I agree wholeheartedly. Additionally, the only people to lose are the current shareholders who (I know it sounds obvious) own the the company and its assets. Therefore any settlements are simply transfers from one shareholder to another (and the lawyers). Given that in a liquid market, any normal shareholder has the option to sell his shares at any time, ALL shareholders have been mislead, not simply those who bought in a certain window who happen to be represented in the suit. There's no ethical justification for this case.
High Definition/High Density DVD's are designed to carry HD content. So obviously the point he is trying to make is that you only need HD-DVD for High Definition Applications (read software). He is thus saying that he's not sure HD applications will be that important because there isn't much incremental entertainment value in having a more pristine picture, unless Application developers somehow can take advantage of this feature. Thus, eventually if the devs can make more of the football field visible using a better resolution, it would make HD-DVD worthwhile. Presumably, in order to have a HD application, you would need more space to hold textures/data/etc.
I don't think Tycho understood the point. I don't think you parroting Tycho understood the point either.
Second, Nintendo is a publicly traded company. It's up to the shareholders to decide whether they wish to be bought by Microsoft or not. If the shareholders are willing to turn down a lot of cash to stay independent, then its their perogative, not management's.
Finally, who cares whether they've been profitable or how much money they have in the bank? It's completely irrelevant. Tons of Merger/Acquisition deals go down every single year, and profitability/cash reserves have nothing to do with anything. At a fundamental level, the two CEO's look at whether value can be created by merging the two firms. If they think yes, then they move forward. Other people have made some points about Nintendo's corporate philosophy making them less likely to wish to be bought, but the profitability/cash point is way off...
Chalk it up as 'journalists never agree on trends.' An article on Businessweek's cover this week says the exact opposite-- Video games and studios are getting much closer, studios looking to buy devs/publishers, devs/publishers looking to make alliances with studios. I read both, and Businessweek is usually more accurate about industry trends than the NY Times. So take it with a grain of salt.
The question is not really whether movie games are universally good or bad, but whether the publishers are paying the right amount of money for the license. Also, remember that only a small fraction of games are hits, so there's a pretty good chance that a big movie-based game could flop. All the naysayers will point to this and say "See movies and games don't mix-- I told you so" when that is simply the standard operating economics of the industry.
There is one problem, and one problem only with World of Warcraft-- Blizzard isn't allowing character transfers across realms. All the problems we're talking about happen on something like 10% of the servers. When there are problems with my main character's server, I go play on a server that works. No one else seems willing to do this. To me, it's not a valid argument to demand your money back. There ARE servers up, just not the one with your primary character on it. If you're alliance, go do some horde quests (they're fun!).
Blizzard WAS a bit dumb when they were allowing folks to sign up to realms. If most people have the attitude "I want to be on the same server as my friends" and/or "I don't want to be on an empty server" it should come as no surprise that there was severe overpopulation of a few servers. On the flip side, folks would be complaining if there was 100% uptime and they couldn't get on the same servers as their friends, so what are you going to do?
I agree with you that everyone should find something else to do, but at the same time, when you are paying $15/mo. to play the game, if you set aside even one hour, let alone eight, to play the game, then you should be able to play.
What if $15 a month isn't enough to gaurantee that level of service? What if the level of hardware/support required to have five 9's uptime would require a $25 a month fee? Would you pay it? Would other customers pay it?
Keeping a MMORPG up isn't the same as keeping a website up. When you have 100 servers and 1 goes down, someone is going to complain. The 99 others won't say anything. It gives the illusion that there are more problems than their actually are. I play WoW on a High/Red server and haven't had any problems.
I'm not giving them a carte blanche for bad service, but I'm not sure what you do in an industry where 50% of the customers are complaining that the price is unreasonable and the other 50% are complaining that the service is unreasonable? What do you do when 50% of your customers complain that the product is not perfect at release and the other 50% demand it to be released ASAP so they can start playing NOW?
