| obieslut said: weather microsoft is doing well or not competition is healthy for the market and its only the consumers who truly win in the end, just think what things would be like say if it was just Sony doing consoles or nintendo or just microsoft, we would be paying for them out our ears with probably crap games. |
This is ONLY true in a free market econonmy. In a free market companies make rational decisions to enter a market based on market demand and profitability potential. MS has disrupted this, and your argument that 'if it wasn't for MS we would have worse' is false. MS loves this argument ("if it wasn't for us there would be hundreds of incompatible desktops systems! We did you all huge favor! You OWE us $199 for Vista!"
We don't know what would have happened w/o MSFT in the games business. We DO know that the market would have decided whether the PS3 was worth that much more than Wii on it's own? How about sony pressured to compete with the Wii, not content to sit back and compete only against the X360? How about $299 PS3 at launch? How about Sega, who don't have a bottomless cash pit, never had to leave?
MS relies on you believing they are 'helping competion', when in fact they are artificially damaging it by throwing the whole game system eco-system off balance. That HURTS consumers and keeps prices UP. and quality DOWN.
There are, literally, hundreds and hundres of examples of a cash rich player (usually the government, a rail road, microsft, etc) screwing stable up markets that other wise were working perfectly. Research how the US government 'bio fuel' policy has driven up food prices worldwide. Someone with tons of money (US governemnt) wanders into the grain market and starts throwing billions around. Price of rice doubles. Price of wheat triples. Price of rice doubles again. price of corn goes up 10x! How are consumers benefiting from this new 'competion' ? they aren't because it's not a rational market anymore.
We can be pretty sure that we would have cheaper HD systems, and better quality HD games if MS had not entered this market!
Trying to convince me the Wii is a real adult game machine 'if you play it right' is like trying to convince me Tofu tastes great 'if you just cook it right'
