Thanks for the words, and for being more specific about the games you feel are underpriced. I agree with you wholeheartedly about Spore. I think this game (along with Starcraft, but that one is more skewed internationally) will really surprise people.
I disagree with you about Crysis however. It severely limits itself by what is required to experience its major selling point (amazing graphics). It gains a lot of publicity for how pretty it is, but that also restricts the number of people who can play it. Also, it is my belief (and experience) that, unfortunately, those who have the best gaming rigs also tend to be the most savvy at piracy. While publishers can combat this with keys that lockout multiplayer functionality, what can they do to prevent piracy for a single player focused game? Also, there's the bigger issue of historical lifetime sales. Without even a service as flawed as VGChartz, we have no idea what most PC games end up selling. Right now it seems that traders are positioning PC stocks just below PS3/360 versions, and I think that is systematically overpricing them.
I never said I agreed with the idea that piracy is destroying the market. I simply posted it as an example of a developer stating the impact that it has (it's impacting sales enough to be noted and feared). Your example of mp3s is a bad one...music piracy is still a huge issue and a lot of people/companies are suffering due to it with the full effects yet to be determined (sales at stores dropping 20%+, estimated 2.6 billion illegal downloads every month, etc). Piracy has (and still is) hit that industry hard. Record companies started with deep pockets...PC game publishers have thin profit margins as it is. I like your mention of direct-to-drive methods. I'd be interested to see if any publishers have released stats on how that has been received by consumers.
Oh and patching doesn't affect piracy. Previously, patches would work just as well with a pirated game and updated cracks are always released.
I think you're shrugging off piracy too easily. The hit to the music industry wasn't "hype"...it was billions of dollars. The industry survived because the companies had enormous profit margins (which have now dramatically shrunk, but still exist). The PC gaming industry doesn't have the revenue that music did...there's a reason why so many studios are willingly selling themselves to larger studios and why they've committed more resources to console instead of PCs. Piracy is a much bigger problem than you seem to think.
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Thanks for the words, and for being more specific about the games you feel are underpriced.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about Spore. I think this game (along with Starcraft, but that one is more skewed internationally) will really surprise people.
I disagree with you about Crysis however. It severely limits itself by what is required to experience its major selling point (amazing graphics). It gains a lot of publicity for how pretty it is, but that also restricts the number of people who can play it. Also, it is my belief (and experience) that, unfortunately, those who have the best gaming rigs also tend to be the most savvy at piracy. While publishers can combat this with keys that lockout multiplayer functionality, what can they do to prevent piracy for a single player focused game?
Also, there's the bigger issue of historical lifetime sales. Without even a service as flawed as VGChartz, we have no idea what most PC games end up selling. Right now it seems that traders are positioning PC stocks just below PS3/360 versions, and I think that is systematically overpricing them.
I never said I agreed with the idea that piracy is destroying the market. I simply posted it as an example of a developer stating the impact that it has (it's impacting sales enough to be noted and feared). Your example of mp3s is a bad one...music piracy is still a huge issue and a lot of people/companies are suffering due to it with the full effects yet to be determined (sales at stores dropping 20%+, estimated 2.6 billion illegal downloads every month, etc). Piracy has (and still is) hit that industry hard. Record companies started with deep pockets...PC game publishers have thin profit margins as it is.
I like your mention of direct-to-drive methods. I'd be interested to see if any publishers have released stats on how that has been received by consumers.
Oh and patching doesn't affect piracy. Previously, patches would work just as well with a pirated game and updated cracks are always released.
I think you're shrugging off piracy too easily. The hit to the music industry wasn't "hype"...it was billions of dollars. The industry survived because the companies had enormous profit margins (which have now dramatically shrunk, but still exist). The PC gaming industry doesn't have the revenue that music did...there's a reason why so many studios are willingly selling themselves to larger studios and why they've committed more resources to console instead of PCs.
Piracy is a much bigger problem than you seem to think.