thaddius' Console Roast 2014 Edition - Round 3

[Foxi4]

It's wrong for any company to have a monopoly, clamwaters. Lack of competition usually goes hand in hand with a lack of progress, inflated prices and declining product quality. This is why there are legal countermeasures preventing any company from monopolizing their sector of the industry... that is, unless literally no other company is interested in that sector, which practically never happens.

 

[trumpet-205]

It's wrong for any company to have a monopoly,

Sadly monopoly is a necessary evil for utility such as electricity and water company. For these companies, high infrastructure cost would have further driven the average cost up, should competition is introduced.

 

[Foxi4]

Sadly monopoly is a necessary evil for utility such as electricity and water company. For these companies, high infrastructure cost would have further driven the average cost up, should competition is introduced.

That's not necessarily the case. If the infrastructure is state-owned or its owner agrees to lend it, you can have a great number of electric companies or water companies. Monopoly is not a given even in that kind of a business.

 

[thaddius]

The sad truth though is that governments are just agents for those who draw in the most capital and have the most influence, so monopoly laws are not enforced in the very least here in America, and stuff like this goes down all the time without the courts uttering so much as a word. This has a lot to do with my Microsoft Windows is so wide spread at this point in the game, and why superior OS' such as BeOS were never given the chance to ship to stores with Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, etc, though that's a rant for another day and another forum.

Ummm...

Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you. I just feel that Sega made the mistake of denying third party titles at first. And Nintendo did lose their hold on companies eventually (Ultra Games is a wonderful example of that). Business is business.

 

[trumpet-205]

That's not necessarily the case. If the infrastructure is state-owned or its owner agrees to lend it, you can have a great number of electric companies or water companies. Monopoly is not a given even in that kind of a business.

It depends on local law, but in US most of the time this is private infrastructure. California in fact once tried to introduce competition against PG&E, it almost triggered an energy crisis due to raising price.

 

[Foxi4]

Ummm...

Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you. I just feel that Sega made the mistake of denying third party titles at first. And Nintendo did lose their hold on companies eventually (Ultra Games is a wonderful example of that). Business is business.

I agree, both companies made their share of mistakes, even if those mistakes all came down to doing their best to make sure that the software they're offering is top quality. If you think about it in 80'ties categories, you'll quickly realize that poor quality software and "barely games" were a plague back then, so Nintendo's "Seal of Quality" and SEGA's initial drive towards first-party development and restrictive third-party policies make much more sense. The companies wanted to show that their platforms offer quality software, so these moves "make sense" in that context. Now, they didn't necessarily work out as intended, but at least the intentions were good... cue "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

It depends on local law, but in US most of the time this is private infrastructure. California in fact once tried to introduce competition against PG&E, it almost triggered an energy crisis due to raising price.

This is because the U.S. takes privatization a couple steps too far. Infrastructure central to the operation of a country shouldn't be in the hands of a private company since you might end up in a situation where the electric company de facto owns the country. That's all entirely off-topic though.

 

[calmwaters]

Well actually Foxi, I was reading this book about how companies have monopolized the food industry in my country. But nobody knows about it except the well informed and the people who do the monopolizing. And they manage to evade the laws that're supposed to prevent this sort of thing. And as far as I'm concerned, lack of competition always brings about poorer standards and higher prices. I'm sure you noticed how awful the living standards in Communist Russia were. The government owned everything. But I don't think Nintendo was a money grubbing business: sure, their goal was to make money, but they weren't greedy. I don't think they ever have been, either. I could argue and say they had the gamers' best interests at heart when they monopolized the industry.

 

[Foxi4]

Well actually Foxi, I was reading this book about how companies have monopolized the food industry in my country. But nobody knows about it except the well informed and the people who do the monopolizing. And they manage to evade the laws that're supposed to prevent this sort of thing. And as far as I'm concerned, lack of competition always brings about poorer standards and higher prices. I'm sure you noticed how awful the living standards in Communist Russia were. The government owned everything. But I don't think Nintendo was a money grubbing business: sure, their goal was to make money, but they weren't greedy. I don't think they ever have been, either. I could argue and say they had the gamers' best interests at heart when they monopolized the industry.

That's this thing we in the business of scepticism call "conspiracy theories". It's pretty obvious that huge corporations lobby the government to steer legislature this way or another, but they're still bound by the law no matter how big they are. The phenomenon you're describing is called "price fixing" and it can lead to severe economical consequences for the companies involved. Also, I have to wonder who wrote the book about something nobody's supposed to know except the people involved - that sort of points the finger of blame at the author.

