Competition is NOT a good thing

Hoobinator

I could ask you how is Lenin bad for Russia or for Communism??? You seem to think he was a tyrant, which he wasn't. My picture of Bush was a retort, designed to show the silliness in how you denigrate Lenin. I am not a supporter of Lenin but never the less, he helped the Russian and Soviet people and economies. Which is far more than Bush has ever done. I suppose Lenin's revolution and movement away from a feudal system in Russia is something we should hate on him. At the very least you could have picked Stalin if you wanted to hate on communism, but Lenin....???

As for your "socialist medicare", if you think that so be it,carry on with your 37th Ranked Health Care System. I'd rather take "European Socialist state run health care systems" anyday. ;)

37th out of 190 isnt bad at all :|

And out of that 37 only 14 are eurpean countries :roll:

You posted bush like he ruined Capitalism in america when he has really dont nothing to it. I posted lenin as a joke as you can see with the lil joke I put when I posted the picture youn know the line you purposley erased :roll:

I think some of the examples give by the original poster were really bad. For instance, he claimed that the DVD price fell despite being uncontested. What he didn't understand was that DVD was uncontested in terms of format, but it was contested in terms of manufacturing. There a difference between format contest and manufacturing contest.

eg.

Blu-ray/HD-DVD - 2 formats, 1 owned by Sony the other by Toshiba. So here we generally have a format contest while the proprietary rights are as of now uncontested.

DVD - 1 format, no sole proprieter. So we have no format contest, but the format is not particularly owned by any one company. So, the price drop is due to manufacturing contest and not a format contest. Because there are more than 20 companies that produce DVDs, jacking up the price is completely out of the question.

So, we can't say that DVD is a monopoly, because it isn't. The DVD technology now belongs to EVERYONE, and that is neither monopoly nor being uncontested. So it isn't a valid example. Generally, lack of competition is NEVER a good thing when the proprietary rights being to one company. The RROD may have either been caused by Microsoft's need to push it out fast...or maybe they just suck at electronics. It's a design problem after all. Design problems are often due to lack of talented engineers. And without competition, Microsoft wouldn't have extended the warranty to 3 years. so the OT failed to consider the perspective that maybe the RROD was inevitable even without competition, and Microsoft's response to the RROD was the one more dependant on competition.

Good job, I got mostly the same typical responses I thought I would. People saying "lolz of course competition is good" without even commenting on my points, and people calling me stupid or a communist. I'm talking about console competition, quite different from how world economies function. By the way, capitalism also tends to lead to large gaps between the rich and the poor, but of course everyone just followed the herd and said "capitalism rocks" and didn't consider any of its flaws.

Okay, I was a bit extreme in my title to get attention. What I'm trying to get across is that competition does have many good things about it, but it also hurts the consumer in many ways, but no one ever tries to acknowledge it. Also, I think the negatives argubly outweight the positives, IN TERMS OF the three-console race this gen. Not capitalism vs communism, the three-console race.

Also, I'm not saying a monopoly is a good thing. It's not. I'm saying, more competition is not always better. Would you want 10 different companies making consoles today? No you wouldn't.

For those few who actually tried to debate my arguments (thank you):

1. DVD is not a valid comparison because there were many manufacturers.

If you're going to use this argument, you must admit you can define a monopoly in relative terms. If you define the market as optical-disk formats, DVD had a monopoly. If you define it as brands of DVD players, there was competition. If there is one console, it would have a monopoly on consoles, but it does not have a monopoly on all gaming systems because of handhelds and PCs. It does not have a monopoly on entertainment. If you think this is BS just think about it: No one would pay for a $2000 console because we can always watch TV or watch a movie. The price is dictated by demand: if the price is too high there will be no demand. The free market will make sure the price is set appropriately. If the only console is a $600 PS3, it would still not sell and Sony would still have to lower prices.

2. The market would be at a standstill.

Do you honestly believe if there were only one console, we would still be using cartridges? Honestly? 50 years from now we still would? No, technology always moves forward. Look at MS. Windows has a Monopoly, but does MS just make one Windows and be done with it? No, it makes newer versions because technology is always moving forward. Companies need to keep making new products and new improvements to keep getting your money. Look at the iPod, it dominates its market, but it comes out with new models every year to keep making you buy them.

Anyway, try reading my points and think about them instead of going "my economics book says competition is good, so ur thread is epic fail." I'm not talking about the same thing.

Competition between software market/developpers/publishers will make an influence on the games quality.

But I guess you're talking about the hardware manufactory's... wich I don't care about. PC platform has been dominating like forever also, don't think it would make a difference.

well if there is no cometition it is a monopoly and i have an argument that is 100 times better than you because it is true.

Jacobistheman

You sound very immature but whatever. I would rather have one platform on which games compete with each other. There would actually be competition between games and not competition between hardware like it is now with the PS3, Wii and 360. Imagine the awesomeness that games would be if game developers were forced to all compete with each other for dominance on a single platform.