I wish folks would complain about the issues that Blizzard could reasonably improve rather than the ones that may be theoretical impossibilities given the current state of technology:
1) GM's not seeming to understand that their job is customer service, rather than some sort of enforcer. 2) Terrible forum management 3) Customer communication - IE what is causing problems, what is being done to resolve them, and when problems will be fixed.
This whole situation is a little bit analagous to the problems airlines have with customer service. Mechanical problems sometimes can't be anticipated. The trick to customer satisfaction actually has very little to do with statistical performance, but rather with expecation management.
After all, this is just a piece of client software for a server-based game: why can't I just download it and give Blizzard my credit card number to play the game?
With all the complaints about server uptime, Blizzard has said they're not going to release more boxes to the public until they feel they're ready to handle more customers.
People play FPS because they like the skill involved. That means living and dying by headshots, etc. In Planetside, you have the "cone of fire" which basically kills any skill involvement whatsoever.
Honestly, though, some people DON'T like the twitchfest that most FPS's are these days. I liked Planetside precisely because it didn't appeal to 14 year olds with ADD who can't wait 60 seconds to respawn.
I think it boils down to the level of teamwork you like in your FPS. Designers need to decide how much a single, excellent player can affect the flow of battle. Cone of Fire limited their effect, which makes it more of a tactical game, rather than a shoot-em-up game.
Regardless, another self-indulgent mediocre offering that continues to get in the way of Gabe and Tycho talking about video games, per their mandate.
Thank you... It's amazing in this season which they admit is so full of gaming opportunities, that they could waste so much time and talent on a topic that interests no one. The post sums it all up-- the fact that they could consider the project a success does not hinge on whether their audience enjoys it or not. Regardless of the bull they spout about doing this for fun AND/OR not caring about whether the fans enjoy their work, any publication requires its fans to enjoy the work. To say otherwise is simply posturing...
An "amazing writer" does not hand you a scrambled Rubik's Cube and ask you to solve it.
Well put. I couldn't agree more. I love Penny Arcade, but Tycho's writing is self-indulgent and oblique. Sometimes I think he checks every adjective for a possible thesaurus substitute.
It reminds me of the witty banter that characters zip back and forth in shows like Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls-- SAT words get blasted around at 6 per minute, and they barely pause to think before rattling off a seemingly brilliant observation that is really quite ordinary.
So this guy did some "analysis" and discovered that inflation happens when more money is created than is destroyed. Anyone with a degree in anything could tell you that.
The reason this happens in games is that game developers are reluctant to introduce money destroying mechanisms because it is inherently unfun to have your money destroyed. Heck, in the real world, if buildings, machinery, everything didn't decay we'd have the same problem too.
The only way to fix these problems is just to introduce some control loops. All you engineers out there know how to do this- the solution is trivial, but to do so would take away from the entertainment value of the game.
Honestly, I think the best way to destroy money in a fun way is to have wars (it is Warcraft after all). It's humanity's most effective way of destroying property after all. Oh wait, it's NOT fun when your elite mount that took you a month to save up for dies. You see, it's not that easy to balance an economy.
The only thing that matters to me is some sort of ordered ranking of games at any given time. If I'm in the mood for a game, I'll go out and buy a game. Typically I'll look at the RANKINGS, not the scores, and go buy the best one. Maybe I'm the only one in this boat, because frankly its hilarious to me that folks would argue about whether the game is a 9.5 or a 10. If you're listening to one reviewer to justify your gaming, you're much more trusting than I am. Gamerankings has about the best system there is to reduce site/reviewer bias. About this time of year, I say look at their top 5 or so, say that I have a budget for 2 and pick the ones that interest me. Isn't that the way most (non-hardcore) gamers buy games? I could care less if someone ranked a game 52/67.. All that really matters to me is how their score compares to other rankings they've done.
If anything, this delay will make it more likely for me to buy this game. By March or so, I'll be ready for a new release, and GT4 will hopefully be waiting for me there...
