this is a bit of a stretch but im not gona say ms wouldnt do it. so right now we have ms and ea who obviously love each other. they have been sharing department heads and they keep old contacts. ok fine, so ea will be nice to ms. then we have ms heavily promoting the 360 version of madden everywhere. now ea is gona be nice and make the 360 version the best for every game (as they have stated). they also now have a 360 bias since ms is being a big help, one might even say a financial tie but its ok because madden will sell. today i saw an ad for the new pga, and guess which console was the only one they showed? you guessed it, 360. now ea sports, the biggest money make for ea, is directly tied to ms. and the old 360 head now leads which department? u guessed it, ea sports. and it gets worse. ea has in game ads in their online games, yea thats fine. i wonder who is the company setting up those ads, yea its massive who is owned by none other than ms. so now we have established ea with a direct tie to ms and really only ms, with everyone else its just casual. where does ubisoft come in? oh yea, through ea. ea as of now owns 15% of ubisoft and controls 25% of the board. its a minority so its ok right? wrong, ea can actually take over control of them and the president of ubisoft is actually thinking of it. now we have a pretty decent chance of unisoft and ea becoming one and ea having even more games under their control. the results would be terrible. on one hand you have nintendo who supports their console pretty much single handedly, except with the help of others. who are those others? maybe they might be ubisoft and ea. so now nintendo becomes even more inclusive. then u have their handheld, which actually gets good third party sales because it is so unique that third parties can make different games. so the handheld gets more support since its not gona work being on the console. sony on the other hand would benefit greatly from this. the next psp will get better support since sony will learn and it wont really be affected by lack of ea or ubisoft. the next ps would work better for sony because their first party games would get more coverage and the normal build up of developers would have them making more games. third parties would flock to sony because they cant get any room on the xbox or nintendo system. pc would get even less support since most of its games would be on the xbox and would be extremely hard to compete with the new ms, and the current trend of more games being multiplatform would continue. overall this would be bad since third parties would be forced to only pc (and it would have trouble there) and ps (fighting against sony fp, which is very strong) along with handhelds. the competition would kill companies and there could very well could be a reccession.

As larges companies merge it leave rooms for other to grow. When EA was "consolidating" in the 90's you had publishers like Ubisoft grow into a giant too.

There is also the development side, talent quits and starts new dev houses (From Rare to Free Radical for example).

You also have to take into account that one big game can make a company explode (Activision in the nineties with Tony Hawk, and then again in 00's with Guitar Hero).

Now it is even easier for smaller developers to "break-in". XBLA, PSN, DS, PSP, Wii and Wii Ware all offer ways for developers to make games with out the mega budgets. As this market expands, many of these will be bought up or begin developing bigger projects.

Don't worry. Free Market Rulez. (The z is a continuation from my other post.)

im a hardcore capitalist, but free market doesnt rule. almost free market does. heard of a little company called apple? think they are alive cause ms couldnt kill them? wrong, ms was forced to invest in them to not be split up by the govt. now we have an alternative os.

dont think that breaking in means u will be well known. u can only make so many casuals games at a time before they eat each other's profits. its not as easy as u make it out, cause guess what ea, ubisoft, ms, and sony all make casual and/or downloadable games (especially sony, which is where third parties would head to. yup even more trouble.).

It's not easy, but you can make a professional level game for .25-.5 million dollars or even less. I (read: we) lost more than that on my first business.

I agree that it is harder than I first made it seem. Whether it is a game, a restaurant, or any business that isn't tied to the real estate it's gonna be tough to get by, and it's always hard to get people to buy a product. The rewards however can be much more substantial than real estate.

I don't agree with your use of almost, because everyone's idea of almost is different. France is considered an almost free market, but it is way too closed for my taste (Different strokes for different folks. My idea of almost free market is "don't tell me how to run my business, unless I am hurting people or the commons"). I was using free market in a Smithian way, implying that under any legal system it can be assumed that there are always going to be some regulations.

in that case i completely agree, but u didnt really express your views on the results.

My take on the results in that situation? Mergers leave more room to grow for smaller companies.

Look at Bank of America for example. People were very worried that they would have too much capitalization of the market, but instead Wachovia has grown, foreign banks are coming in, and service banks like Bank Atlantic (mostly in Florida FL, some are open 24 hours) have adapted by offering new or extended services.

Another example is Wal-Mart. While people were concerned that Wal-Mart would ruin any chance at retail competition, Target had also grown by offering cleaner, better stores. Small retail stores still do well in more urban areas, and very well in large cities. Specialty department stores have begun to grow in response too; Bed Bath and Beyond, Best Buy, Stein Mart, Furniture Stores, etc. Malls are still a big draw also.

How does this relate to video games?

Let say EA and Ubisoft merge, heck throw in Sony and Take Two also. When this happens companies lose alot of their cash capital. It cost a lot of money to buy a major developer or publisher. They won't be able to take the same amount of risk because the investors (the ones who aren't scared away), banks, and board members are going to hold the leash pretty tight.

Activision is still becoming cash rich from Guitar Hero and can risk publishing more games from smaller developers. Majesco has seen tremendous success from DS and Wii games (relative to their size) and can invest in making more titles, higher budget titles, or even publishing for other developers. D3 is seeing growth and looks to make some money off of several of the middle budget Wii games, they are going to grow. Conspiracy is coming out with many value/low-budget games that will probably bring in some money. Sega has a wealth of intellectual capital that gamer are dying to give their money up for. Capcom going to continue to make a fortune off of RE games, Megaman, and some of their more risky ventures are bound to pay off (especially on Wii, 360, and DS). Nintendo and MS will invest more in development tools or intellectual leases (really a form of payoff, see: PS3 and UT3, Nintendo giving Sega Mario for S&M at the olympics) to get the smaller third parties to bring over there more risky ventures. Too.... tired... to... keep... typi...n...g.

Could be bad, I remember what EA did to Westwood... Shame. Allthough Ubi is bigger than WW was at the time, so it likely won't happen again.