[QUOTE="BumFluff122"]Nintendo would have to go third party if they wanted to stay in busienss. Nintendo is a company, they want to make money. If there was never a Nintendo or a Gamecube or a Wii or an N64 it would most definately be third party. And Microsoft would be a third party developer as well. Again they would want to make money out of their products. To do that they would be a third party developer.the_h_bomb

Micrososft could refocus on PC's or indeed leave gaming altogether as they are quite a diverse company. Nintendo would be forced to downsize considerably if they did go third party. But they have said numerous tiems that they would rather drop out of the business than go third party

If you want to see what Sony would bve like without competition looks at the PS2. They had 2 competitiors targetting the same market and both competitors failed out of the gate. That meant they basically got to call the shots and could sit back and let third parties take over

Contrast that with the huge effort they are making with the PS3

[QUOTE="Hewkii"]

[QUOTE="TMontana1004"]I really wish their wasn't any competition. Then there would be no fanboyism and everyone would get to enjoy the same games and same console features.TMontana1004

just like 1984.

How much were the current consoles then and how much did it cost for them to be manufactured?

Lmao, he's talking about the book by George Orwell! :lol:

For those few who actually tried to debate my arguments (thank you):

1. DVD is not a valid comparison because there were many manufacturers.

If you're going to use this argument, you must admit you can define a monopoly in relative terms. If you define the market as optical-disk formats, DVD had a monopoly. If you define it as brands of DVD players, there was competition. If there is one console, it would have a monopoly on consoles, but it does not have a monopoly on all gaming systems because of handhelds and PCs. It does not have a monopoly on entertainment. If you think this is BS just think about it: No one would pay for a $2000 console because we can always watch TV or watch a movie. The price is dictated by demand: if the price is too high there will be no demand. The free market will make sure the price is set appropriately. If the only console is a $600 PS3, it would still not sell and Sony would still have to lower prices.

2. The market would be at a standstill.

Do you honestly believe if there were only one console, we would still be using cartridges? Honestly? 50 years from now we still would? No, technology always moves forward. Look at MS. Windows has a Monopoly, but does MS just make one Windows and be done with it? No, it makes newer versions because technology is always moving forward. Companies need to keep making new products and new improvements to keep getting your money. Look at the iPod, it dominates its market, but it comes out with new models every year to keep making you buy them.

Anyway, try reading my points and think about them instead of going "my economics book says competition is good, so ur thread is epic fail." I'm not talking about the same thing.

iamanehero

You make good points but those points are biased and you don't see the whole picture. That's what i felt when i read your post.

1. DVD. It became cheaper and cheaper even if there was no competition. That's true. But with competition it could have been cheaper much faster just because of competitive pricing.

2. Look at MS? That's a joke. Why don't they make one windows and be done with it? hmmmm...... I wonder...... money perhaps???? They release new versions of windows and force them to the consumers. And Vista is just a rip-off of the Mac OS. If Mac didn't make such a user-friendly interface in their OS to compete with Windows, who knows what Windows Vista would have been.

[QUOTE="Hoobinator"]

I could ask you how is Lenin bad for Russia or for Communism??? You seem to think he was a tyrant, which he wasn't. My picture of Bush was a retort, designed to show the silliness in how you denigrate Lenin. I am not a supporter of Lenin but never the less, he helped the Russian and Soviet people and economies. Which is far more than Bush has ever done. I suppose Lenin's revolution and movement away from a feudal system in Russia is something we should hate on him. At the very least you could have picked Stalin if you wanted to hate on communism, but Lenin....???

As for your "socialist medicare", if you think that so be it,carry on with your 37th Ranked Health Care System. I'd rather take "European Socialist state run health care systems" anyday. ;)

Gh0st_Of_0nyx

37th out of 190 isnt bad at all :|

And out of that 37 only 14 are eurpean countries :roll:

You posted bush like he ruined Capitalism in america when he has really dont nothing to it. I posted lenin as a joke as you can see with the lil joke I put when I posted the picture youn know the line you purposley erased :roll:

Is that so?

1. France

2. Italy

3. San Marino

4. Andorra

5. Malta

7. Spain

9. Austria

11. Norway

12. Portugal

13. Monaco

14. Greece

15. Iceland

16. Luxembourg

17. Netherlands

18. United Kingdom

19. Ireland

20. Switzerland

21. Belgium

23. Sweden

24. Cyprus

25. Germany

31. Finland

34. Dennmark

I counted 23. Bit off, weren't you? :|

I'm pretty much in a 100% agreement with the TC, I hate the idea that I've got to buy all 3 consoles and a PC just to get the most out of gaming. Knowing that each of these games I can buy can be done on all 3 consoles anyway which begs the question why are there 3 consoles in the first place? When they all do pretty the same thing? Play games. :|

Competition isnt bringing us anything new and it's not making developers strive to do better things, the milking is still there, the copying an unorigional ideas are still there. The games are plagued with FPS and shooter games, theres hardly any veriaty, the overpriced consoles are there, theres too many multiplats and less exclusives, theres hardly any difference between PS3 and XBOX360 other than the slight few features. Theres nothing. Once one system is going to start selling the most anyway developers are going to start focusing on that one console anyway. So whats the point of the other 2? Competition might be better in other industrys but it's not helping gaming very much. If not at all.

