Former Sony Exec Believes Sony and Microsoft Will Join Forces

[LavaLampBamboo]

A lot of people are saying we need competition to breed innovation and keep the market fresh, but from a strictly game quality point of view, imagine the quality of games we could see if all of the Big Three joined together. I'd personally love to see the innovations they could come up with if they shared all their tech and experience.

 

[JDKJ]

The thing about capitalism is that it's designed around competition. The 360 dropped it's price to try to sell more and be more in line with the wii, which meant sony had to drop it's prices to compete, etc.

If there is just ONE console they'll be able to charge outlandish amounts and never need to drop the prices. It will absolutely have a subscription fee to go online because hey, what are YOU going to do about it?

At least I'll always have my PC <3

The thing about capitalism is it's designed around competition.


If there is just ONE console they'll be able to charge outlandish amounts and never need to drop the prices. Then a new business will come along that makes consoles that aren't quite as good, but a lot cheaper. Then they'll make a load of money off of the people who couldn't afford this super expensive hyper console and will start to use the money in R&D to make an awesome console, Sony/MS will react by lowering prices to be competitive and balance will be restored.

The thing about capitalism, you see, is it's designed around competition.

Not necessarily true. Your scenario assumes that the competitor to a monopolist won't encounter insurmountable barriers to market entry. Those who try to compete against a monopolist often do encounter barriers to entry. Moreover, a monopolist can leverage their market power and temporarily lower their product price below that of the would-be competitor, drive them from the market, and then raise their product price back to original levels once they're rid of them.

Competition alone doesn't guard against the monopolist. The monopolist doesn't compete fairly, they rig the market to their advantage. Standard Oil taught us that lesson a long time ago. If competition was such a good deterrent, there'd be no need for free markets to have antitrust laws.

 

[The_Emperor]

I doubt Sony would ally with Microsoft.

More likely Sony and Nintendo.

Either that or someone goes bust and does a Sega. I can well see that happening.

 

[JDKJ]

A lot of people are saying we need competition to breed innovation and keep the market fresh, but from a strictly game quality point of view, imagine the quality of games we could see if all of the Big Three joined together. I'd personally love to see the innovations they could come up with if they shared all their tech and experience.

But imagine the price that they'd gouge, too. Ouch! Not worth the innovation. Besides, once they corner the market, they'll have no need to be innovative. They can sell a piece-of-shit brick with stale technology hand over fist. If you don't like their piece-of-shit brick, too bad. There's no alternative.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

10 years says Apple will be in the market, maybe Google. Maybe Sony will eat up Microsoft's gaming division, but antitrust makes me think that monopolization is not really gonna happen.

 

[JDKJ]

Personally I think it would be a horrible thing if they partnered into one console, like a few have said Capatalisim leads to inovation. If there is no competition then they I think the gaming industy would stagnate.

As for the whole anti-trust aspect. A lot of my fellow Americans here forget that Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies, not American ones. If they decided to merge then there isn't a whole hell of a lot the U.S. government could do about it. Only if Microsoft would join in could they step in and stop it from happening.

What makes you think that the Japanese government won't take steps to prevent monopolization of a market? The Japaneses have antitrust laws, too. In fact, they pretty much adopted their antitrust laws wholesale from American antitrust law. Besides, both Sony and Nintendo have American divisions of their Japanese parent companies through which they conduct their business in America. Those division are incorporated and domiciled in America and therefore entirely subject to American antitrust laws.

 

[FloodOne]

There is already a universal platform Sony and MS can use. It's called the pc.

PCs really aren't designed FOR games, though. They just happen to be able to play them, and not particularity efficiently at that (considering all the background software that's always running). It's like saying Sony and Nintendo should drop their handhelds in favor of supporting smart phones.

.........Idk what to even say to this. Just no.
Please, don't take this as trolling, it's just that PC's have always been part of gaming, its just that before it was pretty even, games like the unreal and quake series were doing good against stuff on the PS2 and the ilk, it's been pretty equal, its just that currently the focus is shifted more for consoles. Inefficient? thats on of the PC's strong points, is that it can do multiple things at once because of the way more advanced hardware you can get, and if your comp cant do that, then you can easily close all background programs.

But then you run into the problem (on the developer side) of knowing that not everyone is going to have a universal standard to run their game. This is why the PC was notorious for the patch and play epidemic that still hasn't subsided.

As far as patch and play on consoles, that just stems from developer laziness or the publisher rushing a product out to meet a deadline.

OT- This probably won't happen, the word is is that Apple is interested in purchasing Sony. If that happens, there is no possible way that Sony and MS can team up.

 

[nipsen]

Reeves never saw the point with developing new tech, or selling it, or creating a better platform than the competition - and he was still the most ambitious of them all over there - so obviously it's going to be natural to suggest something like this. Maybe they should both start to sell milk-carton designs instead of games? That'd make everyone, including Reeves, very happy I think.

