StingingVelvet wrote on Jul 20, 2011, 15:30:
Dev wrote on Jul 20, 2011, 15:18:
Yeah... no. They SHOULD plan far ahead, but most don't from what I've seen. They take short term gains over long term far far too often.
I don't think you and I are really talking about the same thing. Yes, profit-wise they do obsess on quarterly reports. What I mean is more along the lines of long-term business mutations and planning for emerging or changing markets.
For example almost everything Microsoft is doing right now is geared toward planning for a future where the home PC, including a laptop, is dead. Apple are doing much better at that, but MS is still gearing up for it. When I say EA are thinking very far ahead I am talking about the shifting market toward online services and direct online distribution through the PC and mobile. Valve thought very far ahead with Steam when Half-Life 2 came out.
I mentioned a number of those cases in the reply you quoted from:) Such as the music and movie and book industries, and how they did NOT embrace those disruptive technologies, and missed out on HUGE profits.
With valve, I don't give them that much credit. Steam was mostly intended to make it easier to patch valve's own games and have a direct way to sell valve's own games directly to the end user, because they didn't like how much profit the retail sales were taking away from them. It took years for them to add anything other than valve's own catalog to the mix, after it started taking off. Once they noticed the huge sales and profits coming in, the hammer pounded on their heads long enough that they got the message and started selling other titles, and becoming a mainstream digital distribution platform rather than just a single companies way of selling their own titles directly to the end consumer.
In large part it was luck, and being fairly friendly and convenient to the end consumer (such as without trying to go whack crazy on DRM), and being early to market that got steam where it is today.
With MS and planning for future without a PC, that's kinda stuff has been going on for decades, starting back in the thin-client days. Lots of companies (including MS I believe) have failed at TV appliances trying to get that going. MS has even failed at trying to sell cell phones. Didn't they kill their cell phone after less than a month on the market?