Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> (or "how come we don't see a lot of Linux games?")
>
> THQ in distribution pact with Microsoft Game Studios
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | THQ Inc. on Wednesday said its ValuSoft division signed an agreement
> | with Microsoft Game Studios to be the exclusive U.S. distribution
> | partner for select Microsoft Windows-based PC products.
> `----
>
> http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:
> reuters.com:20061129:MTFH32482_2006-11-29_11-24-54_WNAS4365&type=
> comktNews&rpc=44
>
> http://tinyurl.com/ydrs3x
>
> The above isn't an ideal example, but...
>
> Can these commitments, much like "exclusives", stifle competition,
> especially when they come from a convicted monopoly? A word of mouth said
> that Microsoft also sought to acquire Capcom, having already absorbed many
> game makers.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It is as anticompetitive as licensing
requirements set up in a manner for OEM's to pay for Windows installation,
whether PC be sold with Windows or other OS installed. It is odd how
customer may get another OS distro CD to be installed by customer, but OEM
does not ship with other installed.
US Sherman Act:
http://volokh.com/posts/1158442194.shtml
| [Sasha Volokh, September 16, 2006 at 5:29pm]
| Antitrust research bleg:
|
| One of the reasons for the enactment of the antitrust laws was to
| safeguard political freedom by preventing the formation of large
| corporations powerful enough to control the government. Taft, in his book
| The Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court (written in 1914, after his
| presidency but before he joined the Supreme Court), said the Sherman Act
| had attacked methods of "suppressing competition and controlling prices"
| which "had resulted in the building of great and powerful corporations
| which had, many of them, intervened in politics and through use of corrupt
| machines and bosses threatened us with a plutocracy" (p. 4).
--
HPT
|
|