Nostalgia always wins. The author even admits it in his paper, but doesn't acknowledge it in his own biases. More along the same theme I see repeated ad nauseum.
- MUDs are better than MMORPGs - Pong was more fun than any NES game, and/OR - Super Mario Bros. was more fun than GTA:xxx. - Final Fantasy:? is not as good as Final Fantasy:* which I used to play with my college roomates.
Kids these days are the same as they were 20 years ago. They play something into the ground, get sick of it, and then pine for it when they have to start working for a living.
First off, these 'employees' are really day traders who are paying a commission to get access to the firm's software and hardware connections into the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. They're not real employees in any sense of the word. The more "employees" this Geneva Trading attracts to its company, the more money it makes.
What better marketing angle to exploit than 'people who are good at video games can make tons as traders?' You get a bunch of suckers in there who are told they're great and they blow through their cash. The only beneficiary is Geneva Trading. These kids aren't investment bankers or anything even close.
Re:Not outsourcing - from a business point of view
on
Inside Wal-Mart IT
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Therefore, when they don't outsource, they don't do so for the right business reasons, and CIOs elsewhere will take note. Over the long run, the market will do the right thing if you let it be.
The reason Walmart doesn't outsource is because they consider IT/IS to be a core competency in the sense that it's necessary to excel at them in order to have an excellent supply chain. Supply chain management is of course what Walmart considers to be its primary differentiator, so they need to have a competent IT department. Not every company needs to have IT be a core competency, so when they can 'get away' with outsourcing (whether its to a US firm like IBM/HP or to a foreign firm) then they'll do it.
Banks, huge retailers like Walmart, and technology companies may have tested the waters with outsourcing, but they won't commit to it because they're in IT-dominated industries. If you don't have the best IT on the block and you're a bank, you're not going to be around in the future. Companies that differentiate themselves on engineering/manufacturing (like auto companies) or marketing (like packaged goods companies) or research (like pharma companies) probably don't need to differentiate on most IT functions and therefore will probably outsource successfully.
A slashdotter is furiously spinning his wheels trying to figure out how to pin this on Microsoft. Because we all know that serious security issues can only be the result of evil capitalists cutting corners and simultaneously writing bloated code to satisfy the sinful graphical desires of lusers.
But unless the publisher stipulates otherwise (and I'd imagine that there's probably a publisher that's willing to work with a developer on this), there's no reason that a game cannot be sold both through traditional channels and online channels.
I liked your post except for this argument. You learn the exact opposite in Marketing 101- channels cannot conflict with each other. No retailer is going to stock your product, give it good shelf positioning, in-store displays, anything, if you're out there hocking the product for less on your own web site. It's a big no-no in marketing to have "channel conflict" between your various distribution methods, but going direct around retailers is like sticking your thumb in their eye. Retailers (who ARE your customers after all) tend to put up with direct-to-consumer distribution only so long as it doesn't eat into their sales too much. You cannot charge less to the consumer than your retail channels!
So, If you're not hocking it for less $$$, you're providing a substandard product (no CD, box, printed manual) to your consumers for the same price, so why bother?
This is a huge problem in most industries, and the general answer is that you need to differentiate the product you sell direct and those you sell through channels, if you sell direct at all. Again, your post makes a good argument why online distro is good, but I really do not believe that you can go with a split online/retail distrubution strategy.
A company without someone who is an expert in marketing and/or sales is doomed to failure. Every sentence in the article reinforces their chief problem-- they were focused only on product development. Good products make for easier sales, they rarely sell themselves.
The duo seemed to despise doing anything they didn't consider "real work." If that's the case, be a dev/artist for someone else! Don't start your own company and expect to be "doing the thing you love" 8 hours a day, five days a week." I've been an entrepreneur-- you spend 1/3 of your time working on what you want to do and 2/3 of the time working on the things you have to do to make payroll/rent/expenses.
The average CEO collected $155,769 per week, compared with the $517 earned weekly by the average production worker.
