Keep Your Enemies Closer (Competition Within the Industry)

This next post will describe what competition is like between the big game companies we discussed last time.  Us gamers tend to make a big mistake in which we assume all the games industry is about is playing games, games and more games, but in fact it isn't as straight forward as that. We know this because of the earlier posts I have made, but we seem to forget there is a huge aspect of business involved in the games industry in which the gamers seem to forget. The main reason why gamers forget about the business aspect side of the industry is because all we care about is playing the games and rightfully so. So I promise or hope this post on competition between companies will be short and not as painful as you might think, plus hopefully you will learn something from it too.

Every game company whether it is a game developer or publisher will always have competition, due to there being so many companies wanting the sales and attention of gamers. There are other key things companies will strive for when going up against each other but as stated it is mainly the factors of who has the most sales and the biggest fan base of gamers. Competition between companies can be either be "clean" where there is no abuse given to one another i.e. bad mouthing off at the enemy's product on social media sites, or can be "dirty" where companies may start a verbal war with one another about who is best.

Usually it is the world wide game companies and those who think they've made their mark in the industry to start pointing the finger at their competition, whereas the smaller companies are aware of their competition but don't make a big deal about who is better, they just have a tendency to deliver the games and make their fans happy. It is also not a rare occurrence to see a company pour lots of money into a marketing campaign just to cheese of their competition, as this is widely done in the games entertainment sector. The perpetrators of such campaigns are usually link to the companies who have a games console in the market with one probably saying they are the best and most powerful gaming machine in the market.

A great example of heated competition between two game companies and at this particular time two console manufacturers would be SEGA's constant bashing of Nintendo during the 80s and 90s. When I write this hopefully some of you remember this or even lived through it. Basically, it was about SEGA saying they had the best console out which was the Sega Genesis in comparison to Nintendo's clunky old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), plus that was SEGA's words not mine on Nintendo's NES. SEGA would have stated in their television commercials they do what Nintendo don't which was often seen as Nintendon't on their ads. Anyway, this shows us just how vicious competition can be between two game companies, below is some materials of the famous SEGA vs Nintendo competition marketing campaign.

 
Hopefully now you realize the companies within the games industry don't hold hands or sing Ring Around the Rosie with one another but instead fight it out for the very last gamer to follow them. So this concludes this post with only one or two more posts to go on the business speak or terms of understanding the games industry, then we'll go head in on characters in the games industry. Thank you for reading, your time, support and I hope your enjoying this blog as much as I am, until next time then.

Image (1) Cross hairs, Ref: http://trinketsandtees.com/webpics/crosshairs.jpg
Image (2) SEGA does what Nintendon't, Ref: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/377390/blog/sega-does-what-nintendont-and-other-trolling-game-ads/?page=2#top_banner
Video from YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nsBoqJ6s8