Comments on: Don't buy Microsoft or EA (even if you like them)

By: Rob Kischuk

Rob Kischuk — Tue, 17 May 2005 12:29:58 +0000

I disagree. Typical business does not always involve cutting your competitors off at the knees, especially in growth industries. Based on their actions, I have little doubt that EA and MSFT would like little more than to overwhelmingly dominate the gaming industry (75% each). With this, each could wield unimaginable pricing power and let innovation languish as they use their market position to push people around.

Imagine a market for televisions where 1 company owns 75%+ of the market. That one company could begin to define standards that their competition isn’t allowed to use. Had one company owned the TV market and defended it with proprietary technology, we might not even have projection TV, much less Plasma, DLP, LCD. Where would such a company get the motive to build HDTV? Competition in the TV industry has increased innovation, kept costs down, and put multiple TVs in every household (broadly speaking). It has spawned dozens of collateral industries that might never have existed. The same is true in gaming.

Furthermore, I’m not calling for any intervention other than warning consumers to spend their dollars carefully. This isn’t about evil. It’s about what happens when a single player dominates an industry, and it’s about how gamers are in a position to keep the future of gaming healthy for consumers with the choices they make now. We gave Microsoft the sway over us that they now hold with Windows/Office. We are on the path to giving them and EA the same in gaming, and I’m pointing out that the short-term joy of that one good game may not be worth the long-term consequences.

By: Guy Mac

Guy Mac — Tue, 17 May 2005 12:16:34 +0000

This is more than a little naive. It is typical business. “Competing honestly” includes cutting off your competitors by strategic acquisitions and timing releases to counter theirs.

I’m no fan of big business or corpatization, but even I recognize that there is nothing wrong with these practices.

If you want to find evidence that MS and EA are evil, I’m sure it won’t take much to find it. But this is not it….

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 17 May 2005 08:29:09 +0000

Wah wah wah. Cry some more why don’t you.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 17 May 2005 01:30:33 +0000

While I agree with you partly, MS buying Rare has no specific reason as to why they only released one game. It’s quite possible the Rare team is working on MS based games now. So maybe Rare is gone, but the team is still around.

As for EA, they suck. Why the judicial courts have not been brought in to stop the monopoly I dont know. It blows my mind how suddenly nobody can make an NFL or college game other than EA. That’s ridiculous. I dont care for EA’s games anyway. Have you read the blogs on the wifes of EA developers? The turnover rate at EA is horrifying. Working game developers 80+ hour weeks for 1/2 the pay they could make doing 1/10th the work in other areas, is nuts!