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What are the most legitimate reasons to fear/hate Microsoft & EA?
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GitarooMan
Member
cybamerc said:
Maybe, but we wouldn't see it until 2008
Ultima Online? The Sims? Spore?SaitoH said:
Electronic Arts produces plenty of innovative games. You can't see them because the successful ones get rehashed to death.
The only legitimate reason to hate/fear EA is its licensed football monopoly. Everything else amounts to "I hate them because they're big." (There's also how it treats its employees, but a lawsuit should clear that up.)
The other exclusive sports licenses don't matter. Gran Turismo and Winning Eleven, for example, are doing just fine without NASCAR and FIFA licenses respectively.
The acquired publishers EA shut down were going downhill on their own. (Does anyone hate Vivendi for shutting down Sierra?)
Lousy games? Please. As EA learned last year, brand recognition only sells games for a week. Bad word of mouth ends it. The good games continued to sell for months. As it should be.
And hating Microsoft for the Xbox is stupid. Microsoft did not and could not use its Windows monopoly as leverage to take over the console gaming industry. It had to compete on equal footing to get where it is now, and that's hardly a monopoly.
Nonsense. Certainly the release of a system is somewhat affected by the success of its predecessor (hence why M$ was in such a hurry to bring out Xbox 360) but there is nothing that suggest Sony was planning on abandoning the six year cycle it has stuck to thus far.GitarooMan said:Maybe, but we wouldn't see it until 2008
GitarooMan
Member
cybamerc said:
I guess the better question might be, why do think sony has a six year cycle in the first place? It's because they need to stay competitive. Are you saying that Sony would do everything the same way if they were the only console manufacturer?
Also see post above me
When I play or use products from MS or EA I do not feel like any kind of handcrafted care went into the game. It feels homoginized, watered down.... a game created by 3000 people instead of 20. Kind of like eating a McDonald's Hamburger or a steak at Denny's or watching a big budget action movie. It can do the trick .. but doesn't really feel satisfying.
It's kind of a generic answer .. because EA can still put out good product ( Burnout 3 and BF2 come to mind). ... but usually an EA product is Armies of Exigo and an MS product is Dungeon Seige.
Both companies have different ways of being bland. EA buys out innovation, then slowly wrings the property dry. MS usually backwords engineers a great idea then slowly builds it up to mediocrity through subsequent versions.
I hope that makes sense. There is definitely room for them in the marketplace .. and they have not completely killed all innovation yet.
It's kind of a generic answer .. because EA can still put out good product ( Burnout 3 and BF2 come to mind). ... but usually an EA product is Armies of Exigo and an MS product is Dungeon Seige.
Both companies have different ways of being bland. EA buys out innovation, then slowly wrings the property dry. MS usually backwords engineers a great idea then slowly builds it up to mediocrity through subsequent versions.
I hope that makes sense. There is definitely room for them in the marketplace .. and they have not completely killed all innovation yet.
It's hard to wade through a lot of the stuff on here and not call it junk, but many of the people posting here are pointing out a monopoly where none exists, as well as fundamentally misunderstanding the economics of the situation, as well as competition in general.
...And I'm going to stop here with that appropriately vague comment.
...And I'm going to stop here with that appropriately vague comment.
But it couldn't force people to adopt the Xbox thanks to Microsoft Windows like it did with Microsoft Office.cybamerc said:
Have you heard how much money Sony Computer Entertainment allegedly lost off of each PlayStation game console it sold for the first few years it was in production?
;;GitarooMan
Member
cybamerc said:
So are you saying Sony would do everything the same way if there was just Nintendo?
Hint: Not a chance.
People may hate Microsoft for many reasons (although logically they could apply many of these reasons to a corporate giant like Sony as well), but the fact that they are adding competition to the market is a good thing.
There's no ideal, even split in a true, competitive environment. True competition lets the competitors compete to the best of their abilities, whatever the consequences for their peers. What you're talking about (and what many seem to favor) is nothing more than arbitrarily constrained competition for the sake of a perverted sense of consumer "choice". Woohoo! I get to pick from three game systems, nevermind the fact that their respective software libraries don't specifically represent the set of games I'd most like to play, which I probably would pull together from the libraries of ALL the systems. Some choice.GitarooMan said:
GitarooMan said:
I don't really have any issues with Microsoft being in the business. I don't like their product as much as others, but they have a place in the industry. I think most people that fear/hate Microsoft fear/hate the prospect of Microsoft becoming #1, where they could possibly abuse their leader position like they have so many times in the past.
SKOPE:
> But it couldn't force people to adopt the Xbox thanks to Microsoft Windows like it did
> with Microsoft Office.