Competition is whats driving the gaming industry today. Without competition gaming would be at a standstill with overpriced products and half-a$$ed games that aren't worth playing. You want games like Hour of Victory flooding stores or do you want games like MGS4, COD4, Halo 3, FFXIII, Gears of War, God of War, Ninja Gaiden flooding store shelves. I'll take the good games over the crappy ones. sirk1264

All those games are sequels, they where bound to come anyway because they sell not because of the competition between the consoles. And trust me theres already games like Hour of Victory flooding the market, all these crappy developers trying to make HALO rip offs now COD4 rips off apparently all because of competition, there not thinking up there own ideas, there just thinking of ways to rip of the better games and add slight new gimmicks to them.

Nintendo in 1985 was a bastard - you want that to happen again?

And their hubris lead them to make stupid mistakes with the N64 hardware. Sony KILLED them with the PS1. Sony actually improved the game industry by offering mature content and titles.

So, competition IS a good thing, provided game makers learn something.

Demetri_OS

ironically, it was nintendo that helped sony make the playstation 1

i like competition

the introduction of M$ into the gaming market means that i get to play some games on consoles that would have otherwise just been on PC and prob to graphics-heavy for me to play without spending a small fortune on hardware

This is what I hate about System Wars: people don't think for themselves. "Oh, of course competition is good, it means lower prices!!"

In fact, I believe that having 3-man horse race is hurting us more than it is helping us. Here are why some common assumptions about competition are dead wrong:

1. Without competition, we would get charged $800 per console!

I hear this a lot in other Blu-ray vs HD-DVD forums too. "If blu-ray won, they would charge us whatever they wanted!" Wake up, DVD didn't have any competition for years and price just kept going down. Same thing with consoles. The market has a lot of control over pricing. If there were one console, priced at $800, no one would buy it! Look at the PS3. It was priced too high, and no one bought it. Did every PS2 owner get a 360 or Wii instead? Nope, most 360 owners were XBOX owners, and Wii sells mostly to non-gamers. A lot of PS2 owners are just buying PS2s, or waiting until PS3's price drops. If there is only one console, the price would come down over time like all consumer electronics.

Still not convinced? Think about it. Why is it that the most competitive gen, the consoles are priced the highest? Doesn't make sense right?

2. We have all these great games because of many consoles!

Sega isn't in the console race anymore and we still get Sonic games. Sure, they're not as good as before, but that's more due to the developers' fault. Did Dreamcast magically make a Sonic game better? Of course not. Would Bungie just not make Halo if the XBOX didn't exist? No, they probably would have still made it for the PS2.

3. There would be no quality control! No alternatives! Imagine 360 as the only console! What if I don't want RROD?

Think about it. The reason for RROD is BECAUSE of competition. MS wanted to beat Sony by getting out its console earlier, that's why they didn't work out RROD before releasing the 360. Most problems stem from competition. If Sony wasn't worried about MS, they could have (and probably would have) delayed the PS3 until production costs came down and priced it lower.

4. We would be stuffed with unnecessary things like blu-ray!

Again, this is because of competition. If Sony wasn't rushing out the PS3 to catch up to MS, they would have waited until blu-ray was more proven of a format, and costs came down more. Sony didn't want to sell the PS3 at $599. Don't believe me? PS2 came out about 3 years after DVD players appeared. DVD was already a proven format.

Think about it this way: if there was no competition with HD DVD, Sony wouldn't even need to push blu-ray so hard. They wouldn't even need to rush it out with the PS3.

Reasons why competition is harming us:

1. To play all the good games, you have to buy all the consoles. I'm sure no one likes spending about $1000 to play all the good games whereas with one console, you'd only have to pay $200-400 in a one-console world.

2. Bad ports. With one console the developers could optimize the game for that console, and everyone who owns the game could enjoy it to its maximum potential.

3. Multiplatform. Now in order to recoup costs, most games need to be multiplat. That means a lot more time and development. If they only need to develop for one console, there's less time in development so we get our games faster, and lower production costs which means lower prices for games.

Still don't believe me? Just take a look at last gen, when the PS2 DOMINATED everything. I think we can all agree that, aside from better technology, the PS2 is easily a better console than the Wii, 360, or PS3. It was cheaper, reliable (after 1st gen with DRE), and it had the best library of any console to date. Everything I've said is reflected in the PS2. Price was not inflated, we still get tons of AAA games with a lot of variety, all on one console. Sony fixed DRE and even came out with a better, slim model. We didn't have unnecessary built-ins, just a proven format in DVD. No bad ports, and games were cheaper.

