Silent_Buddha
Legend
As has been said, computer game piracy has existence since forever. I don't think piracy was a very big factor in consoles becoming the primary target because game companies have always dealt with it. I think it's just that game companies want more money and there is more audience to be accessed on the consoles and there are other advantages, including relative safety from piracy, that appeal as well.
Piracy has existed forever yes, but you can't honestly compare pirating now to...
Pirating in the 80's. Having to go over to someone's house that has the game and make a physical copy. Oh and you had to track down a program to allow you to copy a game in the first case. There was copy protection even back then (Wizardry I had one of the better copy protections). Or being a geek enough to not only own an analog modem, but to then find a BBS that hosts pirated files, and then download at anywhere from 300-2400 baud. The vast majority of people with a computer didn't even know what an analog modem was or what to do with it if they had one.
Pirating in the 90's. Again copying from physical media or BBS download. Or being geek enough to find an FTP site to download from that didn't require some sort of contribution. Or being even geekier enough to figure out how to grab it off Usenet (without PAR files, being sometimes impossible to get all parts). Or even MORE geeky learning how to use IRC. Again just a tiny fraction of the average computer owner.
Pirating in the 2000's. Explosion of P2P and 1 click downloads of whatever pirated software you want. Install program (kazaa, edonkey, and later bittorrent). Search with Google. Even an idiot could do it. And now you don't even need to go to shady websites that might be pushing virus' and trojans to do it.
Added to that you don't need to modify any hardware to do it. And you don't even have to spend money on optical media to burn it to.
There just isn't much comparison and why pirating is so prevalent now, and why there are virtually no AAA PC only devs left. Only the smaller players making games on a small budget. I can only think of Blizzard off the top of my head as a remaining AAA dev. All others have moved to either console only, console first, or in some VERY rare cases PC first. And every single one of them cites piracy as one of the main reasons for the switch.
Piraters can live in denial all they want. But PC devs and especially publishers (mostly AAA but even some smaller studios) have moved to console due in large part to piracy.
Heck even Relic (/sigh) is moving to console. Another previous PC only RTS dev. Their upcoming game Warhammer 40k: Space Marine is going to be console only.
This despite the fact that Windows is generally easier to develope for and there is a "potentially" larger market. But it doesn't mean squat when the majority of that market would rather pirate than spend even 1...I'll say that again "ONE" USD to buy a game if there is an easily piratable version of the game available for download.
Regards,
SB
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