Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – is competition bad for innovation? (pic: Nintendo)
A reader makes the counter-intuitive argument that competition is bad for video games and uses Sony and Nintendo as their examples.
Since I game primarily on PC and Nintendo Switch I didn’t have too much interest in what is happening with Microsoft and their attempt to buy Activision Blizzard. I guess it’s kind of bad to see a rich company buy its way to success like this, but that’s life and I’m sure Sony would’ve done exactly the same thing if they had the money – so there’s no moral high ground here.
What did pique my interest though is one argument that Xbox fans were making (and I’m sure Microsoft probably did in court), suggesting that the extra competition for Sony was good for them and gaming in general. On the face of it that’s a fairly straightforward truism, but the more I’ve thought about it the more obviously false it seems.
First of all, it only makes sense with the implication that Sony is somehow resting on its laurels and becoming creatively complacent. A quick look at Metacritic shows that their games have been of a remarkably high quality for years now. The only complaints fans seem to have is that they’re starting to spend all their money on live service games… which is not something they would’ve likely done if Microsoft were not breathing down their neck.
Rather than improving anything, the renewed competition from Microsoft seems to be encouraging Sony to do the opposite of what fans want, just to try and compete. For example, they will now be obliged to try and create a Call Of Duty clone, to cover for the day when Microsoft makes it an Xbox exclusive – which I suspect is also not something fans would like Sony to be spending their time doing.
Competition, at least in the games industry, does not inspire innovation, it inspires panic and conservatism. Sony will no longer be free to innovate and do whatever it wants, happy in the knowledge that its dominance gives it a considerable safety net if some games or hardware ideas don’t work out. If their backs are up against the wall then the opposite is true and they have to concentrate on only pushing out surefire hits and not taking any risks.
If you prefer a neutral example then consider Nintendo, who have been around almost since the very beginning of gaming. They’ve had many highs and lows but all their best work comes from when they were in a dominant, industry leading position and all their worst is when they were being squeezed out by trying to play Microsoft and Sony at their own game.
Many questions have been asked recently, of whether Nintendo are direct competitors to Microsoft and Sony, and I would say they are not. Obviously, they’re in the same industry but neither rival makes anything similar to them in terms of either hardware or software. Nintendo is essentially without any direct competition and yet they continue to make the most acclaimed games of the last decade and the Switch is beloved by all.
Although no company is perfect Nintendo don’t have any particularly bad anti-consumer policies and certainly nothing that you wish they’d be scared into changing, because of more direct competition. I’d argue that Nintendo and Sony’s games and hardware are as good as they are precisely because they have not had any real competition for so long.
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Compare the Wii and Switch to the GameCube days, when Nintendo had generally good third party support (including Call Of Duty). It was a complete disaster and led to them completely changing direction with the Wii or risk going under.
In theory, it doesn’t seem right for any company to be too dominant but in video games… every time it happens it benefits customers rather than hurting them. My takeaway from all this is that the Microsoft acquisition will do exactly the opposite of what they’ve argued and that it will lead to worse and less innovative games from Sony. That may benefit Xbox but it certainly won’t benefit PlayStation owners.
By reader Amchor
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A reader makes the counter-intuitive argument that competition is bad for video games and uses Sony and Nintendo as their examples.
