Oligopoly & Game Theory
Three companies have run home consoles for thirty years. Every PlayStation move is studied before the controller ships.
For 30 years, the home video game console business has had three players - Sony with the PlayStation, Microsoft with the Xbox, Nintendo with whatever Nintendo decides to build that decade. There are no real fourth options. Every console launch by one of the three is a public move that the other two are guaranteed to study, copy, counter, or ignore in full view of every gamer on Earth. Each launch begins the same way. In November 2013, Sony launched the PlayStation 4 at $399 US dollars. Within months, Microsoft cut the connect, dropped the price to $399 and conceded the entire generation. By 2020, the PS4 had outsold the Xbox One roughly two to one across the cycle. Microsoft never made that mistake again. When the PS5 launched in November 2020 at $499, the Xbox Series X launched the same week at exactly the same price, the same number to the dollar.
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