Okay, so competition does bring us a few good things. For example, if there were only one console, online probably wouldn't be as good as it is now. Also, wiimote probably would not be as popular, although it could easily be an accessory, like eye-toy. I'm not saying competition is all bad or it's the devil. I'm just saying, grow a brain. Think for yourselves. Don't automatically go "competition good!" just because everyone else is saying it. 3-console gen is really not all it's cracked up to be.

iamanehero

my conclusion of your analysis is not that competition is hurting us but M$ is hurting us by rushing and wanting to be on the marketplace at all costs even if it means to lose money by doing it

All those games are sequels, they where bound to come anyway because they sell not because of the competition between the consoles. And trust me theres already games like Hour of Victory flooding the market, all these crappy developers trying to make HALO rip offs now COD4 rips off apparently all because of competition, there not thinking up there own ideas, there just thinking of ways to rip of the better games and add slight new gimmicks to them.

Dahaka-UK

that doesn't mean a lack of competition would make things better.

Actually I think you will find a lot of people will disagree with your last point, I do not think the PS2 was the best console last generation at all and I spent far more time on my GC and got more enjoyment out of those games. Due to my age and circumstances I found I had less time on my hands last gen so I wanted more quality than quantity.

[QUOTE="Hewkii"]

[QUOTE="TMontana1004"]I really wish their wasn't any competition. Then there would be no fanboyism and everyone would get to enjoy the same games and same console features.TMontana1004

just like 1984.

How much were the current consoles then and how much did it cost for them to be manufactured?

*sigh*

why don't you move to china you communist because that was what a world without competition would be.

The competition is what drives anything forward, from weapons (cold war) to toys if there was no competition the market would be at a standstill.

Jacobistheman

I sincerely hope you are joking

If you arent, you seriously need educated. I would'nt even know where to start.....

[QUOTE="MattUD1"][QUOTE="darkslider99"][QUOTE="jigglebilly1983"]You know who thinks that way too?................................COMMUNISTS!darkslider99

Exactly. If humans were less corrupt, it would be. It is easy to see why people though it was a utopian system at the time. But with hindsight, we know its flaws.

If all Soviet leaders had been more like Kruschev and Gorbachev and less like Stalin and Brezhnev, the Soviet Union may not have collapsed, and perhaps people would have had a more positive view of Socialism. Like the general view Che Guevara.

Sorry this is a bit off topic, but it is kinda relevent to the TC's argument. Not every Communist or Socialist nation is that restrictive - some still have a degree of free market policy.

Im not going to argue that monopoly or competition is better, because I have only ever lived and experienced a free market economy. Obviously I would assume that its better, because its what im used to. And, like Communism, the theory doesnt always work in pratice. Same can be said of either high competition and monopoly.

Exactly. If humans were less corrupt, it would be. It is easy to see why people though it was a utopian system at the time. But with hindsight, we know its flaws.

If all Soviet leaders had been more like Kruschev and Gorbachev and less like Stalin and Brezhnev, the Soviet Union may not have collapsed, and perhaps people would have had a more positive view of Socialism. Like the general view Che Guevara.

Sorry this is a bit off topic, but it is kinda relevent to the TC's argument. Not every Communist or Socialist nation is that restrictive - some still have a degree of free market policy.

Im not going to argue that monopoly or competition is better, because I have only ever lived and experienced a free market economy. Obviously I would assume that its better, because its what im used to. And, like Communism, the theory doesnt always work in pratice. Same can be said of either high competition and monopoly.

Quofan

Back to the topic at hand. The big flaw in the TC's argument is that DVD technology is open to anyone willing to pay the license fees. In fact, BD has the same advantage: you can buy into the BDA and learn how to make discs and players. Sony is not necessarily in control of the technology.

Whereas consoles, by their very nature, are only built and controlled by one company. It's part of the fallout from the 1983 videogame crash where open standards brought about lots of imitators resulting in shovelware and other shoddy products, bringing down the opinion in the public of the entire gaming industry. Now each company has such tight control of the product (through such means as ownership of chip designs, novel hardware designs, patents, trademarks, et al), it's overly difficult if not impossible for one console to play the games of another. That's why the big equalizer of competitive markets--being able to use the competition's goods (in this case, being able to play another console's games)--doesn't gain much traction. Sure, you can do it for older consoles (Nintendo's VC is an example), but you'll probably never see it among those of the same generation.

[QUOTE="Gh0st_Of_0nyx"][QUOTE="Hoobinator"]

I could ask you how is Lenin bad for Russia or for Communism??? You seem to think he was a tyrant, which he wasn't. My picture of Bush was a retort, designed to show the silliness in how you denigrate Lenin. I am not a supporter of Lenin but never the less, he helped the Russian and Soviet people and economies. Which is far more than Bush has ever done. I suppose Lenin's revolution and movement away from a feudal system in Russia is something we should hate on him. At the very least you could have picked Stalin if you wanted to hate on communism, but Lenin....???

As for your "socialist medicare", if you think that so be it,carry on with your 37th Ranked Health Care System. I'd rather take "European Socialist state run health care systems" anyday. ;)

Hexagon_777

37th out of 190 isnt bad at all :|

And out of that 37 only 14 are eurpean countries :roll:

You posted bush like he ruined Capitalism in america when he has really dont nothing to it. I posted lenin as a joke as you can see with the lil joke I put when I posted the picture youn know the line you purposley erased :roll:

Is that so?

