Exam Question 5

5. What are some of the issues raised by Media ownership in the videogames industry?

An issue raised by media ownership in the videogames industry would be the constant battle for exclusivity. One example of this would be the distribution of downloadable content for the game Grand theft auto 4 which the rights was bought by Microsoft for $50 million. This gave Microsoft a certain exclusivity and popularity that other companies needed to earn money due to the fact that they had something other companies didn't have. This is just one fact that shows just how popular GTA4 was and what lengths companies would go in order to get their hands on a fragment of ownership.
A further issue with the distribution of the final product of GTA4 was the fact that during previous releases of the series, Sony had the rights to distribute before other consoles. This was good for Sony as it earned them more money having such ownership as the gaming industry is extremely competitive. However with the arrival of GTA4 Rockstar had decided on a first, to allow both Sony and Xbox to release the game at the same time. This caused an issue for Sony as they were used to having the privellidge of having the game before anyone else did, but now had to share their rights and in the long term lose money. Although this was a problem with Sony, unsurprisingly it gained Xbox a good reputation for having the game out at the same time as the playstation, and in the long run would earn them money that they may not have had if the player couldn't wait for the release for the game on the xbox and instead purchased it on the playstation.
All in all videogame ownership is a very competitive market and costs lots of money to gain certain ownerships and privileges which would then bring in money to their own companies. only very rich and popular companies can afford to make deals with industries such as Rockstar as it is so popular.