$5+ billion buys you a lot of stuff. It buys you a powerful piece of hardware in no time when your early design was too weak. It buys you developer support that lesser companies could never even hope to achieve. Hell, it buys you a couple of developers outright. And while M$ hasn't, according to public figures, spent more on marketing than Sony and Nintendo it has certainly spent more than most other companies could afford. And so on...
Also, let's not underestimate the value of brand recognition. M$ may not be a company loved by all but it is a company known by most. That gives it a huge advantage compared to most other newcomers.
> Have you heard how much money Sony Computer Entertainment allegedly lost off of
> each PlayStation game console it sold for the first few years it was in production?
Sony lost money in the beginning but after a few years the game business was profitable. M$ is still losing billions on Xbox today.
> But it couldn't force people to adopt the Xbox thanks to Microsoft Windows like it did
> with Microsoft Office.
$5+ billion buys you a lot of stuff. It buys you a powerful piece of hardware in no time when your early design was too weak. It buys you developer support that lesser companies could never even hope to achieve. Hell, it buys you a couple of developers outright. And while M$ hasn't, according to public figures, spent more on marketing than Sony and Nintendo it has certainly spent more than most other companies could afford. And so on...
Also, let's not underestimate the value of brand recognition. M$ may not be a company loved by all but it is a company known by most. That gives it a huge advantage compared to most other newcomers.
> Have you heard how much money Sony Computer Entertainment allegedly lost off of
> each PlayStation game console it sold for the first few years it was in production?
Sony lost money in the beginning but after a few years the game business was profitable. M$ is still losing billions on Xbox today.
GitarooMan
Member
kaching said:
I agree, the 1/3 remark was simplistc, but the overall point is still valid I think. With only one console, you would see longer console generations and higher prices. Competition forces companies to create higher quality product therby giving us a better "choice" of software/hardware.
I really don't think this is true. SCE, unlike Microsoft for example, is in a position in which they are the major revenue producers and technology drivers of Sony Group as a whole. SCE desires a cyclic movement and they will continue to push the technology as it's influence is throught the Group as a whole; For Sony, PlayStation is a core buisness... For Microsoft the XBox is an ancillary project that was formed in responce to Sony's ambitions.
Sony's funding of PlayStation2, PlayStation Portable & PlayStation3 weren't reactionary to the competition, Sony is much more their own competitor|driver when it comes to R&D funding levels and what influences there are on the level of investment.
The thing to fear isn't Sony slowing the cycle to 8 years (they need the cyclic upturn in revneues a new cycle brings), but that Microsoft will continually shorten the cycle in a bid to drive Sony and Nintendo out by their inability to continually fund such development... a fear I've heard that Sony had early in the last cycle (~2001).
PS2 launched a year and a half earlier than Xbox. And the point isn't that the $5 billion bought M$ success. The Xbox is a huge failure. The point is that few other companies could afford to spend $5 billion just to get a foot in the door.SKOPE said:
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
You can bet that if the Xbox 360 did not exist, the PS3 might be out in 2007, which IMO would not bother me one bit as games such as Black are showing me 
I think everyone here knows my opinion on the topic at hand, so no need to regurgitate what's been said.
I think everyone here knows my opinion on the topic at hand, so no need to regurgitate what's been said.
Nintendo was just the first successful company to establish licensing that people couldn't sneak out of. What are these "cruel employee treatment" things you are talking about? Seriously, what are they?Stinkles said:
My only true gripes against Sony and MS are that they 1) are megaconglomerates attempting to take over another market, and 2) they use unfair business practices to drive away competition (dumping hardware at a giant loss so as to chase away other companies). Is this bad for the gaming industry as a whole? I think it probably is, as they drive the market away from being run my game makers and more and more towards the boring, uninspired business world... much like Hollywood has become.
Are they "evil"? Well, no, not really (although MS has done really shady stuff in their other divisions)... but I don't think they are necessarily entirely positive influences on the gaming industry as a whole.
Microsoft did the same things to establish the Xbox Sony did with the PlayStation: produce a console more powerful than the competition, sell it at a huge loss, secure key exclusive games and developers/publishers, and spend big money on an initial marketing blitz.cybamerc said:
Sony was more successful at it than Microsoft.
GitarooMan said:
Let's look at a comparable open format market. DVD movies. How does this being an open format hurt consumers? You buy the player you want, it just has to meet minimum spec. ie. play dvd's. Then if you want an online unit that stores your mp3's and streams windows media from a pc, boom, you buy that model.
If you wish to respond, explain how the open nature of the DVD model has hurt customers.
>no first year commerce students please, this is not a good/bad art discussion<
cybamerc said:
In one console cycle they've gone from being regarded as a nothing but a software application company to having the largest single videogame release day in history and becoming number 2 in the console wars.
