Competition(or lack thereof) Part II - bluengold34_OS's Blog

bluengold34_OS's Blog

Competition(or lack thereof) Part II

Posted on April 10, 2013 at 08:23 PM.

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(Contd�.) While it�s easy to say it has been exclusive deals that have caused the lack of competition, there really are very few instances where the lack of competition is directly the result of exclusive licensing. The MLB, NASCAR, NCAA basketball, and now NCAA football licenses are currently considered non-exclusive, so there are some great licenses available for companies to take advantage of, but most have chosen not to.

The investment of time, personnel, and overall resources are considered a losing venture in most developers eyes for a lot of these licenses. Is it from lack of marketing, bad release timing, or poor title quality that cause this? The fact is it�s probably a combination of these three factors plus even more. We still maintain that if more than one developer put out a quality title with any of the above mentioned licenses, that the market is big enough to sustain them both, and return a solid investment to both investors.

Competition is what drives and creates new innovations and healthy competition between two companies is always a good thing. Who wins when that happens, the consumer does, but right now that is happening far too little. Right now we are stuck with singular agendas and minimal yearly improvements. And if we are being honest here, that probably is not going to change very soon.
Our one hope as gamers is truly resting on the new generation of consoles. We are hoping that more developers will be inclined to take the financial risk in developing and releasing multiple titles in the same genre by the 2nd and 3rd yearly cycle on the new PS4 and Xbox.

We need two NBA games, and we should have that in by this Fall. We need two baseball games, but there is no guarantee of that after this cycle, unless 2K continues its relationship with MLB, or EA or some other developer jumps into the ring. Having two NCAA football titles would be great also, but with a certain lawsuit pending, we are extremely worried that any type of college game(as we know them) may be a thing of the past. We would also love to see a second company such as Codemasters jump into the NASCAR ring and see what two companies feeding off of each other, could do. Sadly, other than a new baseball game, we doubt we will see competition in any of the sport titles we just mentioned.

As a consumer it falls back on us to hold back on purchasing sub-par titles, but it seems the industry looks at this as a lack of interest in said titles, when really it was a lack of interest in a bad title, and that is the sad reality of it all.