1. France

2. Italy

3. San Marino

4. Andorra

5. Malta

7. Spain

9. Austria

11. Norway

12. Portugal

13. Monaco

14. Greece

15. Iceland

16. Luxembourg

17. Netherlands

18. United Kingdom

19. Ireland

20. Switzerland

21. Belgium

23. Sweden

24. Cyprus

25. Germany

31. Finland

34. Dennmark

I counted 23. Bit off, weren't you? :|

Wow, you really owned that guy. Good job.

[QUOTE="darkslider99"][QUOTE="MattUD1"][QUOTE="darkslider99"][QUOTE="jigglebilly1983"]You know who thinks that way too?................................COMMUNISTS!Quofan

Exactly. If humans were less corrupt, it would be. It is easy to see why people though it was a utopian system at the time. But with hindsight, we know its flaws.

If all Soviet leaders had been more like Kruschev and Gorbachev and less like Stalin and Brezhnev, the Soviet Union may not have collapsed, and perhaps people would have had a more positive view of Socialism. Like the general view Che Guevara.

Sorry this is a bit off topic, but it is kinda relevent to the TC's argument. Not every Communist or Socialist nation is that restrictive - some still have a degree of free market policy.

Im not going to argue that monopoly or competition is better, because I have only ever lived and experienced a free market economy. Obviously I would assume that its better, because its what im used to. And, like Communism, the theory doesnt always work in pratice. Same can be said of either high competition and monopoly.

It's not that humans are flawed. They just shouldn't be expected to work any harder than anyone else for the same exact reward.

As for competition in the gaming industry, it is ALWAYS a good thing to have more than one company in the video game market. How else will those companies have any incentive to make something better?

HOWEVER, too much competition in one industry is also bad. BELOW is a quote from a certain free encyclopedia site concerning the N.A. video game crash of 1983:

At the time of the US crash, there was a plethora of consoles on the market, including the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Bally Astrocade, the ColecoVision, the Coleco Gemini, the Emerson Arcadia 2001, the Fairchild Channel F System II, Magnavox Odyssey2, Mattel Intellivision (and its just-released update with several peripherals, Intellivision II), the Sears Tele-Games systems (which included 2600 and Intellivision clones), the Tandyvision, the VTech CreatiVision, and the Vectrex. Each one of these consoles had its own library of games, and many had large third-party libraries. Likewise, many of these same companies announced yet another generation of consoles for 1984, such as the Odyssey3, and Atari 7800.

OF COURSE, to say that history is repeating itself would be exaggerating.

While too many choices can be a bad thing, having ONLY ONE choice would be equally bad (which is also precisely the reason why Hillary Clinton and her universal health care plan CANNOT HAPPEN).

Without competition graphics would advance only slowly - why was the Xbox so far beyond the PS2 graphically? Because it had to be - if there was no competition, MS could have saved their money. If there was no competition the Wii wouldn't exist - why build a non-traditional console and take risks, when you can just release console 2.0 and know that (eventually) you will get people to move over?

Without competition, there would be nothing to stop a variety of unethical practices. For example, if the Playstation was the only console, Sony could simply stop selling the PS2 a year after the PS3 comes out, regardless of popularity, in order to force people over. "But they wouldn't do that because they'd lose money!" Only in the short run - monopoly lets you do things that are extremely manipulative in the short run, because in the long run you are always able to hit ideal "profit maximizing" price points (due again, to lack of competition).

What a lack of competition ultimately does is put a great deal more control into the hands of the business building the monopolizing console. Things wouldn't be cheaper - the reason consoles are expensive this generation is that we made the leap to HD, and that took huge hardware improvements. Really, the PS2 did mainly 480i games - 720 x 240 @ 60fps, now it is expected to do at least 1280 x 720 @ 60fps - that's a huge leap, and the prices reflect that.

You really cannot make a clear one way or the other statement on this subject, there are far too many what-ifs. Who is to say what company on top would charge what and do what? In any industry, competition drives the market, and while competition between developers and studios could increase the quality of games with one standard console, where would the hardware standards be set? It's true, today one console to rule them all is a lot more viable due to all the expierence the industry has had, but are we still ready? Maybe someday, but today I don't think so, especially with an increasingly polarizing set of consoles. In the future, however, I do see the race slimming down between two drastically different options instead of three that are compairable.

Point. That's why I call capitalism "Winner Economics". Let it run for long enough, and eventually there will be a winner with so much clout and reach it can't be approached--the dreaded de facto monopoly. Capitalism recognizes the instinctual need to win--"survival of the fittest" and all. While in communism, there's not a lot of incentive to try new things since everything's provided by the state. But I digress.

HuusAsking

WOW, TC just bought some very good arguments to the table and ingnorant gamers bash him??

As for TC, well you got your points. But there are also important points for competition. I for one would love to have only one console. My dream console, a full Cell processor maybe 2, 8800 Ultra like GPU, Wiimote, Blu-ray and all for £200 AND a free game!!!