I would definitetly say kudos are in order.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
I dislike EA mainly because they don't make games good enough to meet my high and unique standards.
I got no beef with Microsoft.
I got no beef with Microsoft.
SKOPE:
> Microsoft did the same things to establish the Xbox Sony did with the PlayStation:
The circumstances where very much different. Do you really think Sony would be in the same position as it is today had it not been for Sega's and Nintendo's screw-ups?
> Sony was more successful at it than Microsoft.
Yes it was. While Sony certainly had some good luck it also did much right on its own. One of those things was to make sure it could control manufacturing expenses. Make no mistake, Sony could not afford to lose the kind of money M$ has.
> Microsoft did the same things to establish the Xbox Sony did with the PlayStation:
The circumstances where very much different. Do you really think Sony would be in the same position as it is today had it not been for Sega's and Nintendo's screw-ups?
> Sony was more successful at it than Microsoft.
Yes it was. While Sony certainly had some good luck it also did much right on its own. One of those things was to make sure it could control manufacturing expenses. Make no mistake, Sony could not afford to lose the kind of money M$ has.
GitarooMan
Member
snatches said:
I was actually responding to a different point. Your first statement seemed to imply that only Sony or Microsoft would manufacture a game-playing unit, which is entirely different scenario than DVDs (where many companies manufacture players).
As far as an open format, where anyone could create a player, it's an interesting proposition. I haven't thought about it enough to comment really, but it's seems one issue would be that these consoles are manufactured often at a loss (because of the technology). An open format system might create a less-technologically advanced console that is more profitable (since profit can't be made up through things like licensing).
GitarooMan said:
This is a good point. However, the price of entry on a "next gen" unit would start proportionately higher (although there would only be "1" platform to buy) but the decrease in price would be accelerated due to competition and many players being on the market.
See: DVD player trends since 1998.
I could stomach a $599 console at launch if I only needed one console.
jetjevons said:
by microsoft expectations ( at least the ones they declared) yes..a huge failure,by the market expectations,a success being the second one and getting franchises like halo
by the way.as much i like the xbox i dont want to see ms as market leader,if you thing sony is greedy or fuck their users wait until ms dominates a market
I think anyone who invalidates Microsoft's gains in the videogame industry by using "M$", then states things like:
"The Xbox is a huge failure"
"M$ is still losing billions on Xbox"
"I think you can be pretty certain that PS3 would be quite similar even without M$ in the market,"
is the definition of bias/prejudice, and has no credibility.
As far as EA/MS hatred, I agree that EA has had the worse effect on the industry overall due to how they treat their people. I also think the model under which EA has operated over the years has its roots with what Nintendo did in the past.
"The Xbox is a huge failure"
"M$ is still losing billions on Xbox"
"I think you can be pretty certain that PS3 would be quite similar even without M$ in the market,"
is the definition of bias/prejudice, and has no credibility.
As far as EA/MS hatred, I agree that EA has had the worse effect on the industry overall due to how they treat their people. I also think the model under which EA has operated over the years has its roots with what Nintendo did in the past.
fortified_concept
Banned
AniHawk said:
More or less my feelings on the subject. The only difference was that I was never really really convinced by them due to their PC history. Ultimately MS has proven that they're the worst of the worst when they become market leaders, so to me they're always a threat. Nintendo is a bad market leader too but they're essensial for the industry because they always innovate. IMO Sony as a market leader and Nintendo having just the right part of the marketshare so that it can be considered serious competition is the ideal scenario for me.
Well, as for EA anything I write wouldn't be enough to describe how much I despise them and what they did to the industry.
TheInkyVoid
Member
jetjevons said:
Oh god!
MS is going to end up last this generation and having blown five billion to secure that place.
MS is nothing but a retarded sideshow to the main console market. About the only good thing they accomplished over the past five years is generously blew five billion on a hiedeous brute force bit of hardware so that all the "Sony killed my Dreamcast with teh Hype" and "I want to play peecee games on my big screen tv and talk about it on the net" crowd had something to do while the rest of us were busy playing real console games.
gg MS
TheInkyVoid said:
OMG get your head out of your a....
oh, sorry Junior.
You just need to be taught. Here are some real console games:
Ninja Gaiden
Halo
Halo 2
PGR
Rallisport Challenge
KOTOR
KOTOR II
Jade Empire
If I only had my PS2, sonny, I would be missing a lot of gamer love. Although I do love my PS. (back fanboys! back!!!!1!!)
GitarooMan
Member
TheInkyVoid said:
I've been playing "real console games" on all three systems for years. I think it's funny when people think that you have to choose 1-2 consoles, pledge allegiance, and then rail on everything else. Consoles are not defined by what company put them out, they're defined by the games on them. /end rant