I stumbled across this fascinating article. Perhaps if Nintendo wants the GameCube (or GC2) to succeed, they need to return to these practices that gave the NES it's 90% market dominance! Here is just a portion of the article:
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By the late '80s, Nintendo... was notorious for the iron-clad terms that it required third-party game publishers to agree to, which gave Nintendo full control over how many cartridges could be manufactured and prohibited publication of a game on rival systems until it had been available on the NES for two years. It's also alleged that Nintendo played favorites when meting out merchandise allotments to retailers, and stiffed stores that dared to drop prices or carry certain competing items. In short, Nintendo was accused of price fixing.
Various States began noticing Nintendo's questionable business practices, and eventually Congress and the Federal Trade Commission became involved. (snip) The FTC was jubilant, crowing about how it had "rejoined the battled against vertical price-fixing by manufacturers and retailers." This would send a message to other countries, it said, about the ethics of doing business in America.
COMPLETE ARTICLE:
http://gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/index23.shtmlIf Nintendo started requiring third-party publishers to develop exclusively for Nintendo, forced retailers to price-fix games or else lose their right to sell Nintendo games, and included lock-out chips to prevent developers from hacking the console, the next-gen GameCube 2 could repeat the NES' success.
Topic: Nintendo Sued For Price-Fixing by FTC (history lesson) (Read 3691 times)
