4 ms·

How would this legislation impact game consoles? Sony has a market cap of $100B and Microsoft is clearly above the €75 billion euro market cap discussed. Perh

How would this legislation impact game consoles? Sony has a market cap of $100B and Microsoft is clearly above the €75 billion euro market cap discussed. Perhaps incorrectly, I don't see that market needing this legislation. The consoles themselves are sold on razor thin margins and rely on game sales to generate profit. Game consoles are also more of an "entertainment" device vs a general use mobile computer.

Whatarethese 4y ago
I view consoles as the same way I do phones. A single store to purchase goods is anti consumer. I can see someone taking them to court since the only way to buy games locally on your Xbox, Playstation, or Switch is through the first party stores.
- gernb 4y ago
  Is it though? What if the price to buy a playstation went to $1200 because that was the only way it's affordable for Sony if they can't subsidize it with a restricted store. So now the consumer can side load but they can't afford the device in the first place. I'm just pulling a price out of thin air but I don't think it's quite a simple as "single store = anti consumer" It's similar to carrier locked phones. They'll give you the phone for a 1/10th it's list price if you sign up for 2yrs of service. Is that anti-consumer? Vs forcing the consumer to pay full price up front?
  - babl-yc 4y ago
    I was curious what the added price on a $400 console would be if Sony couldn't guarantee a cut of game revenue, so here's some napkin math. Avg 9.6 games sold per console [1] * $70 game * 30% take rate [2] =~ $200 additional. Current pricing: $400 + $70/game Restructured pricing: $600 + $49/game So it's more costs upfront, but not insanely more expensive. It would certainly change marketing and incentives though, if Sony made more money by selling consoles than continuing to extend the lifecycle of the current generation. [1] https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/01/ps4_has_a_very_high_software_attach_rate_average_player_owns_around_ten_games https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/01/ps4_has_a_very_high_... [2] https://hypebeast.com/2022/8/sony-playstation-digital-games-pricing-lawsuit https://hypebeast.com/2022/8/sony-playstation-digital-games-...
  - aequitas 4y ago
    There is always the second hand market if you don’t want to pay full price. Which currently for digital games doesn’t exists, because everything needs te be bought through first party stores and is DRMed.
  - error503 4y ago
    Nothing's stopping Sony (or more likely, retailers) from offering a payment plan for your hypothetical $1200 PlayStation, just like the phone carriers do for handsets. The difference is that they extract the money directly from the consumer, who can make an informed decision about it that has market impact, rather than on the back-end through strongarm deals with the publishing companies where the consumer has no direct influence. I would say that carrier locked phones are undeniably anti-consumer though, and they are banned in many jurisdictions. Their sole purpose is to add friction and give the customer less choice, and due to 'collusion' between the few carriers that exist, impossible to avoid, even if you did choose to purchase the phone outright; it's practically the definition of anti-consumer. The phone purchase should be a separate contract, with a defined monthly payment against the retail price of the phone. Offering this is a profitable enterprise for BestBuy etc. on other electronics, so why not phones? The user should be free to switch carriers with little friction, to maintain as competitive a market as possible in a market that is a natural monopoly. It reminds me a lot of the equipment monopoly in the Bell System until the early '80s.
kinnth 4y ago
I think it might enable game consoles to allow more developers to list their products on the store without the hassles of their particular processes. Perhaps an indie only section. It might with time open up software across multiple ecosystems.
- ephimetheus 4y ago
  What if it just makes consoles unprofitable and Sony and Microsoft stop making them?
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Well, would anything of value be lost? Like, why don’t just sell custom built PCs? Then developers can actually develop against a few common APIs, no more exclusives, etc..
    - ephimetheus 4y ago
      PCs are much more expensive than consoles, with that gap only increasing with recent soaring prices for GPUs. I’m guessing this will just force more people into using their smartphones for this.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        Are they more expensive for equivalent hardware? I didn’t look at the current gen ones, but it used to be the case that consoles get a few years old hardware, developers just optimize better for those targets. And even still, there have been plenty of memes how you get a low-poly mess for a character in some console games. PCs are only expensive if you go the “current best” route, but hardware advances are well in the diminishing returns category (maybe besides hardware-accelerated ray tracing), so you can very well play most games on mid-setting on a few years old PC which you can build from $500.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jchw 4y ago
Ignoring monopoly positions, censorship concerns, security research, industry innovation and many other important considerations that go into these kinds of ideas, I'd like to present another angle; I think even just the eWaste concern alone is enough to suggest that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo should also have to provide the end user the ability to load their own code with relatively few restrictions. I actually don't see why game consoles are special and I don't really care about current industry norms or razor thin margins. The industry we have now doesn't need to remain financially sustainable as-is; that is not a condition that is set in stone. In fact, I'd argue that often times making progress literally requires this kind of disruption sometimes. Nobody ever sat down and decided that what Nintendo did with 10NES was a good idea; it was just legally viable and nobody stopped it. It became normal without any concerted decision that it should be, just the lack of any strong enough force opposing it. I don't think that means that everything must continue this way forever. It is possible to realize that the implications are bad. Even that said, hackers like to think in absolute and concrete terms and theory. In practice, phones are extremely important, telling people to vote for their wallet doesn't work, and there are basically no phones that offer a good set of trade-offs today because the market is not incentivized to produce it. Consumers pay $1000 for a phone and can't install a web browser. It is disturbing that people who are on a website with "Hacker" in the name can see this as a good thing. (Not that you are necessarily. But still, I see it too often.)
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Defining what business models are legal and illegal, based on profit margins, is not a road we should go down in my opinion. Plus, some game consoles (like the Nintendo Switch) are profitable even if nobody buys a game because Nintendo prioritized that, and other game consoles become profitable in-and-of-themselves later in their lifecycle. This leads to all sorts of perverse incentives. If I'm Nintendo, I could sell my game console for $299 with some profit on Day 1 (like now), but then I would be forced to have an open store. Or, I could sell it for $269, take a initial loss, and have a closed store. It would simply made "game consoles shall be sold at a loss" the law, not opened things up. I think that would be atrocious. So... either game consoles can remain locked, or we simply declare game consoles cannot be sold locked.
Hamuko 4y ago
>1. An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if: >(a) it has a significant impact on the internal market; >(b) it provides a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and >(c) it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future. >2. An undertaking shall be presumed to satisfy the respective requirements in paragraph 1: >(a) as regards paragraph 1, point (a), where it achieves an annual Union turnover equal to or above EUR 7,5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or where its average market capitalisation or its equivalent fair market value amounted to at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and it provides the same core platform service in at least three Member States; >(b) as regards paragraph 1, point (b), where it provides a core platform service that in the last financial year has at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10 000 yearly active business users established in the Union, identified and calculated in accordance with the methodology and indicators set out in the Annex; >(c) as regards paragraph 1, point (c), where the thresholds in point (b) of this paragraph were met in each of the last three financial years. I wonder what the monthly active users for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo consoles are. Also, if there are at least 10,000 active developers in the EU for any of these consoles.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Probably not enough to qualify. PlayStation 4's total sales in Europe to date is 55 million consoles... but how many are active users? How many have multiple consoles for the same "user"? How many are in storage, were broken, or simply don't get turned on for long periods of time? I think they are borderline or under the limit. As for total developers, there are currently 3,276 recognized games, and thus less than that amount of "developers" as per the legal definition - let alone how many of them are still active. I know we're on PlayStation 5 now, but if PS4 doesn't hit the limit, game consoles are fine. The Nintendo Switch has many more games (particularly indie) than PS4, yet they only hit 4,462.

