> Let the consumers decide what is best for them. Both business models should be allowed.
Yeah! And let's make sure the customers have the choice of whether flour should have asbestos in it! And whether watches should have radium dials!
Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition. The console market is almost the textbook definition of a non-free market: only three players of any consequence, each of them giant, multi-hundred-billion-dollar megacorps, and with very few actual distinctions between them.
When one business model is more obviously beneficial to the megacorps—not just in terms of profit, but in terms of control—it's going to tend to dominate, regardless of "consumer choice". Let's make sure that we, the consumers, get to still have choices, shall we? And the only way to do that is with government regulation.
> Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition.
It’s even worse than that. It only works with goods that are fungible and suppliers that are interchangeable. Otherwise it’s just a race to the bottom to build higher walls, increase friction and seek to extract rent from an audience that’s as captive as possible.
Indeed: and the most common good that is largely non-fungible is media.
Sure, if all I'm looking for is "entertainment", I can watch Star Wars or play Final Fantasy or read The Lord of the Rings. And for some people who enjoy gaming, they'd be just as happy with Call of Duty as they would with Battlefield as they would with some version of Halo.
But if I've heard about this new game Breath of the Wild and it sounds really cool, the only way I can experience that is, in fact, to play Breath of the Wild. And the only way to play Breath of the Wild is to have a Switch. And the only company that makes the Switch is Nintendo.
And while some of the other big names in gaming have been moving away from console exclusivity (which is an unqualified benefit to us gamers), the games themselves are still (largely) nonfungible.
Yeah! And let's make sure the customers have the choice of whether flour should have asbestos in it! And whether watches should have radium dials!
Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition. The console market is almost the textbook definition of a non-free market: only three players of any consequence, each of them giant, multi-hundred-billion-dollar megacorps, and with very few actual distinctions between them.
When one business model is more obviously beneficial to the megacorps—not just in terms of profit, but in terms of control—it's going to tend to dominate, regardless of "consumer choice". Let's make sure that we, the consumers, get to still have choices, shall we? And the only way to do that is with government regulation.