| thranx said: they do not have a monopoly, there is more then one publisher, they will compete, there is no monopoly. you can't just spout off monopoly when there isn't one. |
Yes, they do, if you treat specific games as the individual products that they are. Competition only prevents monopolies in a case in which two or more companies are selling an identical product.
As an example, consider Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company manufacturers cans and bottles of the drink, then sends it off to retailers, who in turn sell it to the end user. Because of that, the Coca-Cola Company doesn't have a monopoly on Coca-Cola; they dont control what happens to it after it leaves their hands. Once bottles or cans fo Coke arrive at the retailer, the retailer may sell them for a markup (which is what usually happens), sell them at cost, sell them at a lower price than what they paid, or even give them away. The end user may do the same thing once they buy Coke from the retailer. This means that, in essence, the Coca-Cola Company, retailers, and the end user are all "dealers," in a sense, of Coke.
Now imagine that the manufacturer - the Coca-Cola Company - is able to encode some sort of new, hypothetical technology in their cans and bottles of Coke that enables them to control what happens to the Coke after it leaves their plants. Say that they suddenly eliminate the middleman and sell their Coke at a fixed (high) price directly to the end user. They then use this technology to the effect that the Coke cannot be given away or resold. Because the company would be the only dealers of Coke in this scenario, it would be demonstrating unilateral price-fixing - in other words, a monopoly.
While it's true that there are other colas out there, none of them use the exact formula as Coke, and they can therefore not be considered a substitute. Regardless of their all being colas, Pepsi, RC, Jolt, etc. all taste different, just as no two shooters, RPGs, strategy games, whatever are the same.
That's why digital distribution would create a monopoly - perhaps not in the traditional sense, but in a different paradigm that demonstrates all of the drawbacks and flaws of one.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