Whatarethese 4y ago

I view consoles as the same way I do phones. A single store to purchase goods is anti consumer. I can see someone taking them to court since the only way to buy games locally on your Xbox, Playstation, or Switch is through the first party stores.

gernb 4y ago
Is it though? What if the price to buy a playstation went to $1200 because that was the only way it's affordable for Sony if they can't subsidize it with a restricted store. So now the consumer can side load but they can't afford the device in the first place. I'm just pulling a price out of thin air but I don't think it's quite a simple as "single store = anti consumer" It's similar to carrier locked phones. They'll give you the phone for a 1/10th it's list price if you sign up for 2yrs of service. Is that anti-consumer? Vs forcing the consumer to pay full price up front?
- babl-yc 4y ago
  I was curious what the added price on a $400 console would be if Sony couldn't guarantee a cut of game revenue, so here's some napkin math. Avg 9.6 games sold per console [1] * $70 game * 30% take rate [2] =~ $200 additional. Current pricing: $400 + $70/game Restructured pricing: $600 + $49/game So it's more costs upfront, but not insanely more expensive. It would certainly change marketing and incentives though, if Sony made more money by selling consoles than continuing to extend the lifecycle of the current generation. [1] https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/01/ps4_has_a_very_high_software_attach_rate_average_player_owns_around_ten_games https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/01/ps4_has_a_very_high_... [2] https://hypebeast.com/2022/8/sony-playstation-digital-games-pricing-lawsuit https://hypebeast.com/2022/8/sony-playstation-digital-games-...
- aequitas 4y ago
  There is always the second hand market if you don’t want to pay full price. Which currently for digital games doesn’t exists, because everything needs te be bought through first party stores and is DRMed.
- error503 4y ago
  Nothing's stopping Sony (or more likely, retailers) from offering a payment plan for your hypothetical $1200 PlayStation, just like the phone carriers do for handsets. The difference is that they extract the money directly from the consumer, who can make an informed decision about it that has market impact, rather than on the back-end through strongarm deals with the publishing companies where the consumer has no direct influence. I would say that carrier locked phones are undeniably anti-consumer though, and they are banned in many jurisdictions. Their sole purpose is to add friction and give the customer less choice, and due to 'collusion' between the few carriers that exist, impossible to avoid, even if you did choose to purchase the phone outright; it's practically the definition of anti-consumer. The phone purchase should be a separate contract, with a defined monthly payment against the retail price of the phone. Offering this is a profitable enterprise for BestBuy etc. on other electronics, so why not phones? The user should be free to switch carriers with little friction, to maintain as competitive a market as possible in a market that is a natural monopoly. It reminds me a lot of the equipment monopoly in the Bell System until the early '80s.

