[quote name='Blaster man']First you should know the following: The Justice Department has indicated that the five book publishers got together for several meetings at various hotels and the Justice Dept has ADMITTED Apple wasn't there. How the hell can they include Apple? If they can include Apple then I'm sure they can justify saying that MS and Sony colluded.
The collusion: Why are downloadable games released for the same price on both consoles when the manufacturer dictates price? Sure sales have different prices at different times but the actual launch (when the games sell the most) always have the games at the same price on both console.
Many people such as myself own both consoles and would gladly buy from the cheaper one but neither console is EVER cheaper. Why is that? Both Sony and MS decide (every single time) that the games are worth a XX.XX price and (every single time) those prices match one another? Give me a
ing break. I don't believe it.
If you look at disk based games, there is a great deal of competition. Stores will have launch week sales and Amazon, Best Buy, Target, etc will often ofter very good but different deals.
Contrast that with the launch of an XBLA/PSN game, the game is either 10, 15, or 20 bucks and it's the same on both consoles (both manufacturers supposedly dictated independently of one another the price). Why isn't it discounted on launch week? What kind of retailer would turn down the chance to take a huge chunk of the market share of a newly launched game? If they were actually working independently of one another then one would offer it cheaper, even if by a dollar, that would drive hundreds of thousands to millions (depending on the game) of sales away from the competitor's console.
I just have a hard time believing that the Justice Department can claim that Apple colluded with the book publishers when they admit that Apple wasn't present at the meetings yet there is no way they can claim that Sony and MS aren't colluding to keep prices high.
I can tell you that if I ran MS or Sony, I would certainly offer a launch discount on the games that I thought would sell huge in order to drive up sales.[/QUOTE]
There is this invention called the telephone. It allows communication over immense distances in real time.
Steve Jobs had extensive discussions with the publishers' representatives. This is documented and discussed in some detail in the recently published biography. That same book played a role in bringing the suit forward. Apple acting as a stalking horse for the publishers was the final piece of the puzzle.
The number of people who own multiple consoles of the current generation are a small subset of the installed base of each platform. The great majority of Xbox 360 owners do not have a PS3, nor do the bulk of PS3 owners have an Xbox 360. Those of us who do are a weird outlier group that doesn't have much effect on most decision making within the platform companies. Once you've bought one box or the other, the maker regards the competing box as shut out in most cases.
As such, they don't regard themselves as being in price competition on multi-platform items as two retail chains would. Now, if there were multiple online sellers of downloaded console content, you would have competitive maneuvering similar to what you see between B&M chains or web sellers of physical goods. Instead, the focus is more on exclusive content to drive the choice of box. Same game for the same price on both machines but on the Xbox you get a propeller beanie for your avatar.
It's all about influencing that box choice. There is little motivation to discount newly launched items in that circumstance. Proven hits that have completed their initial sales peak are better candidates.
Imagine if Best Buy felt assured that someone who came into their store instead of the competing chain across the street would only patronize Best Buy for several years to follow. The patterns of promotions would take on a different character in response. Being a platform company is like that.
An example of competition motives is found on Android devices which draw upon both Google's store and Amazon for many of the same apps and games. Each site has differing promotions to draw business. Google focuses more on sales while Amazon promote free items to promote loyalty. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses. giving stuff away to capture customers is classic Amazon. You can see similar competition between PC download venues where their product lines overlap for some items and others are exclusive. Origin has little need to undercut anyone on EA games because they are the exclusive download venue for EA games. By that tactic they hope to catch up with Steam and surpass it if they can.
