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Abstract
In digital industries, platform-based business models make openness and control key strategic levers shaping innovation, ecosystems, and competitive advantage. This study examines how platform strategies shift between openness and control over time, using video game platforms as a historically leading context. Through a comparative case analysis of four platforms: Nintendo's Family Computer, Valve's Steam, Apple's App Store, and the Epic Games Store, the study identifies how governance transitions are structurally shaped. The analysis is guided by a Five-Factor Framework encompassing technological, economic, institutional, competitive, and ecosystem dimensions emphasized in prior research. Findings reveal that platform governance emerges not from managerial intent alone, but from the multi-causal alignment of structural forces across these dimensions. Openness fosters distributed innovation and developer diversity, while control ensures quality, security, and monetization. Hybrid configurations such as selective openness and strategic re-control appear as adaptive responses to asymmetrical factor alignment. Building on these insights, the paper proposes the Dynamic Openness and Control Theory, which conceptualizes governance as a pendulum-like movement shaped by structural configurations. The comparative evidence demonstrates that the video game platforms pioneered governance mechanisms such as licensing, modular openness, digital distribution, and selective exclusivity from the 1980s onward, establishing precedence for similar dynamics observed in mobile operating systems, cloud infrastructures, fintech platforms, ride-hailing services, and generative Al ecosystems. This framework contributes to platform strategy and innovation management by integrating historical precedence with cross-industry applicability.
Keywords: Platform Strategy, Openness and Control, Video Game Platforms, Five-Factor Model, Comparative Analysis
Introduction
The expansion of platform-based business models has brought renewed attention to how structural design decisions affect patterns of innovation, value creation, and strategic advantage. In digital content industries, particularly video games, platform strategies often revolve around how openness and control are configured, shaping who can participate, how value 1s created, and how ecosystems evolve (Gawer & Cusumano, 2014; Boudreau, 2010). During the 1980s and 1990s, closed platform models (such as Nintendo's licensing system) prevailed, emphasizing control over software quality, branding, and distribution. These strategies safeguarded quality and reputation. By the 2000s, however, the rise of open platforms like Valve's Steam and Apple's App Store led to increased accessibility for indie developers, faster content cycles, and the proliferation of user-generated innovation (O'Donnell, 2014). This shift redefined how innovation was sourced...