I don't see them as monopoly when there are alternatives. You can go about your life without paying them a cent, as you decided to do.
Well, it doesn't matter what you "see" or "feel" or "think," it only matters what is true.
True, you don't have to buy a Windoze PC. You can buy a Mac, which I believe is a far superior platform. You can buy or build a PC, and use an alternative OS such as Linux. But look at what you suddenly get involved in.
- Compatibility limitations, lots of them.
- Headaches, unless you're a Linux wizard. Linux is coming along, but it's far from plug n play, and support isn't widespread with most software or hardware. Most of the time, you have to hope there's a FAQ addressing your issue, or a friendly ear awake on a message board.
- Limited internet access, limited content access.
Microsoft really has the computer world about wrapped up, and hardly anyone sees this as a good thing if they manage to pull this off in the gaming and entertainment world too.
As for not paying anything to M$ directly, I hope! Indirectly though, I'm quite doubtful. It's clear to me if not to you that Microsoft is patent "land grabbing." I guess the royalty fee MS began demanding from anyone who had content on random access memory using their table system system escaped your notice...
My point is that they (SONY) try (very hard, granted) to be one, and are all about the money, and that can be said to most major manufacturers. They (M$) have just been more successful at it. (edited for clarity)
You're going to have to give me some indication of how "very hard" SONY is trying to become a monopoly. For instance, rather than coming up with a convoluted scheme to patent illuminated flat screen displays, say for PC monitors and TVs, they not only allow Samsung to make their own TVs, they buy their flat screen displays
from them. Or say, 3D technology. Has SONY come up with some twisted legal method to have everyone who makes a 3D device give them a royalty for it? No. What about movie houses? Or music companies? Is Virgin giving SONY Music any money? Are the other movie companies being squashed by SONY/Columbia? Hardly.
Now, when you buy a CD, you are paying a hefty fee. Some does go to SONY/Philips because they did invent the format after all. But the fee I'm talking about is to the
music industry, the RIAA, because of rampant music copying. This goes way back to the creation of the cassette, because the music industry saw it as a threat to vinyl record sales, since albums could be copied with essentially no loss of quality.
Now in a sense I agree with you, in that SONY Corp is a money hungry beast, and would love to end up
being a monopoly. But working to
be one? No evidence whatsoever.
Edit:
- Why do you think GT is a PS exclusive, and not cross platform?
(and I still believe they delayed GT in March to sell 3D Tvs as well)
Do I really need to answer this??
There is this thing known as the "exclusive," which every system maker needs to make their platform desirable. This is what Halo was
going to be for the Mac, before M$ doled out suitcases of money.
Where was Sonic before the SEGA hardware division died?
Where is Mario?
Now I'm sure that there's a SONY suit somewhere who would love to come up with a wild, insanely involved way to make Gran Turismo the
only racing game you can buy for any platform, unless you pay some kind of tidy sum to SONY to make a game in which cars go around a track. The day that happens is the day I live in fear of
two global megacorporations. I will add though that EA does make me nervous at times...
As for 3D delaying GT5, I sincerely doubt it. Otherwise, you'd have had GT5/PS3 bundles with 3D Bravias this summer.
Anyhow, this discussion is absorbing too much of my time. Think what you want, you have free will.
Your math is off because it is assuming that one team is only working on one car at a time. Say a team has 10 members. Member one completes his part on a car and passes it to member two and then starts on a new car while member two begins his part of the car he just received. So, one team is working on the same number of cars as there are team members. A 10 member team is working on 10 cars (possibly more) at once.
Think of an assembly line in a car factory. One car might take a week to build, but they don't just build one car at a time and hundreds roll out every day.
One more drabble.
I don't think the car modelers work on an assembly line basis. I could be wrong. What I suspect is that the super-skilled modelers work on the cars, and each one has a list of cars to model. Those with more mortal skills are in the track and assorted asset building teams. Whatever the deal is though, I'm in awe of the work they've done, and am going to spend even more time gawking at their work as I drive leisurely around their tracks as I did in GT4 and Prologue.
which was introduced in GT2.
