Exculsive deals illegal?

I was reading an artcle in tech section in the paper this morning about allegations that Sony have paid Rockstar to hold off releasing GTA3 for Xbox until GTA4 is released for PS2, and how such a deal would be illegal as it breaches the Trade Practices Act.

Is this possible. And, does this mean that similar deals (Halo, Matrix) would also be illegal? Can anyone clarify this? :confused:

I believe that it’s legal to pay someone off for exclusivity rights, but not to pay them off to delay or cancel something for another system if it’s already planned. Not that I’m an expert or anything, so I could be totally wrong, but if I remember correctly it’s something like that.

Well, it would kinda break the American laws only because it diallows competition in the market place. If Sony could do that, then they woud definitely crush Xbox and Gamecube and maybe even drive them out of business. Of course the real question is, do these laws apply over seas seeing that Sony is Japanese. I’m not sure if Rockstar is American or Europe, but I think the latter.

Originally posted by TheUltimate
Well, it would kinda break the American laws only because it diallows competition in the market place. If Sony could do that, then they woud definitely crush Xbox and Gamecube and maybe even drive them out of business. Of course the real question is, do these laws apply over seas seeing that Sony is Japanese. I’m not sure if Rockstar is American or Europe, but I think the latter.

What makes you think Sony would "definately crush Xbox and GameCube" if they could do that? If they could, so could Nintendo and Microsoft. It’d just depend on who could throw more money around, and that, as we all know, would pretty obviously be Microsoft.

Money makes the world go round. ^_^

It’s amazing how Sony will shatter the competition. Paying companies to hold off releasing games for other systems.

Unless Rockstar is owned by Sony or something, they shouldn’t really be allowed to do that…. o_O

Originally posted by Dj MogK’

Unless Rockstar is owned by Sony or something, they shouldn’t really be allowed to do that…. o_O

So should they be allowed to restrict Squaresoft from releasing FF games for other systems? Cuase they partially own them too.

And the only reason I said Sony would crush everyone, Tifas knight, is b/c thats the system that most people have right now.So money is an issue and I think a company would go with the system that wouold sell the most for them, and that would be PS2. Billy would have to pay said game company the money they would lose from not doing business with Sony. That pay out would be alot more than Sony would have to pay said company because the company knows that they would not seel that much on the Xbox. You get what I’m trying to say?

Anyways, Microsft has alot of money but so does Sony, and from what I hear, Nintendo has more money than Sony! 😮

I doubt Nintendo has more money then Sony. Sony isn’t only playstation, Sony is almost every single electronic applience made. And they’ve been around longer then Nintendo has.

Sony makes more money, but that comes from third party software, which can be unstable. For the last few years its the PSX thats kept Sony going while other divisions ave been losing money.

Nintendo tightly regulates production so games that come will have a longer shelf life, which means that as long as there are Nintendo fans, there will b Nintendo. Thats why Nintendo has been going strong for 17+ years.