Ubisoft creative director: “Piracy’s basically killing PC”

I don’t think that the problem with piracy is limited to the PC. It’s just that it’s a lot more frequent at the moment.

Most PC gamers know about torrents and downloading stuff for free, whereas most console gamers probably just don’t actually know how easy it is to hack a console and download ripped games.

I’m pretty sure that if the PC gaming market is “killed”, then console piracy will quite easily sky rocket as those PC gamers look for free software elsewhere.

Consoles = PC dongles confirmed.

I fail to see how releasing a PC version of a game later than a console version is going to do anything to stop it being pirated. It may get gamers with a console and a PC to buy the console version and ignore the PC release but it’s not going to stop the Jolly Rogers being hoisted for those who steal their games.

It would be nice to know if the game is any good of course but they keep delaying the bloody VIP demo!

This statement about piracy on Pc is becoming regular BS, like an excuse for bad product sales or something… Crytek were the first who attacked piracy, and blamed it for poor Crysis sales. And we all know that wasn’t the case why crysis made a financial flop.
I hate this kind of statements, it’s like some brain washing, if you repeat a lie 1000 times, eventually it will become a truth… I don’t think so… For God sake, why don’t you ask Stardock how they sold more than a million copies of “Sins of the Solar Emire” without any protection, and before that game was “Galactic Civilizations 2″, also without any protection what so ever… So what’s their explanation?!
Answer: they made a good game!

So Crysis wasn’t a good game now? Did I miss a memo?

Crysis : first two thirds = good game with rather excessive hardware requirements, last third = shit game with insane requirements (the ice level killed my framerate and was a wanky escort mission too).

Yes poor developers. It`s not like everyone had illegal copies of C-64 games. Many people back then didn`t even buy 1 original and the companies survived. So this piracy argument is bullshit. Maybe they should lower prices. Fact is they charge more for the console version is because they can.

“Many people back then didn`t even buy 1 original and the companies survived.”

lol. Back then it only took one person, possibly 3 maximum, to make a game, and they could do it in their spare time.

These days most mid budget games will cost at least £2 million to develop – MININMUM!

As for the quality of the games being what makes them sell, then I can’t really picture the scene where some kid comes home from school, turns on his PC and says to himself “I won’t bother downloading [insert AAA game here] because it’s just too good! I’ll wait for Mum and Dad to buy me a copy in a few months time.”

In fact, I doubt that that’s ever happened.

YaY, more rubbish being spouted. Hurrah!!

Funny thing about this PC piracy, when you ask them to bring numbers to the discussion to prove that piracy is killing the PC, they can’t. Sims 2, the most pirated game, is still selling and making EA a fortune. As someone else said, Sins of a Solar Empire selling incredibly well.

Not releasing a PC version at the same time as the console versions is also a factor in, what people are saying, killing PC gaming as everyone with a console and a PC will buy the console version first. So his remarks are utter rubbish.

This isn’t because of Piracy, this is because the have probably been told by M$ and $ony to do this so that the console games get more visibility than the PC ones.

“Funny thing about this PC piracy, when you ask them to bring numbers to the discussion to prove that piracy is killing the PC, they can’t”

You want them to produce accurate figures of sales they didn’t have? And you’re supposing that because they can’t accurately track sales that didn’t happen then it must all be a fallacy?

Hello? Logic?

Gamers running anecdotal evidence suggesting Piracy is practically a non event or has no significance on the market as a whole going up against publishers and developers who will have financial forecasts, costs and understanding of the economics of game development is just too funny to be taken seriously. These apologist arguments usually come from people who indulge in pirated software who want to believe they’re doing no wrong or, even more amusingly, are a victim of someone else’s greed.

Additionally, the notion that “good games sell, bad games don’t” is so wonderfully naive that anyone who believes it should have a chat with Ensemble, Iron Lore and Clover.

By contrast with most of the comments here, Tonka is bang on the money.

Kalain: M$ and $ony conspiracy you say? How insightful.

Yeah, sure, because consoles aren’t pirated to hell and back.

Make good games, they’ll sell.

What an idiot.

“Sims 2, the most pirated game, is still selling and making EA a fortune.”

It’s selling loads because it’s being bought by people who don’t generally pirate: casual gamers.

In fact, the point that you make kind of highlights the problem of piracy on PC.

Some of the best selling PC games these days are aimed at the casual market, because the people who buy them are not likely to be tech savvy enough to know how to pirate them.

Some of the most underachieving games are games that hardcore gamers are more likely to play. Games like Crysis that your typical high end PC upgrader wants in order to show off his hardware. People who play these games are the kind of people who have the know-how to pirate a game before the thing is even released, and it’s these people who are being referred to as killing PC gaming.

Just look at the success of the Wii. It’s been astronimical in comparison to anything in the history of the games industry, and it’s the casual gamers who are buying it.