This issue has much more to do with perceptions of fairness than it actually has to do with anything else. While I don't intend to justify the disparity, consider this: If those "major corporations" have 5,000 to 10,000 workers, and you confiscated all of the CEO's pay, it would come out to about $15 to $30 per week. Take out taxes, and you're down to $10-20 per week. It's not going to change the world to sack all those CEO's, but it may help morale. Folks are always much more concerned with what they're getting in relative terms than they are in absolute terms. Everyone's usually satisfied with their salary until they find out their cubemate makes more...
With proprietary solutions, there are full indepth analyses of market need, product placement, user targeting, etc etc, which as far as I can tell, open source projects lack.
Detailed market/customer analysis doesn't really seem to exist in the OSS world, but it is acheived indirectly through natural selection of projects. If no one likes a project, no one will jump on and contribute, and eventually the project will die when it gets usurped by a project that actually provides value. There's a zillion open source projects out there- most of them are garbage and most of them will die.
The popular projects- just like a closed product- have the right mix of technical superiority/featues/whatever that gets people excited to contribute. The only problem is that once a project gains enough momentum, there's little control mechanism in place to make sure that devs continue improving the special sauce- whatever magic it was that got folks excited about the project.
Of course, this method leads to the success of projects that appeal to programmers, not users (be they technical or non-technical). This is the fundamental reason why a project can be technically superior from year to year, while still not popular with users-- the culling of bad programs only happens when folks don't enjoy contributing, not when the end product stinks.
In the corporate world, sometimes the same thing is done to achieve market analysis- it's the "see what sticks" technique.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree wholeheartedly. Additionally, the only people to lose are the current shareholders who (I know it sounds obvious) own the the company and its assets. Therefore any settlements are simply transfers from one shareholder to another (and the lawyers). Given that in a liquid market, any normal shareholder has the option to sell his shares at any time, ALL shareholders have been mislead, not simply those who bought in a certain window who happen to be represented in the suit. There's no ethical justification for this case.
High Definition/High Density DVD's are designed to carry HD content. So obviously the point he is trying to make is that you only need HD-DVD for High Definition Applications (read software). He is thus saying that he's not sure HD applications will be that important because there isn't much incremental entertainment value in having a more pristine picture, unless Application developers somehow can take advantage of this feature. Thus, eventually if the devs can make more of the football field visible using a better resolution, it would make HD-DVD worthwhile. Presumably, in order to have a HD application, you would need more space to hold textures/data/etc.
I don't think Tycho understood the point. I don't think you parroting Tycho understood the point either.
Second, Nintendo is a publicly traded company. It's up to the shareholders to decide whether they wish to be bought by Microsoft or not. If the shareholders are willing to turn down a lot of cash to stay independent, then its their perogative, not management's.
Finally, who cares whether they've been profitable or how much money they have in the bank? It's completely irrelevant. Tons of Merger/Acquisition deals go down every single year, and profitability/cash reserves have nothing to do with anything. At a fundamental level, the two CEO's look at whether value can be created by merging the two firms. If they think yes, then they move forward. Other people have made some points about Nintendo's corporate philosophy making them less likely to wish to be bought, but the profitability/cash point is way off...
Chalk it up as 'journalists never agree on trends.' An article on Businessweek's cover this week says the exact opposite-- Video games and studios are getting much closer, studios looking to buy devs/publishers, devs/publishers looking to make alliances with studios. I read both, and Businessweek is usually more accurate about industry trends than the NY Times. So take it with a grain of salt.
The question is not really whether movie games are universally good or bad, but whether the publishers are paying the right amount of money for the license. Also, remember that only a small fraction of games are hits, so there's a pretty good chance that a big movie-based game could flop. All the naysayers will point to this and say "See movies and games don't mix-- I told you so" when that is simply the standard operating economics of the industry.
