Datel Gets Green Light for Microsoft Lawsuit
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
I wasn't aware that this was an issue that really needed lots of attention. Is there a large market for third-party memory cards and the 360?
They are going to lose.
Microsoft is a privately owned company?
So..they have every right to do whatever they want with their hardware and software.
If you own a Toyota, and try to put some Honda parts on it, and they don't work, you can't sue Toyota for it. (crude comparison, but it's the general idea. and i'm sure there is some terms of service somewhere in the manual)
Microsoft is a privately owned company?
So..they have every right to do whatever they want with their hardware and software.
If you own a Toyota, and try to put some Honda parts on it, and they don't work, you can't sue Toyota for it. (crude comparison, but it's the general idea. and i'm sure there is some terms of service somewhere in the manual)
OH BOI more lawsuit fun! Good for them getting it going however.
Answer me this though, doesnt Microsoft have a right to have a monopoly on its own product..?
Btw: Holy quadruple post danpascooch.
Answer me this though, doesnt Microsoft have a right to have a monopoly on its own product..?
Btw: Holy quadruple post danpascooch.
Perhaps you should double-check the definition of monopoly [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly]. Specifically, the very first line: "A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service." So basically, by making it so that only Microsoft's cards will work on the 360, they're ensuring that no one will buy any other brand of memory card. Basically, they're snuffing out the competition, not by offering a better product, but by making sure the competitor's product won't be compatible.FactualSquirrel said:
And mind you, this isn't the first time Microsoft's been guilty of this kinda thing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_antitrust_case]. You can just read the first paragraph for the gist of it. Basically, back when the internet was new and there was a huge struggle for who's browser was the most-used, Microsoft abused their position as the creator of Windows to give themselves an unfair advantage over the other browsers. Not only was Windows packaged with IE by default, but Windows was slow to download any other Browser, and the only other alternative was buying the other browsers separately. On top of that, there's talk of Windows having been specifically programmed to handle the other browsers poorly while running IE just fine.
Granted that "It's their product and they can do what they want with it", but that only goes so far. Monopoly laws are there to protect the consumer. If everything everywhere is Microsoft and no one else is allowed to try and enter into the market, then why should Microsoft bother to try and offer a good product at a fair price? Not like we're gonna buy from the competitor who doesn't exist, and it's not like we can just not buy anything ever.
Over what exactly? This law suit is about the 360, and Microsoft is far from having a monopoly in the console market, especially with the PS3 making something of a comeback these past months. This is more about preventing an attempt at creating a monopoly than about trying to break one that exists.Jaredin said:
I kind of see what you're saying, but if toyota aren't restricting the addition of those parts, and the failure is in the parts themselves not working to Toyota's spec then that's Honda's fault.Mcface said:
A clearer argument would be if Toyota created a car with standard car stereo connectors but could ONLY use a Toyota branded unit.
I wonder if this will come down to standards implementation. If MS are implementing a standard but modifying it (MS bastardising a standard? No way!) then there's a case there. If they're implementing their own proprietary (& patented) standard then Datel would have the lawsuit on their doorstep for patent infringement.
So, on the basis of that, and presuming the interface is a standard one, I hope Datel win.
Not at all. Last year Datel came out with memory cards for the 360 that were (I believe) 4GB and 8GB, and possibly a 16GB card too, while Microsoft and licensed products only went to like a gig or so. A few weeks later, MS put out a patch on the 360 that rendered these memory devices useless. So it was useless to buy them or use them, and I'm sure anyone who has/had one is/was pissed.PedroSteckecilo said:
I think the idea is that once you buy something it is yours.FactualSquirrel said:
I know someone is going to tear that point apart with about 90 laws that contradict it but I'm just saying the "basic idea".
Overall though I tend to find Microsoft Peripherals to be much better than third party. The only exception being their storage options which are a few thousand percent more expensive than anyone else (including themselves outside of the Xbox division).
I imagine there is some level of control companies do not have when they build electronics. One immediate one that comes to mind is that their stuff must accept interference. If it is their stuff and they can decide what can interact with it then that particular rule flies in the face of that belief.
Anywho it is late and I'm sure I've dug myself a deep enough grave in this thread
. Wikipedia lawyers are all over these days (more power to them, wiki is great).Considering the massive cost difference I could see there being a market. I know the harddrive strapped to the top of my 360 is sure as heck not made by Microsoft >_>.BehattedWanderer said:
Course...I don't really play the 360 anymore but doesn't change the fact.
Yay! Now give us third party harddrives too. Not that i'm likely to use either. Bad experiences with third party memory cards.