 

[Jake the Snake]

With the way Nintendo is carving itself into the casual game market and grossly overshadowing the revenue of Microsoft, and Sony combined, I think it IS only a matter of time before those two combine. Think about it, if Sony and Microsoft came together, not only would they now be encompassing ALL of the hardcore gaming market, but also would allow developers to spend less time worrying about choosing/porting a game for a specific system, and more time just making a good game. I think if Sony and Microsoft want to hope of continuing their success, they need to merge.

 

[Korey Von Doom]

I'd rather they not, microsoft is cruel to its customers and greedy, not to say Sony doesn't pull some shit, but not nearly as bad as M$

 

[Sephiwind]

Personally I think it would be a horrible thing if they partnered into one console, like a few have said Capatalisim leads to inovation. If there is no competition then they I think the gaming industy would stagnate.

As for the whole anti-trust aspect. A lot of my fellow Americans here forget that Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies, not American ones. If they decided to merge then there isn't a whole hell of a lot the U.S. government could do about it. Only if Microsoft would join in could they step in and stop it from happening.

What makes you think that the Japanese government won't take steps to prevent monopolization of a market? The Japaneses have antitrust laws, too. In fact, they pretty much adopted their antitrust laws wholesale from American antitrust law. Besides, both Sony and Nintendo have American divisions of their Japanese parent companies through which they conduct their business in America. Those division are incorporated and domiciled in America and therefore entirely subject to American antitrust laws.

Well honestly I didn't know if Japan had similur, if any, anti-Trust laws.

 

[The Almighty Narf]

There is already a universal platform Sony and MS can use. It's called the pc.

PCs really aren't designed FOR games, though. They just happen to be able to play them, and not particularity efficiently at that (considering all the background software that's always running). It's like saying Sony and Nintendo should drop their handhelds in favor of supporting smart phones.

.........Idk what to even say to this. Just no.
Please, don't take this as trolling, it's just that PC's have always been part of gaming, its just that before it was pretty even, games like the unreal and quake series were doing good against stuff on the PS2 and the ilk, it's been pretty equal, its just that currently the focus is shifted more for consoles. Inefficient? thats on of the PC's strong points, is that it can do multiple things at once because of the way more advanced hardware you can get, and if your comp cant do that, then you can easily close all background programs.

I mean, yea sure... PCs work perfectly fine for gaming, on the gamer end at least. I couldn't imagine playing SC2 on anything but a PC. That's not the issue. The issue is that they're just not dedicated gaming platforms which brings a lot of drawbacks. Certainly not the least of which is that developers only have access to a limited amount of a computer's resources. Another would be that developers have no idea what sorts of hardware or software to expect so that don't really know whats sort of resources they even have to work with. It's open nature also lends itself to rampant piracy. That last one alone is probably what turns off most developers from supporting the platform. A closed, dedicated gaming platform, not unlike current consoles, alleviates most of those problems and would be a hella lot more likely to get the big 3 on board with.

Seriously, with there being nothing stopping developers in the way of licensing or development tools from producing PC games whenever they wanted to... if the PC could realistically work as a universal game format, it already would be that.

 

[JDKJ]

Personally I think it would be a horrible thing if they partnered into one console, like a few have said Capatalisim leads to inovation. If there is no competition then they I think the gaming industy would stagnate.

As for the whole anti-trust aspect. A lot of my fellow Americans here forget that Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies, not American ones. If they decided to merge then there isn't a whole hell of a lot the U.S. government could do about it. Only if Microsoft would join in could they step in and stop it from happening.

What makes you think that the Japanese government won't take steps to prevent monopolization of a market? The Japaneses have antitrust laws, too. In fact, they pretty much adopted their antitrust laws wholesale from American antitrust law. Besides, both Sony and Nintendo have American divisions of their Japanese parent companies through which they conduct their business in America. Those division are incorporated and domiciled in America and therefore entirely subject to American antitrust laws.

Well honestly I didn't know if Japan had similur, if any, anti-Trust laws.

I didn't know that tonight's Bears-Dolphins game isn't gonna be available on regular television. And now I'm hella pissed.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I can possibly see Sony and MS join forces (considering that they're basically the same when you come down to it), but Nintendo is still rolling on the money-train to eternal wealth, so I doubt that they'll ever join forces with a far weaker enemy.

 

[iblis666]

it makes sense but it is doubtful that they would do it since there would be much fighting over size,shape, hardware, software, and many other things

 

[iamnotincompliance]

Pfft. I was saying they should do that two years ago. [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.69256-Playbox-Xstation#654760]On this very site, in fact,[/a] and I stand by what I said then.

Also, huzzah for relatively low post counts making old points easy to find.

 

[Vyce]

I could see that bit about another company making consoles. I mean, Sega went down as first-party, and then Microsoft came out of left field.

Google doing consoles? Heh. Google is suspicious enough trying to grab all it can. >..>

 

[BigbadaBEEF]

sure it would solve a lot of problems but the idea having mario as a playable character in god of war just made me throw up in my mouth a little