There is one problem, and one problem only with World of Warcraft-- Blizzard isn't allowing character transfers across realms. All the problems we're talking about happen on something like 10% of the servers. When there are problems with my main character's server, I go play on a server that works. No one else seems willing to do this. To me, it's not a valid argument to demand your money back. There ARE servers up, just not the one with your primary character on it. If you're alliance, go do some horde quests (they're fun!).
Blizzard WAS a bit dumb when they were allowing folks to sign up to realms. If most people have the attitude "I want to be on the same server as my friends" and/or "I don't want to be on an empty server" it should come as no surprise that there was severe overpopulation of a few servers. On the flip side, folks would be complaining if there was 100% uptime and they couldn't get on the same servers as their friends, so what are you going to do?
I agree with you that everyone should find something else to do, but at the same time, when you are paying $15/mo. to play the game, if you set aside even one hour, let alone eight, to play the game, then you should be able to play.
What if $15 a month isn't enough to gaurantee that level of service? What if the level of hardware/support required to have five 9's uptime would require a $25 a month fee? Would you pay it? Would other customers pay it?
Keeping a MMORPG up isn't the same as keeping a website up. When you have 100 servers and 1 goes down, someone is going to complain. The 99 others won't say anything. It gives the illusion that there are more problems than their actually are. I play WoW on a High/Red server and haven't had any problems.
I'm not giving them a carte blanche for bad service, but I'm not sure what you do in an industry where 50% of the customers are complaining that the price is unreasonable and the other 50% are complaining that the service is unreasonable? What do you do when 50% of your customers complain that the product is not perfect at release and the other 50% demand it to be released ASAP so they can start playing NOW?
I wish folks would complain about the issues that Blizzard could reasonably improve rather than the ones that may be theoretical impossibilities given the current state of technology:
1) GM's not seeming to understand that their job is customer service, rather than some sort of enforcer.
2) Terrible forum management
3) Customer communication - IE what is causing problems, what is being done to resolve them, and when problems will be fixed.
This whole situation is a little bit analagous to the problems airlines have with customer service. Mechanical problems sometimes can't be anticipated. The trick to customer satisfaction actually has very little to do with statistical performance, but rather with expecation management.
After all, this is just a piece of client software for a server-based game: why can't I just download it and give Blizzard my credit card number to play the game?
With all the complaints about server uptime, Blizzard has said they're not going to release more boxes to the public until they feel they're ready to handle more customers.
People play FPS because they like the skill involved. That means living and dying by headshots, etc. In Planetside, you have the "cone of fire" which basically kills any skill involvement whatsoever.
Honestly, though, some people DON'T like the twitchfest that most FPS's are these days. I liked Planetside precisely because it didn't appeal to 14 year olds with ADD who can't wait 60 seconds to respawn.
I think it boils down to the level of teamwork you like in your FPS. Designers need to decide how much a single, excellent player can affect the flow of battle. Cone of Fire limited their effect, which makes it more of a tactical game, rather than a shoot-em-up game.
Regardless, another self-indulgent mediocre offering that continues to get in the way of Gabe and Tycho talking about video games, per their mandate.
Thank you... It's amazing in this season which they admit is so full of gaming opportunities, that they could waste so much time and talent on a topic that interests no one. The post sums it all up-- the fact that they could consider the project a success does not hinge on whether their audience enjoys it or not. Regardless of the bull they spout about doing this for fun AND/OR not caring about whether the fans enjoy their work, any publication requires its fans to enjoy the work. To say otherwise is simply posturing...
An "amazing writer" does not hand you a scrambled Rubik's Cube and ask you to solve it.
Well put. I couldn't agree more. I love Penny Arcade, but Tycho's writing is self-indulgent and oblique. Sometimes I think he checks every adjective for a possible thesaurus substitute.
It reminds me of the witty banter that characters zip back and forth in shows like Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls-- SAT words get blasted around at 6 per minute, and they barely pause to think before rattling off a seemingly brilliant observation that is really quite ordinary.
