Electronic Arts' Domination Of The Market - Bad?

Will writes "A recent article at Gamemethod makes claims about how big companies can squash the little guy, and good gaming along with it: 'With almost 600 million dollars in sales in 2003(not including December), and 20% of the entire market, Electronic Arts is a developing and publishing powerhouse... Why should you be worried that EA rules the American gaming market and dominates sales? Well, if EA becomes too large of a force in the industry, it has some potentially damaging side effects that will hurt us, the consumers.'" It goes on to specify that "competition breeds creativity", suggesting "there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game", and concluding that "the progress of games as a medium will continue, but at a snail's pace in comparison to the previous years of fierce competition."

Comments

On the subject of Need For Speed

[Sevn]

It's my favorite series. Hands down (I play it on the PC). You can argue about other racing games, but I love the feel, or at least I did. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 rocked. Quite impressive. I still play it online. It was the reason I forked out 200 bucks for a Logitech Momo Force. But Need For Speed Underground is VERY disappointing. In drag racing mode, my wheel simply doesn't work. Downloaded all patches for the game. Downloaded the Wingman 4.3 software. Installed any other patches I could find. That and I'm stuck doing "drifting" before I can go any further in the game. Instead of prior titles in the series where you could select from a board of possible paths to take, you have ONE path. And the fact that I think "drifting" is fucking stupid, and I suck at it means I can no longer enjoy this game. They did a great job appealing to the erector set wing, fast and furious wannabe crowd, but the gameplay flat out sucks. They also made "Hard" mode way too easy. Until "drifting", I hadn't lost a single race. Thank God I thought to quickly hit the arrow keys on my keyboard during my first drag race when I noticed my wheel wasn't working anymore. It works with everything else in the game. I'm definitely not impressed.

Headline Structure - Worse?

[M.C. Hampster]

n/t