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javi741 on 05 February 2024
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Azzanation said:
javi741 said:

Saying competition never helped us in the video game industry is wild. Many consoles became far cheaper solely to get ahead of the curb in sales against their competitors, there are so many examples I could list. N64 was originally supposed to launch at 250$ but lowered the price to 200$ to keep up with the PS1 & Saturn in sales and price. Throughout the 6th generation literally the day after Sony announced price cuts on the PS2, Microsoft & Nintendo would price cut their systems to keep up. Sony also clearly wouldn't have priced the PS3 at 600$ if the 6th gen competition was closer, but they priced it that high because they thought they were so dominant that consumers would buy their consoles no matter what after dominating the 6th gen, the reason the PS4 was as affordable and developer friendly as it was was to make a better system that would make sure Xbox wouldn't take away their sales again.

Competition just overall gives us more options too, if the competition wasn't so stiff in the 6th generation Nintendo likely would've never gone the innovative direction with their consoles, consoles that have proven to be more appealing than standard Nintendo consoles as proven by the sales numbers of the DS,Wii,3DS, and Switch. We now benefit as a consumer having another option like the Switch to get a hybrid experience different from PS & Xbox.

Competiton also encourages companies to release the best games to sell the most hardware.

You are clouded by the notion of Competition is better. There is always a catch when companies play around with pricing. Companies find other ways to make you pay them back for their discounted prices. Nothing is for free. They literally all locked up Multiplayer behind a paywall, that was Competition that did that, not a monopoly. 

Competition does not equal better games, and to debunk your points on pricing, look at the industry today. We have price increases across the board, in a industry with Competition. Companies will price hike regardless. Because they know when one does it, they all follow to push the agenda

The industry is better when we move away from exclusive boxes and focus on open platforms. Exactly how PCs and the mobile marker work.

We have literally seen more bad things happen when it comes to competition than we have seen with gains.

You keep only mention the small negative stuff competition brought but completely ignore all the great thing competition has brought to the industry, competition brought far more positives than negatives.

If Nintendo didn't release the revolutionary NES controller with a D-Pad and A & B buttons, we'd still be playing games on a worse joystick type controller. Other competitors like Sega & Sony copied many of Nintendo's control schemes to keep up, improving the industry as a whole. The whole reason why Sonic exists is cause of Mario, and many games were influenced heavily off one another in positive ways. Many developers were inspired by games like Mario 64 & Zelda OOT for how well they handled 3D games and used concepts from those games to keep up and improve their games, only possible with extra competition and more options to be inspired by. Games like Doom, Goldeneye, Halo all contributed to an improvement towards FPS. The GC & Xbox controllers was inspired by the PS1 two handlebar design. Online gaming improved heavily because Sony looked directly at how well their competitor Microsoft was doing with Xbox Live and implemented many of their features on their system. It's just basic economics, more competition drives innovation and provides more and better options for the consumer cause everyone is trying to 1-up each other, it's not even a subjective matter whether or not more competition is better.