Re: [DL] Pinnacle sold... (REALLY OT)

[Patrick Phalen <pphalen@yahoo.com>]

> Possibly - but you can't assign altruistic motives to
> WotC - the TSR 
> purchase was just part of the standard Hasbro plan of
> consolidation - 

Bullshit!
First off, Hasbro wasn't in the picture when this happened
Secondly, Adkinson is a gamer geek at heart and understood
the importance to the industry as a whole to keeping alive
in any fashion TSR. Sure, it *has* turned out to be a sound
business decision, but at the time, it looked silly
(consider that a few months before WotC had dropped its RPG
staff to concentrate on its "core" business...)


> A marketing strategy that seems quite similar to the
> marketing strategy of 
> Microsoft.  Real good for Microsoft, not so good for any
> other company or 
> any consumer that doesn't want to deal with Microsoft
> products.

Granted MS, is a giant, but this is a common practice in
the consumer goods industry called "Category Management"
The basics is that the biggest player in a Category (For
example P&G in Laundry detergent) is responsible for
growing the category for *all* of the players (since a
market share of a BIGGER number is a good thing)

> Unless - of course, WotC continues on it's path of
> undercutting the 
> distribution system.  After all, as the 900lb gorilla,
> everyone will HAVE 
> to come to WotC to get the products that are in demand.
> The means that the current distribution system does more
> good WotC 
> competitors than to WotC  - so,  of course, bypassing the
> distribution 
> system is a good business decision made by smart
> managers.

It's ironic that people said the same things when Alliance
"acquired" Chessex...

> We've seen this all before in the Microsoft history -
> small company with an 
> original idea gains a market advantage and then
> aggressively uses that 
> position to consolidate their position, dominate the
> market, coerce the 
> industry and crush the competition - stifling the growth
> that comes from 
> good competition.

You forget the fact that they continued to develop and
improve their product.
If we were all still using Wordstar 2000 in Dos 4.2, I
might see your point...
 
> But no - WotC isn't all bad.  After all, they just put a
> slap to the 
> industry practise of two inch wide margins and 16 point
> size font in 
> sourcebooks with the incredibly dense 3rd ed.


Once again I Call BULLSHIT!
There are *plenty* of companies putting out RPG books with
wide margins and more and more art..

> But hey. . . Microsoft does the same thing - when they
> decide to put forth 
> an effort into an arena where they are facing competition
>  they really 
> knock out some envelope pushing stuff - at least until
> they use their vast 
> resources and desktop monopoly to exhaust their
> competition and force them 
> out of business.

SO after MS "killed" Netscape. they stopped development on
IE?
After they Killed OS/2, They stopped development on
Operating systems?
Ditto 123, Wordperfect,etc...
Why do more people use Quicken than Money?
Etc...

> There is one vital point where the MS <--> WotC analogy
> breaks down, and 
> that's the fact that WotC is not a business/job
> requirement.  It's a 
> hobby.  

Which, of course, is the biggest problem with this
"industry" is the fact that too many people don't recognize
that this *IS* business we are talking about.  

Patrick



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