While it is widely known that the success of platforms requires consistent support from complementors, scant attention has been paid to understand the moves of complementors in dynamic settings. In this paper, we focus on platform evolution from the sixth to the seventh generation of videogames and studied the strategic moves of third-party developers that supported personal computer and videogame consoles during a period of architectural convergence. We theorize how platform attachment capability of third-party developers (complementors to platforms) influence developers’ strategic choice. We analyze their choices through two strategic moves—porting (launching an existing game on another platform) versus augmentation (launching a new game on a platform) using data on 316 developers over a nine-year period. We find that complementors that are more embedded in single platform technologies are unable to leverage their existing knowledge in new platform settings and hence, are less likely to engage in porting moves but support existing platforms through augmentation. Complementors are also more likely to port titles to platforms that were architecturally similar to their previously supported platforms. Architectural convergence across sixth and seventh generations of videogames affords even previously embedded developers an opportunity to migrate and support disparate platforms. The results underscore the importance of framing how platform providers and complementors coevolve their actions to respond to platform evolution and architectural convergence from a dyadic and dynamic perspective.

中文翻译：

---

架构融合与平台演进：电子游戏中互补动作的实证检验

虽然众所周知，平台的成功需要互补者的一致支持，但很少有人注意了解动态环境中互补者的运动。在本文中，我们关注从第六代到第七代视频游戏的平台演变，并研究了在架构融合时期支持个人电脑和视频游戏机的第三方开发商的战略举措。我们对第三方开发者（平台的补充者）的平台附加能力如何影响开发者的战略选择进行了理论分析。我们通过两个战略举措来分析他们的选择——移植（在另一个平台上发布现有游戏）与增强（在一个平台上发布新游戏）使用 316 名开发者在 9 年期间的数据。我们发现更多嵌入单一平台技术的互补者无法在新平台设置中利用他们现有的知识，因此不太可能参与移植动作，但通过增强支持现有平台。补充者也更有可能将标题移植到架构上与其以前支持的平台相似的平台。第六代和第七代视频游戏的架构融合甚至为以前的嵌入式开发人员提供了迁移和支持不同平台的机会。结果强调了从二元和动态的角度确定平台提供者和补充者如何共同发展他们的行动以响应平台演变和架构融合的重要性。