id and Epic went multiplatform because of piracy on the PC

I had a dream. In my dream, prices for all games (be they console or PC games) in China were cut by half (compared to current prices) as part of an experiment to see if piracy in Asia is due to the comparatively high cost of games/software in that region, or if buying pirated games/software has actually become an "accepted" way of life.

More money is made by all parties concerned from the sale of a single copy of GameX on any console compared to the game's PC equivalent. The game developers themselves get more royalties. That's what I was told anyway.

 

I'm glad you agree that piracy played a part in killing the platforms off early, even if we disagree about how responsible it was. Perhaps you're right about it only playing a small part back in the Atari ST era, but at least there's consensus that piracy hurts a platform to some (debatable) extent or another.

But, even if we can't know the reasons why that platform faded when there were still hundreds of thousands of machines still in use, we can know what is happening right now with high certainty because devs are telling us right now why they're looking to other markets.

When the makers of games are saying they're not getting to the cake because piracy is reducing sales, common sense would say that piracy is causing harm to the pc gaming market.

 

That's interesting... I'd been under the impression that console sales generated less per unit for the dev because they pay a royalty fee for every copy sold.

 

I extremely doubt they know how it works I also guess no one has told epic about mod chips yet have they?

But really the biggest part here that is BS is the Unreal Tournament 3 being the problem its not. Its a freaking multiplayer game their biggest audience is going to be people playing on the net and they are going to have online authentication. Single player games I can totally understand this being a real problem. Steam being a steaming pile of ... was the reason I didn't buy HL2 btw. I know alot of people who will try a game out on warez and buy it if it is decent Epic has to worry about people if they expect there game to be bad.

What next MP3 have killed the music industry? and video tapes have killed the movie industry?

On the flip side you could say gears of wars would have never existed if it wasn't for pirates.

Prolly not 87 but 88 or 89 I was playing that ( under 10 ) had to get dad to answer the age verification password stupid Yank question hows an an australian kid supposed to know them anyway ctrl-x helped

 

Between four of us at work we bout 5 disks

 

yeah,, but you dont have to support all the myriad of different formats..

i'm stunned people dont think piracy is damaging things.. when i've worked multiplatform,,we've even not bothered released the "debug" pc version,, because even if we had a version ready from the xbox version, that we would use in house.. it's just not worth that extra developer effort..
partly coz the extra dev cost for all the hardware.. then ( as sweeney is saying) all the cost due to hassle from people who have problems.. and the joke is you WILL get people who've not even bought the thing complaining... and yeah this isnt new, i've got friends who worked for ocean customer support who had people ring in asking for help "but just read the manual?" "what manual?"....

its true about it being publishers hassle though,, but who do people think they hassle to get information?

as for "theyre just in it for the money"... well derrrr ... would you do your job for free? if you would , feel free to mow my lawn , clean my house,, buy me a car!

as for good games/bad games.. i can see the logic, but apparently research doesnt back this up... however what is backed up is that the copy protect stuff at least means the game will be in the shops before the pirate version is out... normally the pirate version will be available first.....

 

Who is saying they're not getting to the cake?

Well in case you hadn't noticed console games cost more. I personally don't know how the royalties are paid, but certainly the higher retail price is tied into it.

 

Ummmmmmm...... they are. Did you skip the links in the opening post?

The cost of royalties being bandied about was $10 per unit. iirc, that specifically referred to X360 games. But I read this stuff about a year ago so I might be recalling it wrongly and it might not have been accurate in the first place.

 

Going multiplatform is not the same thing as leaving PC-platform altogether, which is what you were implying.

Well 10$ per X360 game..., and how much more expensive were those X360 games again... Seems to me like there is plenty of margin left for the publishers.

 

Because there's extra money to be made there. Companies like Sony and MS pay devs to develop for their new machines. Without games, the hardware wouldn't sell. You think devs are just going to ignore new markets? Of course not.

Saying piracy pushed them to other markets is like saying piracy of VHS tapes caused movie studios to start producing movies on DVD. In truth a new market emerged where they could make more cash (often selling the same titles over again). If you look at games like Doom, for the sake of porting the engine over, ID got to reuse all the art assets, gameplay and map design, and got themselves a whole new market.

The problem with piracy (as distinct from counterfeiting) is that no one really knows, not the developers or the publishers. There are no real figures, there is no proof that a pirated title is one that would otherwise create sales. Mostly figures are pulled out of the air when a title doesn't sell up to expectations, regardless of marketing or quality. It's the equivalent of a movie studio claiming the reason why Elektra or Catwomen did badly was because of piracy. In fact it was because of a poor product that no one wanted to spend money on. Studio and game publisher suits point to everyone but themselves when a title does badly, and "piracy" is an easy cop-out that can't defend itself and allow the industry to clamour for DRM and removal of fair use to save them from this evil scourge.

I've known pirates who download everything. The never get a chance to play games, because they are too into the OCD of downloading. They certainly wouldn't be paying for all that stuff if they couldn't get it for free. There is no lost sale there.

So I'm not convinced that PC gaming is on the down. It's too much linked to certain gametypes, it's too deep into the development of games and mods, it's too entrenched into every home for all it's other uses, and is constantly being upgraded to the point where it's often ahead of a console during that console's lifespan.

I think that at the moment the consoles are ahead because they are at the beginning of their lifecycles, all three of them at once. New spanky markets with money to spend are opening up, and devs are jumping into them to make cash. There's nothing wrong with that, but to claim it's about piracy on the PC when there's loads of heavy duty counterfeiting in the console market just makes no sense. The console market doesn't have less piracy, it's just is a newer additional market with opportunity for more revenue streams.