So this guy did some "analysis" and discovered that inflation happens when more money is created than is destroyed. Anyone with a degree in anything could tell you that.
The reason this happens in games is that game developers are reluctant to introduce money destroying mechanisms because it is inherently unfun to have your money destroyed. Heck, in the real world, if buildings, machinery, everything didn't decay we'd have the same problem too.
The only way to fix these problems is just to introduce some control loops. All you engineers out there know how to do this- the solution is trivial, but to do so would take away from the entertainment value of the game.
Honestly, I think the best way to destroy money in a fun way is to have wars (it is Warcraft after all). It's humanity's most effective way of destroying property after all. Oh wait, it's NOT fun when your elite mount that took you a month to save up for dies. You see, it's not that easy to balance an economy.
Uhh no it doesn't that's why it was Total GROSS
No, Blizzard/Vivendi's gross revenue is whatever sales they receive from their customers- the retailers. That's the definition of gross revenue.
So in that one day, selling 240,000 units at $50 each means making $12 million dollars in one day.
That ignores the retailer's cut, which is probably in the ballpark of 50%.
The only thing that matters to me is some sort of ordered ranking of games at any given time. If I'm in the mood for a game, I'll go out and buy a game. Typically I'll look at the RANKINGS, not the scores, and go buy the best one. Maybe I'm the only one in this boat, because frankly its hilarious to me that folks would argue about whether the game is a 9.5 or a 10. If you're listening to one reviewer to justify your gaming, you're much more trusting than I am. Gamerankings has about the best system there is to reduce site/reviewer bias. About this time of year, I say look at their top 5 or so, say that I have a budget for 2 and pick the ones that interest me. Isn't that the way most (non-hardcore) gamers buy games? I could care less if someone ranked a game 52/67.. All that really matters to me is how their score compares to other rankings they've done.
"Guild Wars is getting ready to beta test again on December 4th."
What a coincidence. World of Warcraft is also getting ready to beta test on December 4th too.
I agree with your point to a point.
If anything, this delay will make it more likely for me to buy this game. By March or so, I'll be ready for a new release, and GT4 will hopefully be waiting for me there...
The introduction was almost like watching The Lords of the Rings movies. Amazing!
This is because it's a blatant rip-off of the Lord of the Rings! I mean dwarves? Elves? Jeez, gimme a break...
Nostalgia always wins. The author even admits it in his paper, but doesn't acknowledge it in his own biases. More along the same theme I see repeated ad nauseum.
- MUDs are better than MMORPGs
- Pong was more fun than any NES game, and/OR
- Super Mario Bros. was more fun than GTA:xxx.
- Final Fantasy:? is not as good as Final Fantasy:* which I used to play with my college roomates.
Kids these days are the same as they were 20 years ago. They play something into the ground, get sick of it, and then pine for it when they have to start working for a living.
It's people like that which make me happy to get the hell out of this country with it's rapidly declineing school systems.
The ironing of this sentence is killing me...
First off, these 'employees' are really day traders who are paying a commission to get access to the firm's software and hardware connections into the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. They're not real employees in any sense of the word. The more "employees" this Geneva Trading attracts to its company, the more money it makes.
What better marketing angle to exploit than 'people who are good at video games can make tons as traders?' You get a bunch of suckers in there who are told they're great and they blow through their cash. The only beneficiary is Geneva Trading. These kids aren't investment bankers or anything even close.
Therefore, when they don't outsource, they don't do so for the right business reasons, and CIOs elsewhere will take note. Over the long run, the market will do the right thing if you let it be.
The reason Walmart doesn't outsource is because they consider IT/IS to be a core competency in the sense that it's necessary to excel at them in order to have an excellent supply chain. Supply chain management is of course what Walmart considers to be its primary differentiator, so they need to have a competent IT department. Not every company needs to have IT be a core competency, so when they can 'get away' with outsourcing (whether its to a US firm like IBM/HP or to a foreign firm) then they'll do it.
