After decades of battling for hardware supremacy, the video game industry is shifting gears. The days when PlayStation and Xbox fought tooth and nail over exclusive titles are fading fast. Today, both are moving toward multi-platform releases, and a top industry analyst says this is exactly the future both need to embrace if they want to stay relevant.
Mat Piscatella, executive director at Circana, believes the so-called console wars are finally behind us. In a recent interview with The Game Business, he pointed to the recent success of games like Forza Horizon 5 arriving on PS5 and Stellar Blade breaking free from PlayStation exclusivity with a PC release. These moments, he says, are clear signs of where things are headed.
For Piscatella, the logic is simple. When a game that had seemingly vanished from the sales charts suddenly reappears, it’s usually because it found new life on another platform. That pattern keeps repeating, and it’s hard to ignore. In his words:
“Every month you’re seeing a game pop up that’s been gone for a while. And you’re like, how did that happen? Well, it came out on another platform.”
The way he sees it, players are no longer swayed by exclusives the way they once were. Instead, they are locked into ecosystems built around friends lists, digital libraries, and social features. This loyalty to platforms, and not brands, makes the old strategy of walling off content feel outdated.
“You’re not going to get people to transition consoles because of exclusives anymore. We’re way beyond that point,” Piscatella said. “People are so entrenched into their systems, that bringing the content to them is the only way to win.”
And companies seem to be listening. Sony recently posted a job opening aimed at expanding its presence on non-PlayStation platforms, including Xbox, Nintendo, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.
What about Nintendo?
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That shift might make sense for PlayStation and Xbox, but not so much for Nintendo. Piscatella sees the Japanese company as a different case entirely. While Microsoft and Sony scramble to stay competitive in a more open ecosystem, Nintendo plays by its own rules (and has for decades).
“Nintendo is a unicorn,” the Circana game boss explained. “No other company can replicate what it does, the brand loyalty it has built over decades, or the massive cultural footprint of its IP.”
Nintendo doesn’t need to worry about Fortnite, mobile gaming, or Roblox in the same way others do. It has its own model, its own rhythm, and so far, that has proven incredibly resilient. As Piscatella put it, other companies are busy trying to defend against outside threats. Nintendo simply doesn’t operate from that place of fear.