumer is going to have to fork out for your machine� oh, and they might as well get an extra pad, a few more games and a memory card while they've got their wallet out as well. Exclusive games are like catnip to the consumer who is always eager to have everything on the market.

Nintendo has some of the best exclusive franchises out on the market, so why aren't they doing better than they are?

As I said earlier, Gamecube sales spike every now and then with the release of new and appealing games, but they really aren't able to keep up a sustained level of sales for more than a few weeks at best. This is mainly because Nintendo is not trying hard enough to open up enough to new consumers and not securing the exclusives that really get people excited.

Mario is a great character and there are some fantastic Mario-endorsed games out there. But Mario sells only to the Nintendo hardcore demographic. The game will sell well, maybe even enter into the top five all-formats in Europe, but at the end of the day, the mass-market consumer is nowhere near as excited about the next Mario game as they are about the next Gran Turismo or the latest in the GTA franchise. It's a shame, because there are so many fantastic games on Nintendo's little box of wonder that are criminally overlooked by gamers, however, that is as much Nintendo's fault as the fault of the consumers: if you don't broaden the appeal of a game so that you can pander to the vocal and dwindling minority, you are going to lose a lot of money.

Thankfully, Nintendo is very rich. The Game Boy has kept the company afloat through many years of hardship and will hopefully continue to do so for a long time to come, but I for one am hoping that Nintendo grabs some more mass-market exclusives for the next platform, in order that the appeal of their excellent stable of faithful franchises can be experienced by the masses once again.

Iun out.

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Next week: Matt returns with Pause, and gives a slightly different view of the DS' launch than others.