Business ramifications of piracy *spawn

[obonicus]

Devs complain about ds piracy all the time. Through sheer numbers of its installed base its able to make up for the lost sales. The ps3 doesn't have a ds size install base.

Devs complain about piracy all the time anywhere. They can't establish the damage done by piracy any more than anyone else can. And in fact it's in their interest to try and assert the 1:1 figure. I've heard as many complaints about DS cart manufacturing costs for low-budget games and Nintendo's policies forcing pubs pay up-front for the carts.

Joe Schmoe can easily apply cfw if all it takes is putting a usb stick in. They will certianly be more prone to do that than hardware mod a ps2

It is easier, but I don't think Joe Schmoe will. I could be wrong, but I don't think most people have the guts to download something off the internet and put it in their console. The people that do aren't necessarily technically savvy, but their desire for free software outweighs other considerations -- but I think these are the modchip people, they'd have paid for a store to do it for them in the first place.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

Right now PS3 userbase should have surpass the 50 million mark due christmas sales. Does really anyone think that 3rd parties are going to cancell their games and stop working on PS3?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

They'll just cut the budget for the PS3 development and release inferior ports and conversions.
It'll be harder to justify the need for producing a 100% identical port at increased costs if the rewards are nonexistent.

It could also lead to decreased PS3 sales, as anyone having access to both consoles will more likely choose the X360 version, thus also creating a feedback loop.

 

[obonicus]

They'll just cut the budget for the PS3 development and release inferior ports and conversions.
It'll be harder to justify the need for producing a 100% identical port at increased costs if the rewards are nonexistent.

It could also lead to decreased PS3 sales, as anyone having access to both consoles will more likely choose the X360 version, thus also creating a feedback loop.

I feel the same people have been predicting the same thing for years now, and been consistently wrong.

 

[Commenter]

They'll just cut the budget for the PS3 development and release inferior ports and conversions.
It'll be harder to justify the need for producing a 100% identical port at increased costs if the rewards are nonexistent.

It could also lead to decreased PS3 sales, as anyone having access to both consoles will more likely choose the X360 version, thus also creating a feedback loop.

The problem is that a lot of people with both consoles will choose to settle for a slightly inferior port if they can avoid paying $50 or whatever. Releasing for the PS3 as it is now might hurt the other console's software sales if piracy becomes rampant. If the ports are vastly inferior. I imagine many will pirate out of principle.

 

[Commenter]

I mean if you think about it. 6 free games and a brand new PS3

 

[Commenter]

...pays for itself.

p.s. hit enter accidentally.

 

[Rotmm]

Right now PS3 userbase should have surpass the 50 million mark due christmas sales.

Seriously, 10m PS3's sold during the Xmas period? Is that your actual prediction?

Does really anyone think that 3rd parties are going to cancell their games and stop working on PS3?

It seems some people do.

Myself, I don't. In fact, I think most of the doom'n'gloom predictions here (and elsewhere) are ludicrous.

The fact of the matter is that most PS3 owners won't ever find out that their machine is even able to play pirated software/homebrew/etc. Yes, there may be a percentage of current owners who will jump at the chance to play pirated games, but it's only ever going to be a minority.

So no, Sony aren't going to do a recall, they're not going to implement a dongle system, they're not going to change to a subscription model, developers aren't going to stop developing games on PS3, those same developers aren't going to invest less in cross-platform titles... in the end nothing much is going to change.

There's only 3 potential changes that I can see going forward:

1) Sony release a new (unhackable) PS3 revision to reduce the effects of piracy going forward. This revision would have to be significantly better, as well as cheaper, than the current model to entice current users to upgrade. The PS3 is, in my memory, the only console released to date that has become a poorer, less-featured console in each hardware revision. Sony would have to reverse that trend, while at the same time as pricing more competetively.

2) Timed-delays. If, and it's a really big if, piracy runs rampant on the PS3, then I can see the PS3 being treated similar to how the PC sometimes is in regards to big releases. So a new Assassins Creed game will release first on 360 to maximise sales, then a month later on PS3.

3) This may force Sony's hand into releasing a PS4 maybe a year or so earlier than they had originally planned. But that still means nothing until Fall 2012 anyway.

Even though some of those are less stupid than many current doomsday predictions, I don't even see them happening. Sony are gonna take this on the chin, play some cat and mouse with the pirates and ostensibly pretend like nothing has changed. Any panic move and (a) the shareholders have a shitting fit and (b) the fact the PS3 is cracked becomes major mainstream news, effectively "advertising" the fact to those 35m current users who haven't got a clue.

