I think by worked he means setting the standards and being the platform and eliminating any competition ... I think his point has been proven over and over thro

I think by worked he means setting the standards and being the platform and eliminating any competition ... I think his point has been proven over and over through the success of those that opened up and the failure of those that didn't ... and you can see a bigger proof these days with all the talks around all the social networking platforms and Android the open mobile platform and the overall intentions of all these companies ... If you open up you can get a lot more market share a lot quicker ... you will also eliminate future competition to a large extend ... if your platform is interesting and you can reach users, then by opening up you will allow thousands of developers making applications for your platform day in and day out, and no matter who you are and how good you are and how much capital you have, you could never comepte with that ... lets not forget how Microsoft beat Apple ... I am not a gamer myself, but for what I know there is competition out there and there is not really any market leaders at this point .. At any given point there might have been leaders in this market but new competition always came in and took a part of the market share, Sony did it with Nintendo and Microsoft to Sony. But I think the gaming industry is a bit trickier since even if you do open up completely its not that easy for everyone to develop a game. I believe they give their SDK to specific companies that they are partners with, since they have the right capabilities (again if someone has more info about the gaming industry they can correct me) ... but imagine you could have a completely open platform for game consoles, then how many games do you think you would have available to yourself! but if you decide not to open and you are the first in the market you will be able to take advantage of your network effects for a while but it won't last forever.... and for that very reason iTunes will not last forever (they are already losing many deals to Amazon, NBC is pulling their content ...) but in general it makes more sense for some platforms to be open than others, i.e. they can take more advantage of it. For instance, I would much rather see iPhone opening up than iPod. And in general if you are offering something unique that bundles up your platform with a specific kind of hardware, you will have more power to resist to opening up, such as the case with iPod or the gaming consoles for that matter