If they sue eachother & win the same amount of money, it will have been a pointless joke we'll laugh about for years.
I have mixed opinions about this, as "A Pious Cultist" points out the online nature of some games and competitive leaderboards makes me wary about the potential return of cheat cards, ultra-programmable controllers, and similar things.
Truthfully I feel that Microsoft is mostly concerned about losing their abillity to charge an arm and a leg for controllers, and to charge companies big bucks to produce "liscenced" products like deluxe fight sticks for specific fighting games and such. HOWEVER that doesn't mean that there aren't reasons why us gamers shouldn't actually support them on this.
Not to mention the fact that if you get new hardware, cheart cartridges, and similar things and they cause problems with your system, even disclaimers aren't going to prevent the huge amount of flak it will generate. I think not worrying about third party compadibility is a good thing to be honest.
As far as Monopoly type behavior, that has always been a touchy subject on things like this. Truthfully I am more concerned about game development and organized cartel type behavior than the accusation of a monopoly by hardware creators.
Truthfully I feel that Microsoft is mostly concerned about losing their abillity to charge an arm and a leg for controllers, and to charge companies big bucks to produce "liscenced" products like deluxe fight sticks for specific fighting games and such. HOWEVER that doesn't mean that there aren't reasons why us gamers shouldn't actually support them on this.
Not to mention the fact that if you get new hardware, cheart cartridges, and similar things and they cause problems with your system, even disclaimers aren't going to prevent the huge amount of flak it will generate. I think not worrying about third party compadibility is a good thing to be honest.
As far as Monopoly type behavior, that has always been a touchy subject on things like this. Truthfully I am more concerned about game development and organized cartel type behavior than the accusation of a monopoly by hardware creators.
But that's the thing, the way I see it, this isn't a market, this is an additional market for a much larger market, the console market, which Microsoft certainly doesn't have a monopoly over, rather than a market of it's own. I may be wrong in my definition or something, but from my point of view, they aren't doing anything wrong.WhiteTigerShiro said:
But again, not "everything" is Microsoft, an add on for one of it's own products, which it has rights to, is being owned by Microsoft, making me think that it's fair enough for them to own it.
No, but they hadn't had time to decide on their market and their intellectual property.danpascooch said:
They are not monopolizing an industry, they would be if the 360 was the only thing on sale, but it's not an industry of it's own.
i still don't get why it's that big of a deal....being a not so proud employee of a gamestop i have day to day experience that most people really don't WANT to buy 3rd party accessories or controllers (minus the old ps2 logitech controllers which were phenomenal) and those who DO buy 3rd party products end up bringing it back broken sooner or later, or complain that it somehow damaged their system(action replay i'm looking at you). sure usually 3rd party things are cheaper, but if they're unreliable and break often, you end up spending more money in the long run
the only products manufactured by Datel that i actually sell on a regular basis is their action replay's, and while they don't come back defective that often, the LAST thing the xbox live community needs is a cheating device being mass produced. their controllers don't sell very well for any console, and as a matter of fact the last controller by them i sold was a rapid fire controller for xbox 360 which is another thing you could loosely relate to cheating, or at least playing with the cards stacked, for the people who use it in online fps's.
with the memory cards though, barely anyone i know actually uses memory cards, and with the new update allowing you to use usb flash drives, nobody really needs to buy memory cards anymore. besides the fact that if you own a 360 without a memory unit (i.e. a hard drive), and are spending the 30-40 dollars microsoft charges for such a small bit of space on their memory cards, you might as well buy a 20gb hard drive for 50 dollars.
the only products manufactured by Datel that i actually sell on a regular basis is their action replay's, and while they don't come back defective that often, the LAST thing the xbox live community needs is a cheating device being mass produced. their controllers don't sell very well for any console, and as a matter of fact the last controller by them i sold was a rapid fire controller for xbox 360 which is another thing you could loosely relate to cheating, or at least playing with the cards stacked, for the people who use it in online fps's.
with the memory cards though, barely anyone i know actually uses memory cards, and with the new update allowing you to use usb flash drives, nobody really needs to buy memory cards anymore. besides the fact that if you own a 360 without a memory unit (i.e. a hard drive), and are spending the 30-40 dollars microsoft charges for such a small bit of space on their memory cards, you might as well buy a 20gb hard drive for 50 dollars.
Umm I've never been to court. How is my attitude immature? I guess a better word for this situation is stubborn. They both are being stubborn. It's dumb that microsoft doesn't allow third party devs but I don't see why Datel doesn't just forget about microsoft and make accessories for different consoles.danpascooch said: