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[felipeko]

If MS makes 10 billion over the next 15 years in their gaming division, what does it matter in the end?

They probably would've made much more by investing it.

 

[sloppyjoe_gamer]

Anyone else first think the thread title was "A truly pathetic article written in 2005 about the Wii and the videogame market?"

 

[Flachmatuch]

If MS makes 10 billion over the next 15 years in their gaming division, what does it matter in the end?

It matters because it's extremely anti-competitive - only a large company like MS could have done this. It's basically buying up a part of the market and this leads to a monopolistic structure eventually. Thing is, nothing lasts forever. Every company will become generic crap after a while, no matter how awesome they are initially. Probably even Nintendo and Blizzard (hey it happened to GE and Disney :-/

Spoiler

yeah, I know I have a rather simplified romantic view on how capitalism should work

). Thing is, if markets become monopoly markets, dominated by, say, only MS and Nintendo, it'll be a lot more difficult for new Nintendos and Blizzards to emerge.

That's a rather cynical viewpoint. I'd like to think, as a consumer, that the industry exists soley to produce and distribute consumable content.

I think it's more of an idealistic viewpoint actually Markets should work as a kind of "democratic" way to decide what kinds of products people want and how limited resources can be spent so that the largest number of people get the largest amount of value (say, enjoyment). I mean, isn't that what markets are for?

I think if you allow companies to bend the rules and compete with each other based on what basically amounts to attrition and not on efficiency and knowledge of the market, they don't work very well though.

If the recording industry collapsed, people would still make and consume music, just less conveniently so. If all of the major publishers collapsed, Nintendo, Valve, Bungie, Blizzard, Epic, Bethesda, and many others would still survive putting their games on watches if they had to.

Hehe the companies you listed are actually mostly ones that work based on market needs and understand their particular segment. It's just that I think the fact that awesome companies like Blizzard or Bioware are not independent is a pretty big problem and not a sign of market health. For example, in the long run, companies like EA and Activision will be able to drag the good ones down with them, and of course in the meantime, their profits support shitty, badly chosen products instead of good ones.

As long as games are being made that people want to play, the industry is healthy IMO.

That's a bit vague - and the market ideology is actually the only way that makes it acceptably concrete and democratic imo (especially for luxury products like videogames). Simply put, the people who want to play the games should be willing to spend enough money to finance making the games they want, which is not really the case with the "core" stuff afaics, as the games we like to play (I also love a lot of traditional genres actually) are actually partly financed by MS profits from other sources and Sony's past profits. I don't believe that's healthy.

Again, completely cycnical. Didn't GAF just have a thread about how cash-ins were bad?

Well this is not about cash-ins at all, I think Nintendo, Blizzard (and btw exactly the companies you listed) prove that the markets can select high quality original stuff pretty well Their success proves that the market works well imo - but they're all quite specialised developers who rely on their deep knowledge of a particular class of product or other expertise for their success. In short, they're successful because of their knowledge, not because they had enough money to invest in marketing, copying other genres and so on (even if they're often not the originators of a particular genre).

I'm also not saying that a company shouldn't be fun to work for. That works quite well for a lot of very successful companies (although not all), but this is a different question (and I actually believe it may be more important for people who work at a company to feel good about their work than to achieve maximum efficiency...but really, it's a completely different issue).

My issue is that an obviously unrepresentative group of people proclaim themselves leaders, look down on stuff they don't really like or get (like the Wii or the Wii... range of games) and think that their taste is superior and thus everyone should follow them - even though a) there are lots of counterarguments about the actual quality of what their market is doing, and, more importantly, b) they aren't supported by the money results. Thing is, literary or whatever elitists who look down on Dan Brown or James Cameron at least have actual products (and theory) to show for themselves, unlike gaming :-/

I simply refuse to accept that eg. Dead Space or Dante's Inferno or MW or even Bioshock are the types of products that should be made because they are superior and are more sophisticated or evolved or refined than, say Wii Sports. They should (or shouldn't) exist because there are enough people who want to play them who're willing to pay enough to support them being made. They're not superior because geeks prefer them to Wii Fit.

(I could imagine games that are being made for "artistic" purposes...but imo that'd probably be better supported by taxes and subsidies and so on, like with movies...I'm not really sure about this tbh, it's really more about cost/ease of production eventually.)

I also don't think that a selection system that selects only people (developers) who prefer one style of game to another is healthy. If the main, decisive issue for most developers is how good the technology they're working with, there's something wrong. I can't really believe this is the case tbh (the industry is in pretty deep trouble personnel-wise if this is true tbh), there must be people who'd prefer simple to complex, gameplay to technology, risky to safe etc (to avoid misunderstandings, I'm not saying that no game that has good technology has good gameplay or that there can be no risky high production value games etc, I'm just saying that there have to be people who care a lot less about one than the other, even though the general preferences in the industry are pretty clear).

Edit: Also, that Chittagong post is pretty awesome. I really dislike it when people say that "GAF" (as if it were an entity with its own opinions and views and not a group of people, each with their own) is as bad or worse than analysts and that it's "always wrong" and that kind of stuff. Yeah, you have some silliness, but there's a lot of insight and intelligence if you care to look for it. Hey, there are always a handful of good posts even in NPD threads

 

[Mariah Carey]

Miyamoto's quote: "When Link grabs a lever, I would like for the user to actually pull it rather than press a button"

Um, wow. He just gave away the secret to the controller. Did people not make a commotion about this?

 

[beelzebozo]

chittagong walks into a seedy biker bar circa 2005, and states bluntly:

"i need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle."