All-Pro Football 2K8 - The Next Tecmo Bowl?

[quietcool72]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaStar

Wow! Where do I begin. questions, is Pepsi in the business to eliminate Coke or is Pepsi in the business to compete with Coke and offer an alternative to the marketplace?(at a profit of course). And if Pepsi is in the business of eliminating Coke, is that realistic or sensible? There is a difference between "sensible business" and greed. Oh, I did watch Wallstreet, the point of the movie was that greed does not work. I guess you missed that part.

For any business, the number of customers is finite. Pepsi wants so much of the market that Coke is either forced out or hamstrung to the point of irrelevancy. Coke wants the same for Pepsi.

The technology company I work for wants to get Dell out of the school marketplace and get that finite number of buyers to buy our computers and services. This is done by price point, exclusive pack-in licenses with software (software aimed at that market) and by doing things like having focused campaigns pointing things out like Dell's tech support that is often outsourced to Southeast Asia, or how Dell makes up their margin on artificially inflated freight shipping charges equating to thousands of dollars above the actual shipper's cost...)

That kind of thing.

It isn't about playing nice. Its about playing legal- but not nice. But if Dell continues its downward slide, how can I say that I don't want it to happen, and that I don't want my "team" to succeed in my market?

You don't really think that myself or anyone else in the technology industry is in business to "offer alternatives", do you? We are in it to make the most money and get the biggest part of the market. (which is often DONE by offering alternatives, or a better product, mind you.)

That's like saying every NFL team should go 8 and 8 so its fair and nobody wins too much and nobody loses too much.

Heck no..

You are "in it to win it."

[quietcool72]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaStar

Oh, I did watch Wallstreet, the point of the movie was that greed does not work. I guess you missed that part.

Several factors in "Wall Street" and the hollywood ending....

1). You DONT break the law when fighting for your "Team" in business.

2). Hollywood needs to sell morality tales where focused, aggressive, greedy people fail.

3) Business- moreso than even in nature- is true Darwinism and natural selection at work. Compete well, be aggressive, be smart, be ahead of your competition... or be out of work. Yet underdog stories sell the best in Hollywood- so, like any business....Hollywood knows what they can market to the masses to generate the most revenue. Which is why the "Donald Trump Story" wouldn't be a popular Hollywood movie.

[NovaStar]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

For any business, the number of customers is finite. Pepsi wants so much of the market that Coke is either forced out or hamstrung to the point of irrelevancy. Coke wants the same for Pepsi. The technology company I work for wants to get Dell out of the school marketplace and get that finite number of buyers to buy our computers and services. This is done by price point, exclusive pack-in licenses with software (software aimed at that market) and by doing things like having focused campaigns pointing things out like Dell's tech support that is often outsourced to Southeast Asia, or how Dell makes up their margin on artificially inflated freight shipping charges equating to thousands of dollars above the actual shipper's cost...) That kind of thing. It isn't about playing nice. Its about playing legal- but not nice. But if Dell continues its downward slide, how can I say that I don't want it to happen, and that I don't want my "team" to succeed in my market? You don't really think that myself or anyone else in the technology industry is in business to "offer alternatives", do you? We are in it to make the most money and get the biggest part of the market. (which is often DONE by offering alternatives, or a better product, mind you.) That's like saying every NFL team should go 8 and 8 so its fair and nobody wins too much and nobody loses too much. Heck no.. You are "in it to win it."

I understand your point of view, I just don't wholeheartedly agree with it. To use your football analogy, teams are in it to win it, so they put their best foot forward and try to out do the competition with superior football. No football team is out their to remove competition, they are out there to make sure their team wins the ring by competing at a higher level. There is no greed concept in that scenerio(at least not on the field). It would be a whole different story if say the owner of the redskins went out and bought texas stadium as well as the logos to the dallas star and the cowboy name to make it so that dallas could not field a team. Instead they have to become the Austin Cowpokes. Sure they can still "compete" but that severerly hinders their ability to be successful doing it.

Additionally, Pepsi has no hopes or intention of removing Coke from the beverage industry, Pepsi just wants its share of the pie, whatever the consumer dictates(through the efforts of Pepsi's marketing and product offerings) that share to be. My position on the "killing competition" theory is that no company enters any business market to kill competition, but rather they enter to compete and or to gain superior, or majority market share. The notions of warfare do not sit within the confines of business is it purest form, and I quote "If a man builds a superior mouse trap then the world will beat a path to his doorstep", That is business and competition in its purest form.

Warfare exists on an entirely different theory, and the tenants of war, simply put, is any means employed that will gain victory or equal leverage will be employed. There is no fairness, there is no ethics. It is a base level existence. Business however, is not base level, it is the by product of an ordered and structured soceity. Therefore ethics and morality must be an integral part of its day to day functioning. Any CEO that confuses the two is short sighted and inbalanced.

[NovaStar]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

????? That wasn't my quote. That was NovaStars... My post only responded to that quote. (edit: edited my post to show it as a quote..)

Wait a minute, that was in your post box, you own up to it...Lol!

[quietcool72]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaStar

I understand your point of view, I just don't wholeheartedly agree with it. To use your football analogy, teams are in it to win it, so they put their best foot forward and try to out do the competition with superior football. No football team is out their to remove competition, they are out there to make sure their team wins the ring by competing at a higher level. There is no greed concept in that scenerio(at least not on the field). It would be a whole different story if say the owner of the redskins went out and bought texas stadium as well as the logos to the dallas star and the cowboy name to make it so that dallas could not field a team. Instead they have to become the Austin Cowpokes. Sure they can still "compete" but that severerly hinders their ability to be successful doing it. Additionally, Pepsi has no hopes or intention of removing Coke from the beverage industry, Pepsi just wants its share of the pie, whatever the consumer dictates(through the efforts of Pepsi's marketing and product offerings) that share to be. My position on the "killing competition" theory is that no company enters any business market to kill competition, but rather they enter to compete and or to gain superior, or majority market share. The notions of warfare do not sit within the confines of business is it purest form, and I quote "If a man builds a superior mouse trap then the world will beat a path to his doorstep", That is business and competition in its purest form. Warfare exists on an entirely different theory, and the tenants of war, simply put, is any means employed that will gain victory or equal leverage will be employed. There is no fairness, there is no ethics. It is a base level existence. Business however, is not base level, it is the by product of an ordered and structured soceity. Therefore ethics and morality must be an integral part of its day to day functioning. Any CEO that confuses the two is short sighted and inbalanced.

You went to Cal Berkeley, didn't you? And you have a government job, do you not? Fess up!

RE: Paragraph 1: There is no Soda Drink "league" whereby Pepsi outdoing Coke and coke going under would stop the "league" from existing. So were apples to oranges with football and team sports analogy with competing "products".

RE: Paragraph 2:
Yes, Pepsi wants coke out of commission (again, I mean legally) And Gateway wants Dell out of commission (again, legally)...etc. etc. etc. If you are beholden to stockholders in a free market society, and you keep recording the same "piece of the pie", and you are "content" with that piece of the pie- you will be replaced. The object of business is to grow the business- and, again, remember there's only a finite number of people to sell to. So do the math. You -as a businessman- want the biggest possible piece of the pie. It can be done ethically, and knock-down-drag-out competition IS ethical, so long as you aren't doing insider stock trading, physical sabotage of the competitor's property, cooking your own books, or doing unlawful corporate espionage... (There's a few others, but for the sake of brevity I won't list them all..)

As for the war analogy (which is used in the Japanese corporate structure)- again, we aren't talking about killing people or breaking laws. We are talking about doing everything within business law to gain an upper hand or strike a decisive blow (i.e. much more sales than the other guy.) Again, this is due to... (drumroll) ..a finite number of buyers.

If you are the CEO of Electronic Arts, and the NFL License comes up for bid... do you say "We need to bid on that and win"? Of course you do. And if you don't, by God you better work for the government because you'd never make it in the private sector where there's actual performance evaluation on your position. Not one single law was broken. Its the NFL's to sell.

but- to the point at hand, the humorous vilification of EA by some people on this board. The NFL owns its own intellectual property, just like the MLB. They can sell it as they see fit.

Yet, where's the NFL vilification? How many of you are boycotting watching NFL games?

But lest anyone think that 2K might have a higher degree of some assigned socialistic "integrity" regarding fairness BEYOND business law than EA...

lets not forget...
2K is the company that bought the exclusive rights to MLB games on PC...
...with no intent of making a PC baseball game.

The difference between EA ethics and 2K ethics is non existent. Its just that one has more capital to work with due to previous success..than does the other guy.

And because many like that other guy better...
It's considered "unfair".

So lets not assign anybody any white robes, wings, and violins for "ethics"...

[NovaStar]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

You went to Cal Berkeley, didn't you? And you have a government job, do you not? Fess up! RE: Paragraph 1: There is no Soda Drink "league" whereby Pepsi outdoing Coke and coke going under would stop the "league" from existing. So were apples to oranges with football and team sports analogy with competing "products". RE: Paragraph 2: Yes, Pepsi wants coke out of commission (again, I mean legally) And Gateway wants Dell out of commission (again, legally)...etc. etc. etc. If you are beholden to stockholders in a free market society, and you keep recording the same "piece of the pie", and you are "content" with that piece of the pie- you will be replaced. The object of business is to grow the business- and, again, remember there's only a finite number of people to sell too. So do the math. You -as a businessman- want the biggest possible piece of the pie. It can be done ethically, and knock-down-drag-out competition IS ethical, so long as you aren't doing insider stock trading, physical sabotage of the competitor's property, cooking your own books, or doing unlawful corporate espionage... (There's a few others, but for the sake of brevity I won't list them all..) As for the war analogy (which is used in the Japanese corporate structure)- again, we aren't talking about killing people or breaking laws. We are talking about doing everything within business law to gain an upper hand or strike a decisive blow (i.e. much more sales than the other guy.) Again, this is due to... (drumroll) ..a finite number of buyers. If you are the CEO of Electronic Arts, and the NFL License comes up for bid... do you say "We need to bid on that and win"? Of course you do. And if you don't, by God you better work for the government because you'd never make it in the private sector where there's actual performance evaluation on your position. Not one single law was broken. Its the NFL's to sell. but- to the point at hand, the humorous vilification of EA by some people on this board. The NFL owns its own intellectual property, just like the MLB. They can sell it as they see fit. Yet, where's the NFL vilification? How many of you are boycotting watching NFL games? But lest anyone think that 2K might have a higher degree of some assigned socialistic "integrity" regarding fairness BEYOND business law than EA... lets not forget... 2K is the company that bought the exclusive rights to MLB games on PC... ...with no intent of making a PC baseball game. So lets not assign anybody any white robes, wings, and violins for "ethics"...

Lol! I like the way you express yourself QC. No, I am not an employee of the government, actually I am a Corporate lawyer that does marketing law for a billion dollar corp(number 2 worldwide in what we sell) I say that to say, I am very familiar with business practices and I don't agree with them all even though I am employed and pretty much finance my video gaming habits with big business money.

Now, I know my theories are not main stream, but they still are sound. I agree, there are surely a finite number of consumers within any market, but that is not the crux of business theory. Understand that competition is the lifes blood of the marketplace, the theory that one is in the business to remove competition is a self consuming theory. Competition is the driving force, powered by the consumer, and in the marketplace, finite or not, the consumer will choose. To remove competition is to remove choice, when choice is removed the marketplace becomes stagnant, and one entity ruling the marketplace would destroy it.

Lets take a look at what we all experienced with ea and the license. ea acquired the license(how they actually went about getting it we disagree on) why did they acquire the license? greed (they got all football related licenses not just the nfl). Upon getting the licenses what happened to the consumer? we were either A) left with a inferior NG ea product, B) left to play no game at all (except 2k5 with FF's editor), or C) very happy that ea got the license because you are a madden fan anyway. The biggest cry was by those who had no company preference but understand that comp is healthy and good. When greed enters the equation, complacency enters with it, not unless you understand the business essence, inwhich case greed would not enter.

Ea got greedy, got the license then became complacent, more so than they had been. They sold the most they ever had (no comp), which is good for them, but bad for the consumer. A business removes comp based on the moves or strategies it makes in the marketplace relating to the product, not by the moves it makes outside of the marketplace based on greed. Competition and greed don't go hand in hand.

[xrams]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

????? That wasn't my quote. That was NovaStars... My post only responded to that quote. (edit: edited my post to show it as a quote..)

I must apologize quiet... I took the first line and didn't realize you were quoting some1 else...

However, I would like to post on this subject... It's quite interesting...

Agian... sorry 'bout mis-reading you....

X

[NovaStar]

Quote: Originally Posted by xrams

I must apologize quiet... I took the first line and didn't realize you were quoting some1 else... However, I would like to post on this subject... It's quite interesting... Agian... sorry 'bout mis-reading you.... X

Well thanks Xrams, now you are saying I have no credibility...Lol.