 

[Squilliam]

So if someone like EA wanted to, could they simply release PS3 games with Sony's say so? Say for instance they could release games without the official PS3 branding 'for' the PS3 and not pay Sony their $10 or thereabouts?

I.E. EA releases Madden 2011, one with Xbox 360 branding, one with Wii branding and another which goes in the PS3 section of the retailer without the label PS3 on it. They could save a consderable quantity of money if they did that.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

Well, not 50 million, but what i was trying to say its that there is enough userbase out there to keep supporting PS3, no developer is going to loose money in a Ps3 port if the game is decent.

Hardware Revisión + Price Cut. That could be the way to go, PS3 is selling quite well, WW is already selling more than 360 even being 100$ more expensive. Also, a boost in sales plus a system secured could calm down the 3rd parties, and stopping, as you said, 360 time exclusives and cheap ports.

 

[obonicus]

So if someone like EA wanted to, could they simply release PS3 games with Sony's say so? Say for instance they could release games without the official PS3 branding 'for' the PS3 and not pay Sony their $10 or thereabouts?

Barring the doubtless legal difficulties from such a move (is EA entitled to use a private key they found on the internet/reverse engineered? what does EA's contract with Sony say?) someone needs to press the games. Sony isn't the only one that can press BRDs, but would other companies be willing to get into that mess of a situation?

There are other difficulties, of course, like probably losing a lot of the PSN integration, though a company like EA would have the resources to implement alternatives.

I don't think it's impossible, by any means, but I think it's far from likely.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Expecting big publishers to completely ignore the crack and keeping budgets the same is far too optimistic IMHO.

 

[eastmen]

Right now PS3 userbase should have surpass the 50 million mark due christmas sales. Does really anyone think that 3rd parties are going to cancell their games and stop working on PS3?

Games wont stop getting released. The question is the quality of the games and if MS will get timed exclusives becuase of it.

Piracy is bad on the 360 but dispite similar installed bases 360 sells more games . If the ratio starts to slip because of piracy on the ps3 then the money used to make ports from the 360 could go down and so will quality and if we look at things like cod black ops the quality is already lower on the ps3 than the 360. Whats worse , if the 360 game sales ratio goes up compared to the ps3 due to ps3 piracy it will be even easier for ms to get exclusive content or make games timed exclusive .

All that is secondary to the real issue of devs making less money and sony making less money due to piracy. I already have some friends of mine asking how to mod the ps3 so they can play uncharted and other single player games on the ps3 and play cod and other big games online with thier friends .

 

[RobertR1]

What's so hard about waiting to see how it plays out? It's like everyone had to be "right!" straight away....

 

[obonicus]

Expecting big publishers to completely ignore the crack and keeping budgets the same is far too optimistic IMHO.

Look, you've been one of those predicting that PS3 port budgets would be slashed for ages. Nothing of the sort happened. Then you suggested that Sony would soon have to start cutting down on internal studios because there's no business in it. Over the year after your prediction there was really no such sign of such a thing happening.

You have a theme you like to keep harping on, but you've been consistently wrong.

We have no idea what the impact of piracy will be, but you're suggesting companies will jump the gun and start cutting budgets right away, which is ludicrous. If this turns out to be worse than PC gaming piracy and destroys the platform (which, for several reasons I've already listed, I find doubtful) then they'll react, but I highly doubt they'll be proactive here. In part because that's generally not their attitude when it comes to such things, and in part because in the past all the 'sky is falling' predictions have been consistently wrong.

 

[patsu]

It may be difficult to expect too much from home-brew developers from the get go.

But I expect them to do the easiest things first:
* Improve XMB… like disabling the ticker tape [and add WebKit browser !]. Basically, stuff that Sony don't have resources or don't want to offer.
* Mod games (How 'bout a modded Home to do my Internet Home network idea ^_^).
* Set up alternatives to PS Store for verified Homebrew software
* AsbestOS may come up but I doubt it'd be more popular or usable than the original PS3 Linux. Need to get RSX working within Linux. Other "jailbroken" and high volume devices are already out there.
[EDIT: How can I forget:
* Emulators
* Racy themes and content]

It is possible that anything outside may be pirated software and PSN exploits. Would be great if some hackers can think of ways to tackle them on behalf of the consumers when they become a nuisance. The hackers will be treated much better than traditional homebrew developers by the community.

