What are some of the issues raised by Media ownership in the videogames industry?

Media Ownership is ownership of the rights of a concepts,property,idea - they can make money as other companies have to gain permission or license to that concept,property,idea. Issues of having Media Ownership include: companies having a similar idea, failure of the game content, one company using their power of the ownership to manipulate console companies.

One of the issues raised by Media Ownership in the video games industry, could be another company has a similar idea but it could go against the Media Ownership license of the other company. For example Rockstar's, Grand Theft Auto Vice City is similar in the idea of the game which involves violence, stealing and driving cars and tasks in Volition Inc.,Saints Row. This would be an issues as consumers could prefer Saints Row to GTA Vice City, so could separate consumers as some of them may only own one of the consoles but could only buy one of the games. Also because of the difference in release dates, people could say that Saints Row was incredibly similar to GTA Vice City which was release in 2002 whereas Saints Row was released in 2006. However there are enough differences to say Saints Row was not a copy of GTA Vice City, as the locations are different and also you can create your own character in the game Saints Row, which means the consumer can identify to the character as it may have the same characteristics as the consumer themselves.

An issue of Media Ownership is that it gives some game companies a lot of power over their game and who can gain license for the concept,property, idea. An example of this would be Rockstar previously gave Sony exclusivity to the GTA series, however when it came to the release of GTA IV Rockstar decided not to give Sony exclusivity. Also Rockstar used their Media Ownership of GTA IV to release the game on Sony, PlayStation, PSP and Microsoft Xbox. Rockstar then allowed Microsoft have a downloadable content for the Xbox, however this cost them $50 million to have for only 2 years.

Another issue of having Media Ownership of a concept,property, idea is that it does not always guarantee success in the video game that is produced. As E.T was a blockbuster film Atari believed it would be a good idea to get the rights of the film to make a game based on the narrative of E.T. However, the game did not get as much interest as Atari thought so the game failed in becoming as popular as the film. The reason the game was such a failure was because the negotiations between the original producer Steven Spielberg and Atari, took so long there development time was shortened which means the game was not to the full expectations of the audience, therefore Atari lost a lot of revenue as the consumers were sending the game back. This shows the Media Ownership of the rights of a concept sometimes do not fulfill expectations of what the consumers want, even though the company had exclusivity to the concept of E.T as a video game.

In conclusion, the main issue of Media Ownership in the video games industry is that one company can use the ownership to manipulate major console companies. This is the main issue as the company demand higher preferences for allowing other companies to have permission for either exclusivity or add-ons. The other issues are also important as they contribute to the success of the company that own the Media Ownership as failure of a game could lead to a negative perspective of the company.