this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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[–] Ottomateeverything 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like monopolistic practices rather than competing on services.

It literally is? They're literally not competing on services, they're competing via artificial scarcity.

[–] CleoTheWizard -1 points 1 year ago

Well, it entirely depends on how you look at things. Sometimes it’s monopolistic, other times it’s actual competition.

With Sony and Xbox, I dislike what Sony does with PS5 exclusives because I don’t think that it convinces people to switch to the PS5. What does do that is the PSVR2 and controller features. The actual features, not exclusives. Games are better on that system, so people can decide to swap.

With PC platforms, I care far far less. In fact, I’d say it’s nearly impossible to compete with the monopoly that is Steam without exclusives. I like steam, but imagine if they change course. PC gaming would be screwed. There is no valid competition.

Epic mostly does timed exclusives (the right thing), they just aren’t giving features which is frustrating. The conversation changes a lot if the platform doesn’t suck. If I like the platform that also has free games and also has new releases for a time, that’s competition and it’s cool with me. But since I like steam and they take games away from the steam monopoly, we call them a monopoly and dislike them.