Electronic Arts
In 1986, a team of programmers from an upstart video game company named Electronic Arts approached a former NFL head coach about working with them on a football video game.
Sounds interesting, said John Madden , who was broadcaster for CBS Sports at the time. But Madden wanted to be clear on just one thing: Unlike most football video games at the time, which didn’t use the full number of players on a team, Madden insisted that any game with his name on it be authentic. “If it’s not 11-on-11, it’s not real football,” Madden said.
The game programmers protested that they couldn’t do it. “Then come back to me when you can,” said Madden.
That conditional OK delayed the first version of Madden NFL Football for two years. The game eventually launched in 1989 on the Apple II personal computer. In the 15 years since, Electronic Arts has sold more than 30 million copies of Madden, making it the best-selling sports video game title in the industry’s history.
Unfortunately being the top selling sports video game and the top game publisher in the world had drawbacks. There been grumblings that EA does not innovate much anymore on its top selling game. All it seems is, come out with the same game with an updated roster year after year and place a 50 dollar price tag on it, And yet, gamers still buy it anyway.
In 1999, EA started to get competition in the sports video game genre. Sega began publishing the NFL 2K series which offered a comparable if not much more excellent graphics, presentation and gameplay. Sega continued year after year to improve and innovate its NFL 2k series, progressively chipping away from the sales of the EA’s Madden NFL series. Though EA never really got that worried as year after year it still end up outselling the competition, that is until last year.
Sega with its partnership with Take Two decided to reduce the retail price of all its sports video games to 20 US dollars (a significant reduction to the commonly standard price of 50 US dollars). That is when EA began to feel the pinch as the lower priced Sega game started to cut into EA’s market share, to the point that around November, EA eventually reduced the price of its sports games to 40 dollars.
But that did not stop there, one of the biggest news in the video gaming world in the past few weeks was the announcement that EA has gotten a 5 year
exclusive licensing agreement with the NFL. Essentially, EA has the sole right to to the NFL, including teams, players, and stadiums
Everyone knows that monopoly tends always to be a bad thing. With no competition, how much innovation we get to expect from future EA NFL titles? Only time will tell.
Starbucks
Vancouverites sure loves their coffee. Only here you can find 2 Starbucks coffee shop across the street from each other on an intersection and both still manage to thrive. Suprisingly, the infamous coffee shops on Robson and Thurlow even had its separate groups of patrons. Personally, I rarely go to Starbucks to be caffeinated, for the reason that Starbucks coffee is too strong (translation: too bitter) for me.
But that is not what my rant is.
Late last summer, Miriams, a family owned coffee shop in downtown Vancouver had closed down. It is hardly surprising with 8 other coffee shops within the two block radius, competition might have been that stiff. What greatly suprised most people is what replaced it. You guessed it, a Starbucks. Now this would have been okay if it is the only Starbucks in the area. But it does not make business sense when half a block away from one side of it is also a Starbucks and one block away from the other side is another Starbucks coffee. Effectively in this 2 blocks radius, 3 out of the 9 coffee shops are Starbucks .
I once read an article about the aggressive business model of Starbucks : Saturating an area with Starbucks coffee shop despite spreading the profit margin thin for the purpose of putting other coffee shops in the area out of business. When that is achieve, then it can consolidate the starbucks in the area into one shop.
During that time, I have dismissed the article as socialist garbage but with this unusual development, I am starting to believe their might be truth in that article. Even in the area I lived in which is just outside of downtown, there are at least 4 Starbucks within 10 minutes walking distance from where I live.
New Rider Publishing
Now this one is not a rant but a rave.
A year and a half ago, in the pursuit of honing my skills and in the spirit of continuing education, I bought a Flash MX instructional book (the title and the author of which would remain anonymous). The book had an accompanying CD containing supporting files which are mostly java files and the mysql database. But despite carefully following the author’s instruction the files never properly installed. With the book being out for a few months then, I figured the problem has already been brought into their attention and an updated installer might be available. So I emailed New Rider requesting information of the availability of a fix and the site where I can download it. The reply I got was quite unexpected. Apparently, they had received a couple of complaints about the book since it got published, errors and omissions on top of just the broken installer. Due to that, they were in the process of doing a revision of the book. For the inconvenience, they offered to ship to me free of charge any two New Rider published books. I was pleasantly surprised since my email did not had a hint of complaint at all, but I still emailed them back with my book choices.
And I thought that is the end of that since on my end as soon as the books arrived I was already a satisfied customer. But about 7 or 8 months later, I got another email from New Rider. This time stating that because of the difficulty they experienced in contacting the author and coordinating with her the revisions of the book, they decided to cancel the revision and take the book out of print. And once again, for the inconvenience, they offered to ship to me free of charge another pair of New Rider books of my choice.
Now if that is not extending customer service above and beyond what you normally expect, I an not sure what is. To think that my non-complaining email yielded me 4 books.
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I onced posed a question, when does a corporation crossed the line from a supported, well-liked company to an evil company. It seems to be a natural progression, as a company continous to be good on what they do, they grow and expand but at some point when it gets to a particular status and size, public perception changes. Companies like McD, Nike or Microsoft (*shiver*) seem to get a lot of bad rap all the time. Perception may be founded as in the case of EA recent action though the NFL has a bit of share on this for putting out the exclusivity license up for bids in the first place.
But then being a big company does not mean an automatic enlistment into the evil column. I am not quite sure how big a company New Rider Publishing is, but it is still sizeable enough to be a presence in my local bookstore. Yet their action left a good impression in my mind.
In all the answers I got to my question I found two to make sense: (1) When a company changed focused from creating jobs and performing customer service to building wealth and satisfying its shareholders (2) It is human nature to always root for the underdog, but when that underdog get successful enough to actually still be an underdog, people turncoats and root for the next underdog in their list.
well the second may not necessarily always true… but still make sense
Carmel’s recent blog entry was thought provoking and despite our loyalty to Apple products and innovations all throughout the years, the Apple rewards seems few and far between. However, Carmel has stated also what our attitude over this,
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ll remain loyal to Apple as long as I can manage to raise the funds (and it’s funny how I always seem to find the money to stay more or less up to date), but Apple falls short of being a great business”.
It seems most of the time, I tend to think that such attitude is what Apple has been banking on, “our loyalty no matter what”, so it rarely goes that extra mile of rewarding that loyalty. But then rewarding loyalty can mean differently to different people. Maybe Apple’s continuing innovation is reward by itself. The fact that Apple constantly come out with products that are far ahead in usability and quality in the marketplace, we tend to be more forgiving. But then how can you enjoy the rewards of innovations if you cannot afford it. I recently asked a colleague of mine who has been a Mac user for over a decade. “Has Apple ever offered a mail in rebate on any of its products?” His answer was a flat No as far as he remembers.
But I am not a business expert nor have I have intently followed Apple’s ups and downs in the past few years, so I won’t begin to speculate much on the “whys” of Apple’s business practices in regards to this. I let somebody else give a much better and more informed opinion of this.
A funny video on an Iraqi rebel not being pleased being given subtitle on an interview. Unfortunately it is in wmv format, but I hope you still get to see it.
Picture of the day
Apparently this species of catfish has been scaring the life of people in Southern Florida for 3 decades, for its ability to walk on land and make short migrations. (The Sun Sentinel)
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