Simulation Economy
I've argued that for the games industry, the licensing strategy is dominated, because the price of licenses will get bid up (via price competition or via M&A). I did some strategy work for an anonymous publisher a year or so back, where I argued thatthe dominant strategy is to position games as platforms, not just as brands. Platform effects dominate brand effects, because they create greater switching costs at a lower price, and in fact, create brand economies for smart publishers.
What does a game as platform mean? Well, for one thing, platforms let users build things on them. MS has realized the power of the platform notion, and here's a nice piece for context about Xbox 2's integrated microtransactions system, with which users will pay other users for vgoods. This is the infrastructure for games as platforms - unfortuantely, few publishers have the right competences to achieve a meaningful advantage.