I agree that people who think any and all competition is a good thing are sadly naive and ignorant of real world evidence. There are many examples of products that work best when there is only one deliver system (ie. some government programs). THere are examples of products that a market/audience will only support one product (hanhelds...up until recently). Further, there are many countless examples of how competition results in a race to the bottom of the barrel with quality getting worse and wose but people support it because it is cheaper and cheaper, but they don't realize the long term problems associated with short term savings (ie. walmart, big box stores, etc). Further there are things like the oil industry where, in theory, there is competition, but consumers still get screwed over on a regular basis.

Yes, in a perfect world, competition is good. However, we live in a world where nothing is ever perfect, and where competition doesn't have to result in what is best for the customer. the world does not always work according to text-book examples, or controlled lab-rat studies.

Meanwhile, many of the "problems" you list from gaming "competition" is caused by SECONDARY products taking over the industry instead of the primary product. by this I mean consoles are heavily in competition right now. The problem is you don't play consoles...you play GAMES. It should be the games that are in competition if we, as gamers, want to see the benefits of that competition (ie, quality, original and innovative titles). Instead, consoles are what is mainly competing which results in less and less competition in terms of games. So we see console prices going up and up, which results in developer fees going up and up. This results in less innovation in games and instead game companies focus on the lowest common denominator to hopefully make their money back. Because if they don't develop for the newest console and produce the best looking game, then that will be more damaging then selling a lot on PS2, or making an original Wii title.

I could also make the case that competition only applies to capitalism, and our society has long ago left capitalism behind in favour of corporatism...which is less interested in real competition and consumer cares and more interested in the bottom line. And the constant obsession with the bottom line will always ultimately result in the consumer getting screwed, either directly or indirectly. And thanks to the beauty of the Global economy, consumer demand in NA no longer has to have ANY bearing on how an NA company acts or sells their product. They can always just cut costs by outsourcing jobs, or find overseas opportunities. It's not like in the past where NA companies had to keep NA customers happy or else fail. Now they can go where the demand is, or just abuse labour and wait it out until demand comes back in their favour.

[QUOTE="sirk1264"]Competition is whats driving the gaming industry today. Without competition gaming would be at a standstill with overpriced products and half-a$$ed games that aren't worth playing. You want games like Hour of Victory flooding stores or do you want games like MGS4, COD4, Halo 3, FFXIII, Gears of War, God of War, Ninja Gaiden flooding store shelves. I'll take the good games over the crappy ones. Dahaka-UK

All those games are sequels, they where bound to come anyway because they sell not because of the competition between the consoles. And trust me theres already games like Hour of Victory flooding the market, all these crappy developers trying to make HALO rip offs now COD4 rips off apparently all because of competition, there not thinking up there own ideas, there just thinking of ways to rip of the better games and add slight new gimmicks to them.

I see what your saying. But we also can't forget about the new games like Bioshock, Mass Effect, Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, Crackdown, Gears of War (which is a new game), Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Lost Odyssey, Saints Row, etc. Those games are good. They may not be original but they are good. Originality is not always the way to go sometimes. You can make a solid game based off of other ideas and then tweak them yourself. Look at Resistance. It took off ideas from many games yet the game is still fun as hell to play. If there was only one console on the market i bet there will be more crappy games like Hour of Victory than there are good games. One console means all console gamers have that particular system and developers can half a$$ alot of them and people would buy it for something to play. More competition doesn't always mean great games i'll agree with you on that. But more competition definitely pushes developers to make great games in the first place.

That still dosent explain how he's bad for captalism because Im still able to buy the stuff I have always bought.

And socialist healthcare isnt for EVERYONE I want a choice in who I want to take care of me not some govt run agency iin which the heath care is mediocre at best. Plus it raises taxes and thats something I really dont need right now.

Gh0st_Of_0nyx

You are misinformed, you can still choose your doctor (like here in Canada), and it doesn't result in mediocre care (again, like here in Canada). You are correct about taxes, but then the trade off is that when my grandma had cancer, it didn't bleed the family dry.

Competition is Progression. I'm not even going to read your article because you can not arue that "competition is NOT good."xNJN

Ah...but you make the mistake that progression (ie moving forward) inevitably means something positive. That isn't always the case.

[QUOTE="Demetri_OS"]

Nintendo in 1985 was a bastard - you want that to happen again?

And their hubris lead them to make stupid mistakes with the N64 hardware. Sony KILLED them with the PS1. Sony actually improved the game industry by offering mature content and titles.

So, competition IS a good thing, provided game makers learn something.

iamanehero

I'm not saying a Monopoly is a good thing, but neither is too much competition. And if you'll remember, PS1 pretty much dominated the N64. It wasn't that competitive of a gen, the gaming industry was just moving in a new direction, which happened to be the direction of the PS1.

why don't you move to china you communist because that was what a world without compition would be.

The compition is what drives anything forward, from wepons (cold war) to toys if there was no compition the market would be at a standstill.

Jacobistheman

Why don't you stop lashing out at me and come up with a good argument? I'm talking about competition in gaming, not the Cold War. Even when PS2 dominated the market, there was still a lot of advancement in graphics and gameplay.

