Abstract

The relationship between fragmentation and convergence is now more interrelated than before. With technological advances all industries have to change their approach and business plans in order to stay competitive. The main result from these advances, are the change in consumer behavior and demands. These new players generate a fragmentation and convergence cycle. While the originator of this cycle may not be clear or vary from industry to industry, the presence of this cycle is imperative for all industries to understand.

Introduction

Media fragmentation is defined as “a trend to increasing choice and consumption of a range of media in terms of different channels such as web and mobile and also within channels, for …show more content…

As a result consumers now have the technology to see what they want, when they want. The consumer, in return is given more personal choices, a form of fragmentation in the distribution. This creates more demanding and specific consumer which would lead to other forms of convergence in the future; such as choosing mobile content. Proving once again, how both trends create a cycle and that these two industries have and are still utilizing both fragmentation and convergence.

Gaming

The gaming industry began as a pure entertainment industry. Since the introduction of Pong, in 1972 till about 2000 when Playstation 2 was launched, the gaming industry kept utilizing similar business models (Kent, 2004). It could easily be described as a fragmented market. The business approach was easy. Build a platform. Release a vast number of games to go with it and wait for consumers to drive profit margins based on the popularity of games and game characters. Companies catered to that aspect of consumer consumption and saturated the market. The success of the gaming console did not really rely of the platform itself but more on the number of titles it could play. Gaming companies increased choice: the definition of fragmentation. The introduction of Playstation 2 is significant because it introduced a platform with not only a vast library of games, but for the first time a console could be used for something other than game playing.