Dear Future Gamer

This is to clarify to our friend Jinn why a Sony monopoly scenario would be unhealthy.

A company bringing the "whole bloody industry together" is not only bad for magazine publishers but also for us, the gamers. A dominant power in ANY industry limits consumer choice. In this case, should Sony dominate the videogames market, we wouldn't have as wide a choice of games to choose from. Sony gives a company rights to publish games on its machine. If it possessed the only system on the market, it would attempt to choose games which would maximise its sales profits (in other words, mainstream games). Hence, more "clone" games would appear on its systems. This would be fine for the casual gamer, but veteran gamers would certainly like more variety.

Choice is good. Look at the current situation. Faced with stiff competition, Nintendo realise that the only way to one-up Sony is to make really good games. Zelda 64, Mario 64, Mario Kart 64... all are excellent, and innovative as well. It's great when a company breathes originality as well as depth into their games. If Sony dominated the market they wouldn't have to innovate as they could just rehash old titles, call them by a different name and sell them. We would have no choice but to buy them.

And regarding the example you gave... an industry does not necessarily become a "mess" when it has a lot of companies competing in it. Look at it this way - your Panasonic and their CDX or whatever wouldn't stand a hoot of a chance if we the consumers weren't interested in their product. Jaguar anyone? Superior technology (at that time), better sounding, better looking but a total flop. Consumers didn't care about the damned thing.

Jonathan

FG: Good points, Jonathan. Choice is essential if we're to continue getting good games. I don't think we're going to see a monopoly occurring just yet, so I reckon we're going to be safe for a few years at least.