Good job, I got mostly the same typical responses I thought I would. People saying "lolz of course competition is good" without even commenting on my points, and people calling me stupid or a communist. I'm talking about console competition, quite different from how world economies function. By the way, capitalism also tends to lead to large gaps between the rich and the poor, but of course everyone just followed the herd and said "capitalism rocks" and didn't consider any of its flaws.

Okay, I was a bit extreme in my title to get attention. What I'm trying to get across is that competition does have many good things about it, but it also hurts the consumer in many ways, but no one ever tries to acknowledge it. Also, I think the negatives argubly outweight the positives, IN TERMS OF the three-console race this gen. Not capitalism vs communism, the three-console race.

Also, I'm not saying a monopoly is a good thing. It's not. I'm saying, more competition is not always better. Would you want 10 different companies making consoles today? No you wouldn't.

For those few who actually tried to debate my arguments (thank you):

1. DVD is not a valid comparison because there were many manufacturers.

If you're going to use this argument, you must admit you can define a monopoly in relative terms. If you define the market as optical-disk formats, DVD had a monopoly. If you define it as brands of DVD players, there was competition. If there is one console, it would have a monopoly on consoles, but it does not have a monopoly on all gaming systems because of handhelds and PCs. It does not have a monopoly on entertainment. If you think this is BS just think about it: No one would pay for a $2000 console because we can always watch TV or watch a movie. The price is dictated by demand: if the price is too high there will be no demand. The free market will make sure the price is set appropriately. If the only console is a $600 PS3, it would still not sell and Sony would still have to lower prices.

You still don't get it, DVD is not a monopoly because multiple companies are making it. Unless multiple companies are making consoles, you have a monopoly.

2. The market would be at a standstill.

Do you honestly believe if there were only one console, we would still be using cartridges? Honestly? 50 years from now we still would? No, technology always moves forward. Look at MS. Windows has a Monopoly, but does MS just make one Windows and be done with it? No, it makes newer versions because technology is always moving forward. Companies need to keep making new products and new improvements to keep getting your money. Look at the iPod, it dominates its market, but it comes out with new models every year to keep making you buy them.

How many differences are there between different versions of Windows? I have Vista and the only differences I've noticed from XP are a few borrowed new features, a prettied up interface, and a whole lot more annoyances. You want another example of why no competition is bad? Look at Nintendo and it's handhelds.

Anyway, try reading my points and think about them instead of going "my economics book says competition is good, so ur thread is epic fail." I'm not talking about the same thing.

iamanehero

*edit: I understand what you're saying, but you're communicating it wrong. The flaw is not in competition, but in the way the game industry is set up. It would be much better for everyone if it was more like the movie market, where multiple companies try to sell you their model console, but they all play the same software.

Without competition graphics would advance only slowly - why was the Xbox so far beyond the PS2 graphically? Because it had to be - if there was no competition, MS could have saved their money. If there was no competition the Wii wouldn't exist - why build a non-traditional console and take risks, when you can just release console 2.0 and know that (eventually) you will get people to move over?

Without competition, there would be nothing to stop a variety of unethical practices. For example, if the Playstation was the only console, Sony could simply stop selling the PS2 a year after the PS3 comes out, regardless of popularity, in order to force people over. "But they wouldn't do that because they'd lose money!" Only in the short run - monopoly lets you do things that are extremely manipulative in the short run, because in the long run you are always able to hit ideal "profit maximizing" price points (due again, to lack of competition).

What a lack of competition ultimately does is put a great deal more control into the hands of the business building the monopolizing console. Things wouldn't be cheaper - the reason consoles are expensive this generation is that we made the leap to HD, and that took huge hardware improvements. Really, the PS2 did mainly 480i games - 720 x 240 @ 60fps, now it is expected to do at least 1280 x 720 @ 60fps - that's a huge leap, and the prices reflect that.

subrosian

1) People don't play graphics, they play games. So your concerns about graphics getting better doesn't mean a benefit to the consumer. In fact, one could easily argue, that the competition for graphics results in increasingly expensive games (which is bad for the consumer) and less focus on originality and innovation in favour of yearly rehashes, sequals with little differences, or clones of better games to cash in on the trend. Again...not good for the consumer who for consoles are gamers.

2) I laughed my arse off at your second paragraph. You actually said that without competition there would be nothing stopping Sony from just killing the PS2 and moving on to PS3, screwing over PS2 owners? Uhmmm....you mean like MS did with the Xbox? Didn't the Xbox have competition?

3) You are treating all competition (or lack therefor) as being equal. We are gamers. We don't play consoles...we play games. The only competition that should matter to us is competition among developers. Right now, the primary competition is being done by the secondary product...the consoles. As a result, there is less concern among development studios to compete with new, innovative, cheap or original products that would benefit the consumer (ie gamers).

