Elios83 from gaf made a Brilliant point:
“
I think that trying to extinguish competition during this gen is something they carefully planned for a few years before the beginning of the current gen.
The whole plan was based on exploiting their financial strength coming from other dominant positions which at some point they clearly identified as their main strength and differentiator.
Luring casuals from the beginning with a cheap hardware promising them access to big games almost for free because they could afford to pay the bills as long as necessary to reach their goals.
In parallel the plan was to start buying whole publishers to starve competition progressively of key support.
The icing on the cake was supposed to be a continous FUD campaign against the competition (and a positive propaganda for them) acted with the help of the many friendly characters in the press and on socials to try to influence and change the public's perception towards the brands at a marketing level.
I must say that on paper the whole thing sounded good, so much that seeing the whole thing currently failing as much as it is is a surprise, but they clearly miscalculated the fact that people are not buying things just because they're cheap, gamers are actually willing to pay for great games, subscription services for games are less effective and attractive compared to similar services for movies and music because games simply cannot be consumed as if they were songs or movies. If you like a game you can spend many weeks if not months on it and at that point you can just buy it.
And finally with Activision they just aimed too high, too quickly and completely miscalculated they would put themselves into a legal mess that now risks to compromise their whole strategy long term and at very least has fully exposed them.”
“
I think that trying to extinguish competition during this gen is something they carefully planned for a few years before the beginning of the current gen.
The whole plan was based on exploiting their financial strength coming from other dominant positions which at some point they clearly identified as their main strength and differentiator.
Luring casuals from the beginning with a cheap hardware promising them access to big games almost for free because they could afford to pay the bills as long as necessary to reach their goals.
In parallel the plan was to start buying whole publishers to starve competition progressively of key support.
The icing on the cake was supposed to be a continous FUD campaign against the competition (and a positive propaganda for them) acted with the help of the many friendly characters in the press and on socials to try to influence and change the public's perception towards the brands at a marketing level.
I must say that on paper the whole thing sounded good, so much that seeing the whole thing currently failing as much as it is is a surprise, but they clearly miscalculated the fact that people are not buying things just because they're cheap, gamers are actually willing to pay for great games, subscription services for games are less effective and attractive compared to similar services for movies and music because games simply cannot be consumed as if they were songs or movies. If you like a game you can spend many weeks if not months on it and at that point you can just buy it.
And finally with Activision they just aimed too high, too quickly and completely miscalculated they would put themselves into a legal mess that now risks to compromise their whole strategy long term and at very least has fully exposed them.”
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