Banks, huge retailers like Walmart, and technology companies may have tested the waters with outsourcing, but they won't commit to it because they're in IT-dominated industries. If you don't have the best IT on the block and you're a bank, you're not going to be around in the future. Companies that differentiate themselves on engineering/manufacturing (like auto companies) or marketing (like packaged goods companies) or research (like pharma companies) probably don't need to differentiate on most IT functions and therefore will probably outsource successfully.
A slashdotter is furiously spinning his wheels trying to figure out how to pin this on Microsoft. Because we all know that serious security issues can only be the result of evil capitalists cutting corners and simultaneously writing bloated code to satisfy the sinful graphical desires of lusers.
But unless the publisher stipulates otherwise (and I'd imagine that there's probably a publisher that's willing to work with a developer on this), there's no reason that a game cannot be sold both through traditional channels and online channels.
I liked your post except for this argument. You learn the exact opposite in Marketing 101- channels cannot conflict with each other. No retailer is going to stock your product, give it good shelf positioning, in-store displays, anything, if you're out there hocking the product for less on your own web site. It's a big no-no in marketing to have "channel conflict" between your various distribution methods, but going direct around retailers is like sticking your thumb in their eye. Retailers (who ARE your customers after all) tend to put up with direct-to-consumer distribution only so long as it doesn't eat into their sales too much. You cannot charge less to the consumer than your retail channels!
So, If you're not hocking it for less $$$, you're providing a substandard product (no CD, box, printed manual) to your consumers for the same price, so why bother?
This is a huge problem in most industries, and the general answer is that you need to differentiate the product you sell direct and those you sell through channels, if you sell direct at all. Again, your post makes a good argument why online distro is good, but I really do not believe that you can go with a split online/retail distrubution strategy.
A company without someone who is an expert in marketing and/or sales is doomed to failure. Every sentence in the article reinforces their chief problem-- they were focused only on product development. Good products make for easier sales, they rarely sell themselves.
The duo seemed to despise doing anything they didn't consider "real work." If that's the case, be a dev/artist for someone else! Don't start your own company and expect to be "doing the thing you love" 8 hours a day, five days a week." I've been an entrepreneur-- you spend 1/3 of your time working on what you want to do and 2/3 of the time working on the things you have to do to make payroll/rent/expenses.
The average CEO collected $155,769 per week, compared with the $517 earned weekly by the average production worker.
This issue has much more to do with perceptions of fairness than it actually has to do with anything else. While I don't intend to justify the disparity, consider this: If those "major corporations" have 5,000 to 10,000 workers, and you confiscated all of the CEO's pay, it would come out to about $15 to $30 per week. Take out taxes, and you're down to $10-20 per week. It's not going to change the world to sack all those CEO's, but it may help morale. Folks are always much more concerned with what they're getting in relative terms than they are in absolute terms. Everyone's usually satisfied with their salary until they find out their cubemate makes more...
With proprietary solutions, there are full indepth analyses of market need, product placement, user targeting, etc etc, which as far as I can tell, open source projects lack.
Detailed market/customer analysis doesn't really seem to exist in the OSS world, but it is acheived indirectly through natural selection of projects. If no one likes a project, no one will jump on and contribute, and eventually the project will die when it gets usurped by a project that actually provides value. There's a zillion open source projects out there- most of them are garbage and most of them will die.
The popular projects- just like a closed product- have the right mix of technical superiority/featues/whatever that gets people excited to contribute. The only problem is that once a project gains enough momentum, there's little control mechanism in place to make sure that devs continue improving the special sauce- whatever magic it was that got folks excited about the project.
Of course, this method leads to the success of projects that appeal to programmers, not users (be they technical or non-technical). This is the fundamental reason why a project can be technically superior from year to year, while still not popular with users-- the culling of bad programs only happens when folks don't enjoy contributing, not when the end product stinks.
In the corporate world, sometimes the same thing is done to achieve market analysis- it's the "see what sticks" technique.