 

Exactly. That's the ticket: instead of complaining about piracy, they should lower the prices. Simple as that.

Here in the Netherlands, DVDs are a great hit, simply because they are cheaper than CDs. More bang for your buck, and very convenient.

With Steam, you get less bang for your buck: no DVD or manual, but you pay the same.


If the above isn't true, I guess capitalism is dead, not PC gaming.

And I agree, that there is probably more piracy with consoles than with PCs. It's simply that console games make nice presents that they do so well.

The main thing is, that most gamers by now are over 30, while the gaming industry is focussing more and more on brain-dead teenagers. If they want more money, they should make more games that the group of gamers with the money to spend wants to buy.

 

as a owner of 3 consoles and Pc i fail to see how piracy is bigger on consoles. Really at least games on consoles sell well, doom3 for example sold better on xbox even if xbox could be soft modded, chipmoded or whatever. And quick look on Gow2 on ps2 presales are over 1 milion now. How big is install base on Pc market?? how well games sale on pc ?? just compare it to ps2 and u will see what they mean.

 

How about in terms of security measures? While every single company on the face of the planet Earth that creates a PC game, it's almost a GIVEN they'll instil usage of a cd key. Some companies went so far as mandatory spy ware, ie EA, to keep tabs on players as was the case with BF2142 (by the way you'll all be pleased to know my views on EA have changed drastically since I was presented with a boatload of evidence essentially saying they're the Nazi equivalent of game devs.) While in terms of sales, I'm certain piracy has brought the PC gaming industry to it's knees, but as is the case with virtually every form of media, you name it music, videos etc, but I see very little being done, in terms of preventative measures with consoles. The day console gamers are subject to a third the restrictions PC gamers are, then perhaps then they could finally understand what it truly means to game.

Like I've said before, this has very little to do with piracy itself, yet id seems to construe it that way. It all boils down to their money hungering, and jumping on some pathetic bandwagon, instead of sticking to their roots as PC oriented game devs. I, personally, tend to lose a great deal of respect for a company that can't be system specific. Why you ask? Because it's a fact of gaming: You can't get everything you want in video gaming. Example? I want Metal Gear Solid 4 pretty badly, but it'll sooner be winter in Hell before I even contemplate dishing out an absurd amount of money for a PS3. This is just another example of whiney console fanboys filling game devs' mailboxes with tears of displacement asking "why can't we have Crysis too?"


Because you can't.

 

I'm not sure that makes any sense, but rant away if it makes you feel better.

 

It makes perfect sense. But it does, thank you for commenting. It boils down the heightened pressure by whiney console gamers, mixed with id's apparent greed that called for the multiplatform switch. If they truly cared, they'd stick to being reliable devs with a PC based audience. Now sit here, and tell me with a straight face, that you find that problematic.

 

Maybe it does, I just don't see it
Because I don't understand how the fact that console gamers don't have annoying obstacles, makes them less unaware what gaming really is. I don't understand why making games and publishing them should have different rules than running any other business, because at the end of the day it is business. I don't understand your "fact of gaming" because you can buy/get any game that's out there, if you really want MGS 4, you should just go ahead and buy it and bury the hatched while doing it, especially as PS3 costs about the same as the vid card you need to play Crysis, which probably finds its way to consoles in one form or the other, considering EA is the publisher. I think you should only look down on consoles if you don't like the games on them.

edit: One of my point is that it's really easy to shout arguments and demands how other people shoud run their businesses, but imo it's not totally fair to make demands like that, since we are talking about their jobs and their way of bringing food to the table.

 

Everyone in this thread is about 5 breaths away from the whole "pc's vs consoles" debate. So to avoid my opinion in the matter I'll stick to my main argument, which is the fact that id is spoon-feeding us bullshit, by stating they went multiplatform for piracy reasons. I personally don't see anything wrong with a developer being specific to one platform. Anyone who does, I challenge you to visit your local game supplier and call up Nintendo crying about how you're displeased with how few Nintendo games are seen in the Xbox 360 section. And the amount of money I spent on my videocard, in contrast to buying a PS3, seeing the road PS3 is going down since it's induction, I can safely say I made a better decision. I wouldn't have bought my almost $700 videocard for one game, and anyone that does is absolutely insane. Same goes for people with the same mindframe and the PS3. Those obstacles you spoke of were examples of security measures devs have taken with pc games. Annoying as they may be, they serve as reminders to the pc audience that superior gaming experiences call for measures such as those. In English, I'd be awestruck if I consistently forked up cash for games, only to be struck down with affirmations of someone using my account or hikacking my gaming experience with the push of a button.

But then again piracy is piracy, and it's capable of being done on the beach heads of every theater.

 

Well this I agree with 100%

I don't see anything wrong with it either, thing is however that Nintendo is not a very good example for this since they also make money on the hardware (tons of it) and thus it's clearly in their best interest to sell as much hardware as possible. ID and others just sell software. Many would also argue that Nintendo is the worst penny and nickle collector, their ability to churn up money never seizes to amaze me, so the Big N is definately not any less greedy.

Not taking part on that superior thing, but why do you feel that they are necessary and how is this apparent superiority connected to the need, or am I missing a sarcastic remark here. (it's hard to tell whether you are serious or not...)

 

Nintendo was the only example I could conjure up at the moment. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Crytek is also one? I seem to remember all those Far Cry spawn abortions released on consoles were third party companies just using the name.

It was sarcasm laid on ten feet thick. Obviously, I'm a pc gamer by my own right, for whatever reason they may be, but I don't think a great deal of the drastic measures alot of companies have resorted to are by all means absurd. Spy ware? C'mon now...

 

Yes Crytek has developed only on PC as far as I know, and the console versions weren't very faitful to the name Far Cry.