[QUOTE="HuusAsking"]

Point. That's why I call capitalism "Winner Economics". Let it run for long enough, and eventually there will be a winner with so much clout and reach it can't be approached--the dreaded de facto monopoly. Capitalism recognizes the instinctual need to win--"survival of the fittest" and all. While in communism, there's not a lot of incentive to try new things since everything's provided by the state. But I digress.

darkslider99

No. Look at all the problems most communist or dictatorships have. Humans are simply flawed creatures. If there was no capitalism, then instead of stepping on each other our of greed for possessions...we be doing it in a communist system out of greed for power and control.

There will always be something.

[QUOTE="darkslider99"][QUOTE="HuusAsking"]

Point. That's why I call capitalism "Winner Economics". Let it run for long enough, and eventually there will be a winner with so much clout and reach it can't be approached--the dreaded de facto monopoly. Capitalism recognizes the instinctual need to win--"survival of the fittest" and all. While in communism, there's not a lot of incentive to try new things since everything's provided by the state. But I digress.

ZIMdoom

No. Look at all the problems most communist or dictatorships have. Humans are simply flawed creatures. If there was no capitalism, then instead of stepping on each other our of greed for possessions...we be doing it in a communist system out of greed for power and control.

There will always be something.

That's what he's trying to say though, Communism would be the perfect system if we all lived in an ideal world. The problem with Communism isn't communism itself, it's human nature.

That's what he's trying to say though, Communism would be the perfect system if we all lived in an ideal world. The problem with Communism isn't communism itself, it's human nature.

TyrantDragon55

[QUOTE="darkslider99"][QUOTE="HuusAsking"]

Point. That's why I call capitalism "Winner Economics". Let it run for long enough, and eventually there will be a winner with so much clout and reach it can't be approached--the dreaded de facto monopoly. Capitalism recognizes the instinctual need to win--"survival of the fittest" and all. While in communism, there's not a lot of incentive to try new things since everything's provided by the state. But I digress.

ZIMdoom

No. Look at all the problems most communist or dictatorships have. Humans are simply flawed creatures. If there was no capitalism, then instead of stepping on each other our of greed for possessions...we be doing it in a communist system out of greed for power and control.

There will always be something.

This is also the reasoning I use when people try to blame religion or religious institutions (e.g. the Catholic Church) for wars and atrocities throughout history. Don't blame religion, blame the humans that behave badly in it's name.

[QUOTE="Gh0st_Of_0nyx"]

That still dosent explain how he's bad for captalism because Im still able to buy the stuff I have always bought.

And socialist healthcare isnt for EVERYONE I want a choice in who I want to take care of me not some govt run agency iin which the heath care is mediocre at best. Plus it raises taxes and thats something I really dont need right now.

dsmccracken

You are misinformed, you can still choose your doctor (like here in Canada), and it doesn't result in mediocre care (again, like here in Canada). You are correct about taxes, but then the trade off is that when my grandma had cancer, it didn't bleed the family dry.

I would also take your point one step further. Here in Saskatchewan, we still have government controlled car insurance, and public power (ie. run by tax dollars under government oversight). In fact, when SaskTel, the phone company, was a government mandated monopoly, they were considered one of the best and most advanced phone companies in the world. However, the government eventually caved and allowed competition for long distance calling. Sure, long distance rates have gone down as a result...at the expense of a publicly owned company no longer being considered a technology leader throughout the world.

Both SGI (car insurance) and SaskPower offer a product that is exactly like "competitive" companies but for a much lower cost. In fact, despite the push to privatize these companies by people who claim who great competition is and how it will gaurantee better product for cheaper...every other province which has done this has seen prices double or triple with less tolerance for consumers with problems. My brother moved to Alberta to go to school and couldn't afford to even plate his car because insurance was more than double. Meanwhile my brother who currently LIVES and works in ALberta recently got into a car accident and can't afford the insurance increase so he's driving it smashed up. It was a brand new car. If he still lived in Sask, insurance would cover it and his premuim wouldn't go up anywher close to what he is dealing with.

You also mention healthcare. Aside from avoiding the obvious problems of people having to chose between eating or getting better, our single payer (ie. taxdollars) system means people have power to negotiate what doctors charge. So health COSTS are cheaper here (or Europe) than the exact same procedure in the US would be, because the government negotiates on our behalf like a union would for wages. We have POWER as a group while individuals fending for themselves don't. I would also add that consumers having POWER is what capitalism is SUPPOSED to be about. Instead we have a generation of people growing up thinking private businesses and corporations having all the power, and the consumer just sucking it up, is what capitalism is about. Then they wonder why it doesn't work perfectly as it should in text books. There is simply too much ignorance for capitalism to be working the way it is supposed too because people have become mindless consumers instead of smart consumers.

That's what he's trying to say though, Communism would be the perfect system if we all lived in an ideal world. The problem with Communism isn't communism itself, it's human nature.

TyrantDragon55

Technically though, if we all lived in an ideal world, any system would work perfectly as it should. Any system would lead to a utopia.

TC is wrong. Competition is awesome, PS3 wouldn't have had many price drops so soon if it were not for competition; keeps the industry at high quality; keeps game prices down, etc... I could go on, but you get the point.