 

[calmwaters]

That's this thing we in the business of scepticism call "conspiracy theories". It's pretty obvious that huge corporations lobby the government to steer legislature this way or another, but they're still bound by the law no matter how big they are. The phenomenon you're describing is called "price fixing" and it can lead to severe economical consequences for the companies involved. Also, I have to wonder who wrote the book about something nobody's supposed to know except the people involved - that sort of points the finger of blame at the author.

He was a very respected journalist from the NY Times and did his homework well. And I always knew there was a monopoly on the industry just because the products' quality was worsening but the prices were going higher. They can get the money out of the people by introducing something new. As we saw with the Xbone: it had an updated graphics engine. And a new iPhone could load apps 4 seconds faster than the last one. There are people who will buy things because of reasons like this, a fact these companies exploit; y'know, because it's in a businesses' interest to make money. I know it could sound like a conspiracy theory like Area 51 or Elvis, but sometimes having enough evidence can make a theory plausible enough to be believed. Plus, people will always find a way to circumvent the law. And their stashes of money make this really easy. I mean, if I had as much money as MJ, I wouldn't have to pirate. And despite the book being written in the '70s, I kept reading things that sounded more like they should've been written in this last decade.

Edit: Consider this: Nintendo no longer holds the monopoly on video games. This means that prices don't have to be as high because there's competition now. So, why are prices just as expensive as they were 20 years ago?

 

[Foxi4]

He was a very respected journalist from the NY Times and did his homework well. And I always knew there was a monopoly on the industry just because the products' quality was worsening but the prices were going higher. They can get the money out of the people by introducing something new. As we saw with the Xbone: it had an updated graphics engine. And a new iPhone could load apps 4 seconds faster than the last one. There are people who will buy things because of reasons like this, a fact these companies exploit; y'know, because it's in a businesses' interest to make money. I know it could sound like a conspiracy theory like Area 51 or Elvis, but sometimes having enough evidence can make a theory plausible enough to be believed. Plus, people will always find a way to circumvent the law. And their stashes of money make this really easy. I mean, if I had as much money as MJ, I wouldn't have to pirate. And despite the book being written in the '70s, I kept reading things that sounded more like they should've been written in this last decade.

I'm not sure if using the XBox One example is particularly relevant when the XBox One's GPU (1.32 TFLOPS) is literally 5.5 times stronger than the XBox 360'ties (240 GFLOPS). As for the iPhones, some of them are cosmetic upgrades, some are groundbreaking developments. The new one is equipped with an Apple A7 which currently offers more bang than any equivalent on the market.

 

[Gahars]

Edit: Consider this: Nintendo no longer holds the monopoly on video games. This means that prices don't have to be as high because there's competition now. So, why are prices just as expensive as they were 20 years ago?

It's kind of asinine to say that Nintendo ever had a monopoly. They might have been top dog, but there was still an abundance of competition.

Anyway, adjusting for inflation, video game prices are the cheapest they've ever been, so...

 

[calmwaters]

I'm not sure if using the XBox One example is particularly relevant when the XBox One's GPU (1.32 TFLOPS) is literally 5.5 times stronger than the XBox 360'ties (240 GFLOPS). As for the iPhones, some of them are cosmetic upgrades, some are groundbreaking developments. The new one is equipped with an Apple A7 which houses a Cortex-A53 and a Cortex-A57, that's more bang than anything else on the market right now.

While the power stat is impressive, what other features could they have that is innovative different from last generation consoles in order to justify its price hike? Nintendo came out with a tablet, but their console isn't very expensive. (Power and games are moot when it comes to the field of innovation.) They could raise the price to get back some of the money they've lost, but they haven't. If anything, they've tried to make it more affordable so more people can buy it. Besides, you're describing new power capabilities, which I really don't care about anyway. The only time I care about them is when it ruins my gameplay experience. The engine slows down or some features get spotty; or the general picture loses quality. Or the game freezes. And how did we get off on this discussion about current generation electronics and their power capabilities in a thread dedicated to choosing the worst console of the second era and explaining that choice anyway? That's crazy.

 

[calmwaters]

It's kind of asinine to say that Nintendo ever had a monopoly. They might have been top dog, but there was still an abundance of competition.

Anyway, adjusting for inflation, video game prices are the cheapest they've ever been, so...

