Retail Threatens Steam Ban

[CRTGAMER]

This thread has really gone off track.

The OP does bring up a very real concern though. The idea that convenience of downloads killing the retail gaming industry. Retail fighting back thru the ban.

Why leave the House
Direct downloads from the source cuts out the middle man. Seems the consumer would get the product at a lower price. Rental and Gaming stores lose, putting people out of work. Consumer loses due to less locations to purchase a game. Box stores also lose when less in store sales occur because of the download competition. There is also that dreaded DRM not having the physical copy as the download source itself goes away.

A side track of my own
Internet continual changing the market, maybe worse now then all the dot-com failures of the past? Even the once stable Post Office taking a hit, maybe Amazon-EBay sales keeping them afloat?

Movies
Same thing is occurring thru online movie streaming and the Redbox movie vending machine. Look at all the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos that went under. Not only the job loss issue, but cutting down of choices one can get a movie.

Without including Retail outlet competition a Monopoly occurs. Windows anyone?

[ZeroAX]

Movies
Same thing is occurring thru online movie streaming and the Redbox movie vending machine. Look at all the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos that went under. Not only the job loss issue, but cutting down of choices one can get a movie.

Without including Retail outlet competition a Monopoly occurs. Windows anyone?

and yet people made fun of Sony for having released many movie services on the PS3. Imo the makers of streaming set up boxes (and consoles, which will probably replace said boxes in the future) should be forced to allow anyone to sell digital media through their machines.


Imo even WiiWare, PSN store and XBLA are monopolies, but it's a bit hard to prove it legally. It's like someone building a mall and only selling their own stuff inside, at set prices. The free market isn't working, and you don't have anywhere else to go. But still it's their mall, they do what they like with it.

[jfrost]

Even conceding your definitions of "monopoly", guys, you're assuming it is necessarily a bad thing. It isn't.

[ZeroAX]

Even conceding your definitions of "monopoly", guys, you're assuming it is necessarily a bad thing. It isn't.

steam becoming the only worthy digital distributor ain't a bad thing?

[jfrost]

No. Not necessarily.

[Niode]

No. Not necessarily.

No competition means no incentive to keep prices down. If there are no competitors where else are you going to get your games from? Prices will increase which means bad news for us.

[the7k]

No. Not necessarily.

No competition means no incentive to keep prices down. If there are no competitors where else are you going to get your games from? Prices will increase which means bad news for us.

The competition will come internally. Rather than Steam competing against Wal-Mart, it's Activision competing against EA within Steam.

There's also the ever-so-small chance that if a true monopoly situation were to occur, they wouldn't suddenly become tyrannical dicks. Stranger things have happened.

[alienjesus]

Even conceding your definitions of "monopoly", guys, you're assuming it is necessarily a bad thing. It isn't.

steam becoming the only worthy digital distributor ain't a bad thing?

I'd say its more akin to them building a shop which sells only their own stuff, which is fine.

[Ivo]

No. Not necessarily.

No competition means no incentive to keep prices down. If there are no competitors where else are you going to get your games from? Prices will increase which means bad news for us.

The competition will come internally. Rather than Steam competing against Wal-Mart, it's Activision competing against EA within Steam.

There's also the ever-so-small chance that if a true monopoly situation were to occur, they wouldn't suddenly become tyrannical dicks. Stranger things have happened.

The end price of the game is not just what Activision and EA take in from the game, but also the cut that Steam takes. If Steam is the only viable distributor, that monopoly can be exerted over publishers like Activision and EA uniformly (or worse, selectively as retaliation for doing stuff against what Steam wants them to do etc.) and if they demand higher cuts of the profit from the publishers it is easy for that to be passed down to the consumer.

Monopolies are not good for the consumer. At best, they may be neutral - I can think of no realistic counter-example here, but I'm interested in hearing about a scenario like that if you can think one up.

Ivo.

[Pulsar_t]

"Do no evil" companies are so very believable