Phil Spencer: Xbox Series didn’t need a system seller at launch

[DonFerrari]

JWeinCom said:

DonFerrari said:

JWeinCom said:

Backseat modding is also moderation worthy.

If you're wondering why I responded to this and none of the salty remarks, the answer is simple. Someone reported this post. Nobody reported the salty comment. (Unless another mod hid it, but we try not to do that before bringing it up in modchat).

Mods aren't omnipresent dude. We try our best to keep an eye on things, but we don't read every word of every post. So, if you think something is an issue, you got to meet us halfway and flag it. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you expect.

Anyways, don't call anyone salty, and don't suggest someone should be modded. This seems to be a case of one relatively minor violation apiece, so we can call it even and move on. Anything further on this should be via PM.

I know that I got mods message for "spamming report", basically the message said that if you reported one post in the thread you shouldn't report others because the moderation team would review THE WHOLE thread. So yep responding to him but not to the "salty" remarks seems in contradiction with the message I received from mod.

But I addressed both of them in the post... didn't I?

The thing in this case was that the poster seemed to be complaining that someone was getting away with something... and the reason they had been getting away with it was because nobody had reported it and no mod had been checking in on this topic. But, once that post was reported, I did indeed go back and look at other posts, and addressed both issues.

Dunno what the other mod said... but this is a 15 page thread, so obviously I'm not going to read every single post that was made. But, I will go back as far as I feel is needed to understand the context of the conversation. Generally, that means I'll go back to the beginning of an interaction between two users, but possibly further than that. 

So, if multiple reports are made on things happening within one interaction, or within a couple of pages, that's probably unnecessary. If something is reported on page one, and then ten pages later in an entirely separate conversation, something else is reported, then that's probably fine. Just my opinion of course, I didn't consult with the mod team on this one. Maybe the other mods literally do read every post XD

Seriously though, last warning, anything further about moderation in a PM. 

DonFerrari said:

I happened to study the subject a bit cause I was writing a brief article about the Epic/Apple Lawsuit. A big point of contention was whether the App Store is actually a market for anti-trust purposes. So I had to look into that issue a bit to write it. Pretty sure that XBox+Playstation can't be considered a market in itself.

As for derailing, it's fine. It's not like you have to be laser focused on exactly what the title says. Side conversations happen. Just has to still be reasonably tied to the topic at hand. 

The very big difference as you rightly pointed is that there is a difference between what "market" considers a market, versus what a court would consider for anti-trust law. And even better put was that even though several of those products don't directly compete they are considered at least substitute products so for total market size they are considered (then sure we can slice and classify sub-markets or niches, even if the niche is 250M users).

Frustratingly, there really is no clear definition for what a market is. For a counter point, American Express was I believe ruled to have monopoly power over their "market" which was really just American express cards.

The difference in that case was though that it was restaurants suing American Express. If the restaurants stopped taking American Express cards, they would lose out on a huge amount of potential business. So, American Express was able to basically dictate terms, and the restaurants had no choice but to take it. Even though alternatives to American express existed, restaurants couldn't just say "well we're going to go with Visa now". Theoretically, the same claim could have been raised against Visa, so both could have had a monopoly on the market, or more accurately had monopoly power.

But, if it had been a consumer suing American Express for an anti-trust violation, they probably would have ruled that there was no monopoly, because the customer does have the option to just cancel their card and sign up with another company. American Express had monopoly power against vendors, but not against individual consumers.

Point being, it's complicated. I'm not an expert, but I think the best way to think of it is, does the company get to do what the fuck they want? If so, it's a monopoly in that context. If not, it's not.

Currently, I don't think either Microsoft or Sony could be said to have monopoly power. Neither one could do something crazy like jack up the price or force devs they don't own to only make games for them. Microsoft buying Bethesda wouldn't get them to monopoly power... But suppose Microsoft bough Activision, EA, Epic Games, and Nintendo tomorrow. Now you're getting close.

Yes you did address both, but I thought it was worth pointing that some post not being reported doesn't mean it won't be looked by moderation if the thread itself had a post reported. And I'm certainly glad you gave more info on it so everyone can better understand it, thanks. Will follow your warning and stop here.

Yep. They are different things, a monopoly, monopoly practices, monopoly power and even though they can all be existing together they don't need to. As you said MS is far from having monopoly in gaming (or Sony, and for Nintendo we would need to pretend portable is a defined market that Nintendo have 100% domination, but then that would be because of lack of competitors and unless Nintendo pushed devs around or abused customers there wouldn't be a lawsuit to be made), but they are big enough company that they could employ monopoly practices through their financial power even though they don't have monopoly power in this market (but could leverage monopoly power from a different market, but I haven't seem a case yet of it happening) still buying a publisher isn't a monopoly practice but a regular market consolidation (that sure long term could create a monopoly or oligopoly).