kinnth 4y ago

I think it might enable game consoles to allow more developers to list their products on the store without the hassles of their particular processes. Perhaps an indie only section. It might with time open up software across multiple ecosystems.

ephimetheus 4y ago
What if it just makes consoles unprofitable and Sony and Microsoft stop making them?
- kaba0 4y ago
  Well, would anything of value be lost? Like, why don’t just sell custom built PCs? Then developers can actually develop against a few common APIs, no more exclusives, etc..
  - ephimetheus 4y ago
    PCs are much more expensive than consoles, with that gap only increasing with recent soaring prices for GPUs. I’m guessing this will just force more people into using their smartphones for this.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Are they more expensive for equivalent hardware? I didn’t look at the current gen ones, but it used to be the case that consoles get a few years old hardware, developers just optimize better for those targets. And even still, there have been plenty of memes how you get a low-poly mess for a character in some console games. PCs are only expensive if you go the “current best” route, but hardware advances are well in the diminishing returns category (maybe besides hardware-accelerated ray tracing), so you can very well play most games on mid-setting on a few years old PC which you can build from $500.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jchw 4y ago

Ignoring monopoly positions, censorship concerns, security research, industry innovation and many other important considerations that go into these kinds of ideas, I'd like to present another angle; I think even just the eWaste concern alone is enough to suggest that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo should also have to provide the end user the ability to load their own code with relatively few restrictions. I actually don't see why game consoles are special and I don't really care about current industry norms or razor thin margins. The industry we have now doesn't need to remain financially sustainable as-is; that is not a condition that is set in stone. In fact, I'd argue that often times making progress literally requires this kind of disruption sometimes. Nobody ever sat down and decided that what Nintendo did with 10NES was a good idea; it was just legally viable and nobody stopped it. It became normal without any concerted decision that it should be, just the lack of any strong enough force opposing it. I don't think that means that everything must continue this way forever. It is possible to realize that the implications are bad. Even that said, hackers like to think in absolute and concrete terms and theory. In practice, phones are extremely important, telling people to vote for their wallet doesn't work, and there are basically no phones that offer a good set of trade-offs today because the market is not incentivized to produce it. Consumers pay $1000 for a phone and can't install a web browser. It is disturbing that people who are on a website with "Hacker" in the name can see this as a good thing. (Not that you are necessarily. But still, I see it too often.)

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Defining what business models are legal and illegal, based on profit margins, is not a road we should go down in my opinion. Plus, some game consoles (like the Nintendo Switch) are profitable even if nobody buys a game because Nintendo prioritized that, and other game consoles become profitable in-and-of-themselves later in their lifecycle. This leads to all sorts of perverse incentives. If I'm Nintendo, I could sell my game console for $299 with some profit on Day 1 (like now), but then I would be forced to have an open store. Or, I could sell it for $269, take a initial loss, and have a closed store. It would simply made "game consoles shall be sold at a loss" the law, not opened things up. I think that would be atrocious. So... either game consoles can remain locked, or we simply declare game consoles cannot be sold locked.

Hamuko 4y ago

>1. An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if: >(a) it has a significant impact on the internal market; >(b) it provides a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and >(c) it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future. >2. An undertaking shall be presumed to satisfy the respective requirements in paragraph 1: >(a) as regards paragraph 1, point (a), where it achieves an annual Union turnover equal to or above EUR 7,5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or where its average market capitalisation or its equivalent fair market value amounted to at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and it provides the same core platform service in at least three Member States; >(b) as regards paragraph 1, point (b), where it provides a core platform service that in the last financial year has at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10 000 yearly active business users established in the Union, identified and calculated in accordance with the methodology and indicators set out in the Annex; >(c) as regards paragraph 1, point (c), where the thresholds in point (b) of this paragraph were met in each of the last three financial years. I wonder what the monthly active users for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo consoles are. Also, if there are at least 10,000 active developers in the EU for any of these consoles.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Probably not enough to qualify. PlayStation 4's total sales in Europe to date is 55 million consoles... but how many are active users? How many have multiple consoles for the same "user"? How many are in storage, were broken, or simply don't get turned on for long periods of time? I think they are borderline or under the limit. As for total developers, there are currently 3,276 recognized games, and thus less than that amount of "developers" as per the legal definition - let alone how many of them are still active. I know we're on PlayStation 5 now, but if PS4 doesn't hit the limit, game consoles are fine. The Nintendo Switch has many more games (particularly indie) than PS4, yet they only hit 4,462.