Platform Wars: Simulating the Battle for Video Game Supremacy

In this live web-based simulation, participants play the role of senior management at a video game hardware platform producer, such as Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft. Built around a companion case study describing the launch of Sony’s PlayStation 3, the simulation explores the dynamics of competition in multi-sided markets. In such markets, success depends not only on a product’s price and features, but also on how many people own it (a direct network externality) and on the number of games and applications available—that is, the size of the installed base of complementary products (an indirect network externality). Platform markets are increasingly common in settings other than video games, including computers, the Internet and e-commerce, and mobile telecommunications.