When Death Stranding was first announced, the game was trumpeted as a PlayStation console exclusive. It still is. The game probably won't be playable on Microsoft's rival Xbox console anytime soon — but, in late August, the game did get released on the Microsoft-owned game subscription service PC Game Pass. Confused?
In the world of video games, exclusives have typically been a big deal. The term "exclusive" means that they are released on only one console. There are usually two types of exclusives: exclusives that will never appear on other consoles and timed exclusives, which are released on one console for a set period of time. After that, the game goes "multiplatform" and is released on other consoles.
"The emergence — or re-emergence, depending how old you are — of the PC as a mainstream platform has radically changed the outlook of console platform holders, who used to only worry about their own games for their own systems," says Luke Plunkett, senior writer at gaming news site Kotaku. (Full disclosure: I was previously a senior editor at Kotaku.) "Now, as both Microsoft and Sony have shown, you can release big console hits like Forza and God of War on PC and make some money all over again."