ravingloon said:
Maybe if all the assholes would buy their games, I wouldn't have to pay 55 dollars to buy it. The good news for the increasing prices, however, is pretty soon PC gaming will be dead and prices will be moot . Hope the fucktards are pleased then.
Piracy has little to no effect on prices IMHO.
Console games,less pirated than PC ones, are still MORE expensive. You often pay 40$ for the PC versions of a multiplatform title, vs 50$ for the console one. Even thought PC games tend to sell less.
GC games, less pirated than PS2 ones, are still often MORE expensive.
We might argue that piracy helps REDUCE prices instead, since offers a cheaper alternative for items considered overpriced (think music CDs), encouraging the industry to make lower prices.
PC games - as well as Amiga, C64, Spectrum ones before - have always been pirated. Music has also always been pirated, since tape media, which we used to copy and excange among friends at school.
And after 15+ years, the industry is still alive. Are you really sure that it will come crashing soon due to piracy?
The general point is that who can easily afford to buy a game WILL BUY IT, imo, and enjoy the shiny boxe and accessoryes.
Piracy is for who doesnt have much money to spare, and wouldnt buy many games anyway - or at very least SHOULDNT buy many games and save their little money for most vital necessities.
I do think that rewarding the work of the devs is fair.
But is funny how, of all the wrong things on in the industry, on the devs / marketers / publishers side (royalties, viral marketing, fixed scores, regional lockouts, content approval processes, IP exploits, propietary uncompatible standards for sake of greed, expensive publishing channels), that so many customers just single out piracy as the source of all problems.
Like prices.
Which in fact, have imo more to do with royalties, regional locking and pricing, releases approval processes (keeps competition down and shelf space more avaliable), the retail channels used (downloadable content would be cheaper), than piracy.
Too much blindly listening to marketers speak?
Sysgen said:
A $10 million dollar loss is a $10 million dollar loss.
Except that, AFAIK, the reported "loss" is hugely exaggerated.
A company estimates that 10k copies of a game have been pirated, and reports a loss based on the supposition thet they would have sold 10k more copies.
THAT WOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, even if piracy was not existant, unless the price of original software was equal to that of pirated copies.
Minimum Wage Joe may easily have 100 pirated CDs, but if he were to buy only original games he couldnt afford more that a couple. The idea that piracy made him not buy 100 CDs in unrealistic.
EDIT #2:
It has to be restated: the idea that less piracy, thus more sales, would cause a price drop, is often unrealistic.
You are assuming that the industry will just be happy by making a tot of money, and will give up any extra that they might make.
What really happens, is that they try to increase the profits as much as possible.
If they can sell 100k copies at 50$, they will.
If they can sell 110k copies (assuming the increase is due a lakc of piracy) at 50$, THEY WILL STILL CHARGE 50$.
There is no a magic point where the industry say "since we are selling so many copies, we made enough money so will lower the prices", that I know of.
Sure, if they sell more, they can afford to lower prices in istances where they are forced to, like stiff competition.
But for a high profile game like DOOM 3, piracy or not, YOU WILL NOT SEE A PRICE REDUCTION.
When a game is expected to sell a lot, like DOOM 3, the price tag is NOT lower for this reason, but actually the opposite: HIGHER.
DOOM 3, sells for a slighty higher price than average, like all big name games sell for at least the standard 50$, more if they think they can get away with it.
Piracy not existing, you would still pay the same price for the game discussed in this thread.