LogFAQs > #974812208

ConfusedTorchic posted...

uh huh. so making a game more available is ultra harmful to...one specific company that benefitted greatly from said game not being more available.

But Sony isn't benefitting from the game not being more available. They're benefitting from having it in addition to other things that all add up to put them ahead of competitors. They would suffer if it were taken away from them.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

yeah, except no. it has not once ever worked this way in real life. exclusivity will always breed competition. as evidenced by, y'know, it being the thing everyone does to be competitive.

Everyone doing it doesn't mean it's beneficial. *Making* exclusives is beneficial competition: Companies try to make products that are better than their competitors', meaning consumers have more choice of a higher quality. Taking products that were not going to be exclusive and making them exclusive, however, is harmful competition: It makes competitors' platforms worse and means consumers that had been planning to buy it on those other platforms are unable to access it without also buying another platform.

It does breed competition, sure, but it's a thoroughly lazy way to do it that yields no direct benefits to the market, only harm that must then be offset by other companies' efforts to compensate for what was lost. That's not something to be lauded. Quite the opposite, in fact. This goes back to my initial question: How does having fewer independent companies result in more competition?

ConfusedTorchic posted...

it being worthwhile is also irrelevant, as evidenced by the fact that it's happening. so clearly, and this is a hard concept to understand i'm sure, it is worthwhile to do if it's being done.

It being worthwhile is entirely relevant because whatever worth they're finding in it is based not on how much money it will make directly, but on the broader effects the release will have on their market position. That means when those ten years are up, if keeping CoD on Nintendo systems is no longer necessary to erode Sony's market share, it's going to stop being on Nintendo systems. Which is why I say not to get too attached to the idea. The six people that bought a Switch hoping that it might get CoD are going to be able to enjoy it for the next few years, but after that it's anyone's guess.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

not only did i not say this, i didn't even imply it. i argued that microsoft was the lesser of two evils. try more.

You overtly argued that MS was going ton fix the things that make ABK a horrible (but highly profitable) company. Now you're saying you didn't say that MS was going to fix the things that make ABL a horrible (but highly profitable) company?

ConfusedTorchic posted...

please point out where i said it was pro-consumer to make something less available.

By insisting that making Sony unable to rely on CoD was a good thing for the market. Whatever "other platforms" get CoD (noting that your "other platforms" diagram just includes Nintendo's and a bunch of minor PC services nobody cares about), removing it from Sony's would be a massive reduction in the number of people who want to play CoD and currently can (particularly where so many people have already made their console buying decisions based on that). However many "other platforms" get the game, when such a large platform with so many people loses it, that's making it less available.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

head of playstation jim ryan says you are wrong.

It's not that CoD is the only thing PS has going for it, it's that losing CoD while a competitor keeps it would be devastating. If CoD disappeared from the world tonight, there'd still be reasons to own a PS. The problem is CoD disappearing from PS while Xbox still has it, since (as I said) "I want to play CoD with my friends" is a massive deciding factor for console purchases. On the flip side, if Sony were to take CoD for themselves and remove it from Xbox, Xbox would pretty much cease to exist. One can also expect the head of Playstation to deliberately exaggerate the significance of CoD in trying to prevent such a merger, given that he's talking to an audience that still thinks Pong is cutting-edge and wants to stop the merger (were the situation reversed, the head of Xbox would say similar things).

Of course, the fact that CoD has such a stranglehold on the industry is itself really stupid and monopolistic, but that's the gaming industry for you.