Well... someone wrote a comment in this thread talking about a rumor that Nintendo monopolized the industry. Maybe it is just a rumor? But I read something somewhere a long time ago that Nintendo's gamble to bring games to the States turned them into the top dogs. Sega followed suit, so they got a good share of business, but not enough to top Nintendo. I think a selling point of the Sega system was that it had games Nintendo didn't (which was saying something) and this lent it its success. Maybe people misinterpreted the top dog status and said they'd monopolized the industry. There's a big difference between monopolizing and dominating.

 

[Foxi4]

While the power stat is impressive, what other features could they have that is innovative different from last generation consoles in order to justify its price hike? Nintendo came out with a tablet, but their console isn't very expensive. (Power and games are moot when it comes to the field of innovation.) They could raise the price to get back some of the money they've lost, but they haven't. If anything, they've tried to make it more affordable so more people can buy it. Besides, you're describing new power capabilities, which I really don't care about anyway. The only time I care about them is when it ruins my gameplay experience. The engine slows down or some features get spotty; or the general picture loses quality. Or the game freezes. And how did we get off on this discussion about current generation electronics and their power capabilities in a thread dedicated to choosing the worst console of the second era and explaining that choice anyway? That's crazy.

You can't have progress in the game development field without progress in the hardware department. The Wii U offers no more than a 1.5-2 times the processing power of last generation systems - that's not a whole lot to go by. Both the PS3 and the XBox 360 show severe signs of aging - you get to see texture pop-in increasingly often even in big budget productions like GTA V, it's high time for an upgrade.

As for the price point, all things considered, both the XBox One and the PS4 are actually cheap for next generation systems - the PS3 launched at $499 for the basic 20GB model and $599 for the 60GB one, the XBox 360 launched at $299.99 for the Core model and $399.99 for the standard system with a 20GB hard drive.

Adding to Gahars's point, gaming is cheaper than ever before. As far as some infamous examples are concerned, the Neo Geo launced at $649.99 - adjust that for inflation. The Sega CD/Mega-CD launched at $300 and it wasn't even a complete system - you needed a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive to even use it. The N64 launched with two games - Mario 64 and Pilotwings, each $69.95. Contemporary pricing, if anything, is very approachable and friendly.

While the power stat is impressive, what other features could they have that is innovative different from last generation consoles in order to justify its price hike? Nintendo came out with a tablet, but their console isn't very expensive. (Power and games are moot when it comes to the field of innovation.) They could raise the price to get back some of the money they've lost, but they haven't. If anything, they've tried to make it more affordable so more people can buy it. Besides, you're describing new power capabilities, which I really don't care about anyway. The only time I care about them is when it ruins my gameplay experience. The engine slows down or some features get spotty; or the general picture loses quality. Or the game freezes. And how did we get off on this discussion about current generation electronics and their power capabilities in a thread dedicated to choosing the worst console of the second era and explaining that choice anyway? That's crazy.

The Master System came to the States partially due to how successful Nintendo was in marketing it there, this much is true. It failed to build a following there because it was poorly marketed and by 1988 Nintendo controlled the gross majority of the market in North America. The only way they could top that was releasing a grossly superior system, and they did just that with the Genesis/Mega Drive. The situation in Europe was the exact opposite - the NES was poorly marketed and the Master System triumphed.

 

[XDel]

My apologies everyone, I forget sometimes that there is not, never was, and never shall be such a thing as conspiracy. Everything in the world works by mere happenstance. The media is not consolidated by 7 major corporations, and the law never sells out but remains firm, established to protect you and me and the tribal people.

Oh wait, I never brought up the Illumanti, I was talking about shady business standards.

 

[thaddius]

We're bringing the Illumanti into this now? Why can't we just discuss video games?

 

[cdoty]

Wow, the third round is pretty rough. The PV-1000 wins as a commercial screw-up, but by 1983 standards, it's pretty impressive.

The Atari 7800 was jaw dropping, when it was released.

 

[kristianity77]

I voted the casio, but only because whoever created the poll missed out the genius that was the Amstrad GX4000!

 

[Foxi4]

I voted the casio, but only because whoever created the poll missed out the genius that was the Amstrad GX4000!

Wow, I've never heard of that one either! It looks awesome, like a white manta ray!

 

[tbgtbg]

The Atari 7800 was jaw dropping, when it was released.

It might have been jaw dropping if they'd released it in 84 as originally planned and not held it back for several years, but not so much when it finally was released.

And that Amstrad thing reminds me of some of those rejected SNES prototypes some magazines published drawings of.