EDIT: I wonder if I will receive some free package from Sony (BR installer + some hardware extension).

 

[nightshade]

It may be difficult to expect too much from home-brew developers from the get go.

But I expect them to do the easiest things first:
* Improve XMB… like disabling the ticker tape [and add WebKit browser !]. Basically, stuff that Sony don't have resources or don't want to offer.
* Mod games (How 'bout a modded Home to do my Internet Home network idea ^_^).
* Set up alternatives to PS Store for verified Homebrew software
* AsbestOS may come up but I doubt it'd be more popular or usable than the original PS3 Linux. Need to get RSX working within Linux.
[EDIT: How can I forget:
* Emulators
* Racy themes and content

It is possible that anything outside may be pirated software and PSN exploits. Would be great if some hackers can think of ways to tackle them on behalf of the consumers when they become a nuisance. The hackers will be treated much better than traditional homebrew developers by the community.

EDIT: I wonder if I will receive some free package from Sony (BR installer + some hardware extension).

lol...Anyways if you mean XMB themes then we've had a theme builder software since years...and recently some people had even started making dynamic themes.

Also I doubt the can do anything significant regarding PS2,Wii,Gamecube emulators...considering how even the emulation scene is far from being perfect on PC even after years of development.

 

[patsu]

...and you didn't forward me a sample in XMB ?

At least RenegadeRock sent me a pic of a Playmate as an introduction. (I think his Friends Request title said "Hi").

EDIT: Not the difficult emulators.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Expecting big publishers to completely ignore the crack and keeping budgets the same is far too optimistic IMHO.

Was there a change in DS budgets when it was blown wide open? I honestly don't know. As I see it, piracy has an impact, but it varies title to title, and one problem with decreasing investment is producing a lower quality product that people will be less likely to buy. Looking at CDs, a difficult parallel but one of the closest I think, file sharing has been shown (in different and conflicting reports) to actually aid artist sales. If the musical producers saw piracy and thought, "let's just use cheap, quick production as it's only going to be pirated anyway," they'd decrease legitimate interest from those who are willing to pay despite piracy being an option.

I don't know if a formula for investment and returns exists. In fact, it can't do, there can't be any decent model, because so many titles are hit and miss the industry clearly has no way to predict sales! But even if there was, I don't think piracy offers a simple coefficient where best ROI comes from reducing investment by x% accomodatin y% loss through piracy. There also isn't an easy way to scale PS3 costs of a port. You're going to create the same assets for all platforms, and the same content. You're going to need a PS3 version of the engine. Downsizing the PS3 coders from 5 to 4 or 3 isn't going to save much. Basically if you looking at losing...1 million units to pirates of a 2 million seller, those losses aren't going to be recovered in any way from reducing PS3 development of a cross-platform title.

Thus you either abandon PS3 and don't develop for it at all, losing potentially lots of sales, or you carry on pretty much as normal, only getting less returns than you used to. I suppose where PS3 is ~50% of the HD market, it may drop now to 30% in terms of revenue, but that generally too big a slice to ignore. I expect some titles will not get a PS3 port as a result, but I don't see that being many at this point. Only if piracy takes on insane proportions could that change.

On that note, we actually have a damned interesting sample base for analysing the impact of piracy. We have a console with 3 years zero piracy where unit sales of a game have been exactly based on what users would buy. This user base is now (potentially, barring security changes) being offered the easiest possible piracy, meaning no barrier to entry except knowledge and willingness; there's no financial costs to prohibit piracy. In the coming years we can compare sales of titles with others in the franchise, like COD and Uncharted, alongside XB360 as a control, and get an excellent measure of how much in terms of lost sales (and not the fairly useless unit downloads from torrents) piracy actual produces. It's a potentially expensive experiement, but one that will provide a lot of relevant data for establishing user rights in law, as real world examples can be used to show what costs companies really bare when considering what potential limits to impose on people's freedoms.

 

[aaronspink]

So if someone like EA wanted to, could they simply release PS3 games with Sony's say so? Say for instance they could release games without the official PS3 branding 'for' the PS3 and not pay Sony their $10 or thereabouts?

As long as they didn't use any Sony IP(copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets) that they didn't already have a license for or weren't covered under fair use (aka "works on playstation 3"), then yes. In fact anyone could do it for any of the consoles.

The issue is it is pretty hard to do that without knowledge of the hardware, using middleware, etc. They would probably have to firewall a team which would only be able to utilize publicly available information and likely no third party or internally developed middleware.