-Dragmire- said:
TheNarrator said:
While I can see your point, would you extend that opinion to games made by devs the console owner owns? I just can't get my head around making games for the competition. When it's third party stuff, I completely agree though.
It's a tough question, I've already been thinking about it and I don't really have a solid answer.
I think the the reason this question is so tough is that software products aren't really products in the traditional sense: you don't
really own them the way you own, say, the plumbing in your house. If you buy a house, and you want to modify the plumbing, you can, because it's your property. Even if you don't know the first thing about it, no one has the right to stop you. This isn't the case with software: you only get a binary executable. Because you don't get the source code, modifying the program becomes virtually impossible. Furthermore, the license agreement often explicitly forbids reverse-engineering or modifying the program, so even if you would be intelligent, patient, and insane enough to modify the binary, you wouldn't be allowed to.
I think it's perfectly logical that a first party developer does not spend time and money on helping the competition by porting it to other consoles or PC, but because you don't really own the product, you also can't do it yourself, or have it done by a third party. In a better world you would actually have access to the source code, and you would get the right to modify it, and you would be able to share your modifications with anyone who bought a license to the software (if necessary only via the developer of the original software, for security reasons). And then none of this would be a problem, because you wouldn't be utterly dependent on the original developer for ports. Of course, it's not going to happen because software developers want you to be utterly dependent on them; in the case of games, most of them wouldn't want people to basically create and share content for free that they could have charged you for.
I have to admit that I'm not sure about how to go about this in the current system. I'm leaning towards saying that first party exclusives are also wrong. It's a bit like a printer manufacturer building his printers so that only cartridges of his own company fit into them, but the other way around: in case of software, it's the "cartridge" that's designed not to fit in other "printers" (consoles). I always found that one corporation manufacturing both the printers and the ink isn't a good situation, it would be better for the consumer if the manufacturer of the printers had nothing to do with ink production, and let free competition of third parties provide the ink.
So I guess that's my answer: ideally, console manufacturers wouldn't be involved in video game development; they should provide a platform where free competition takes care of game production. I am aware though that no one can reasonably expect this of a corporation. In fact, even though I may have sounded a bit judgemental in my previous post, I don't even blame Sony or Microsoft for commissioning third party exclusives: if they want to stand a chance in the console market they
have to do that to be competitive. In the end, their behaviour is just a symptom of a much larger disease, and that disease is that our laws against anticompetitive behaviour are pathetically weak and people don't care about business ethics, even if they themselves get burned in the long run.
I try to do my part by refusing to sway for exclusives: I pick a gaming platform based on its technical specifications and its potential for internal competition between distribution channels, game developers etc (so basically only PC is a reasonable option for me, in fact my computer runs Linux only now). Also, I complain on the internet. Which I'm sure will change the world for better forever