Getting Complementors On Board: Evidence From the 7th and 8th Generations of Video Game Consoles

This paper analyses how three facets of platform openness explain complementor participation in the video game console industry. Three facets are considered boundary resources, exclusive content, and the breadth of content offerings. This study focusses on the number of complementors rather than complements and makes a first attempt to measure platform boundary resources. Fixed-effects regressions on a panel comprising two generations of consoles across six platforms showed that the breadth of content offerings have an positive effect on complementor participation. The results support the importance of boundary resources in attracting complementors. Exclusive content plays a higher role during the early stages of platform development rather than during mature stages due to intense competition among complementors in the latter stage. Our results suggest that by following the right open-platform strategies, platform firms can orchestrate a large network of complementors and proliferate a variety of complementary product offerings.