[tomnipotent]

There is no legal, economic, or dictionary definition of monopoly that supports your position. The closest example is "aftermarket" (what you call vertical) following the 90's Kodak SC case, which has long since fizzled out. Monopoly might as well not mean anything if you can define it however narrowly you want.

[scheeseman486]

Let's look at Merriam-Webster

'1: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action specifically : exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition.'

That definition doesn't define any boundaries on to what market a company has control over. A hardware platform like Playstation only has one store, run by the company who sells the platform; explicit control of the particular market, that market being Playstation games. By going digital only, they now have total command of supply. They also explicitly deny competition from participating. They even have a hand in pricing the games sold on the platforms, an ability they're able to leverage because they hold a vertical monopoly.

The issue isn't me or anyone else defining the word "monopoly" too broadly, it's that the frog has so thoroughly been boiled on what we once considered monopolies that we can no longer see a monopoly for what it is even when it's self-evidently obvious. I agree that anti-trust enforcement has become lax, I'm not arguing that it hasn't... but it shouldn't have. It's been about 30 years of letting big tech and media conglomerates do whatever they want and it is time for that to stop, and not just for video games.

[tomnipotent]

> they now have total command of supply

They've always had control by licensing who can publish games on their platform. Now that contract with publishers has changed who can distribute. Publishers are still free to distribute on other platforms in whatever formats those platforms allow.

> that market being Playstation games

This is arbitrarily narrowing the definition of market as far as possible while ignoring reasonable (legal) thresholds. Case in point how Apple's App Store was not ruled a monopoly while Google's Play Store was - there are reasonable tests to pass, and Sony's case will land closer to Apple than Google. And a monopoly is not the only form of anti-competitive abuse.

Might as well claim Domino's has a monopoly on Domino's pizza.

[scheeseman486]

> This is arbitrarily narrowing the definition of market as far as possible

No it isn't, it's literally a market.

Dominos pizzas aren't created and sold by third parties. If you're going to make a comparison, try something doesn't so obviously miss the point (though if you want to talk about commercial food supply chains and how that's become almost entirely monopolized in the United States...).

The rest of your argument is basically "the law says so". Not an argument I'm interested in discussing since I don't care. I explicitly want legislative changes.

[tomnipotent]

You seem to lack a basic understanding of what a market is in the context of a monopoly, and you can't argue your way around a bad foundation.

> our argument is basically "the law says so".

That's the only argument that matters, because monopoly is a legal matter.