Most game devs do want to make casual games for 13 year old girls and 35 year old Mums just to make money. They want to make games that they want to play, such as COD4, Crysis, Endwar and whatever else.

They want to make games for real gamers, hardcore gamers, but practically the only way that they can do that and still make a profit these days is on console.

crysis wasn’t a good game.

it was a tech demo just like far cry.

Well it’s got a metacritic score of 91 from 56 reviews, so it must be a very good tech demo…

Crytek make really good games that turn rubbish when they add monsters/aliens into the mix. Hopefully their next FPS creation has no non-human enemies and it should be 100% awesome rather than 66%.

@shatner: “good games sell, bad games don’t” – you think naive?, I think insightful! Tell me something, did you ever heard of Stardock complaining about piracy on PC?, or Bioware, or Activison, or Valve, or Blizzard??? And all of them have become giants of the industry because of great games they made, and most of it was for Pc only.
I agree that piracy is bigger on Pc than on consoles, that’s a fact. But it’s not such a big factor in selling of video games as some publishers want to make it. Existence and success of the publishers I mentioned above are the living proof of that.

Make a great game, and people will love it, and buy it. It’s simple as that. There is no other philosophy. In this year I bought COD4 and Mass Effect because for me they are both great games and well worth of my money.

Someone has said that casual gamers are a big part of the industry and that’s the reason why Sims are best seller on the pc market. And also, that casual gamers don’t have the knowledge to go on torrents and download the game. I totally agree. But, are “Sins of the Solar Empire” game for casual gamers, “Galactic Civilizations 2″, or “COD4″… All three games are played by hard-core gamers, all three were available on torrents, but in spite of that they also made great commercial success… So what’s the explanation for that?!

Steam FTW that is all

“I totally agree. But, are “Sins of the Solar Empire” game for casual gamers, “Galactic Civilizations 2″, or “COD4″… All three games are played by hard-core gamers, all three were available on torrents, but in spite of that they also made great commercial success… So what’s the explanation for that?!”

First of all, what is a “great commercial success”? It’s not really wise for either of us to comment on the sales of these games without knowing the exact figures, but what is possible to say is that you can almost guarantee that the console version of COD4 definitely made more money than the PC version. Why? because of piracy! This is the burning issue, not whether or not an RTS sells 100,000 copies without copy protection.

In any case, RTS’s are pretty much limited to PC’s at the moment purely down to the ease of control over console. Which, I’d be willing to assume, is exactly why Ubisoft have put a lot of effort into getting the control method for Endwar just right.

So if two PC games out of thousands manage to do well without copy protection, it doesn’t change that fact that PC developers KNOW that they are missing out on the money that their console counterparts are making.

Hey m3nAc3, why don’t you go speak to Ensemble. They made million selling games too.

Oh? What’s that? You’ll conveniently ignore the developers I mentioned that made award winning, standard-setting games that are now closed and out of business due to DAMAGED SALES?

Oh righty then. Well, I guess when you carefully overlook any details that might contradict your guesswork (I don’t see you actually giving me a demonstration of development costs, pricing structures, retail sell-through and so forth – you just quote a few big names – the exceptions, not the rule – and hope I’ll be convinced) then you can keep preaching your sermon to anyone else blinkered enough to believe it.

Additionally, declaring something a “great commercial success” when you have no figures available to you, no units sold, no profit margin, no investment details – that’s just posturing. Even if something sells 10 million units. If it’s making a loss each time it’s not a commercial success is it? Without knowing detailed costs and margins you can’t possibly be qualified to make such a declaration.

Tell me, what financial data and market research are you basing your “Piracy isn’t a problem” argument on?

Wow, in your world piracy must be GREAT! Or maybe GR8.

You’d better hurry up and speak to Ensemble though. Microsoft are closing them down. I guess it MUST mean Halo Wars will be shit and a poor seller!

/facepalm

“It’s not really wise for either of us to comment on the sales of these games without knowing the exact figures, but what is possible to say is that you can almost guarantee that the console version of COD4 definitely made more money than the PC version. Why? because of piracy!”

Umm…the console version of CoD4 sold a lot more because the market for consoles is much bigger than PCs. Spouting that as proof that piracy is a big problem is just ignorance.

“Tell me, what financial data and market research are you basing your “Piracy isn’t a problem” argument on?”

What financial data and market research are you basing your “Piracy is a problem on” argument on? You can’t state that as a fact without some proof the the revenues generated by game sales has been actively harmed by piracy. I have yet to see any proof.

No one has proof either way. Those proclaiming piracy is a big deal with throw around some marginally useful statistic like the number of users on torrents. Those claiming piracy isn’t a big deal can point to developers that seem have gotten around the issue entirely.

You wanted numbers – okey, here you go, enjoy:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/09/05/solar-empire-moves-500-000-units
- ohhh, oo my, it an a exception, only 500 000 units sold without any protection what so ever…

You mentioned something about 10 million units, oh, here we are:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=190220

Check this:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=186918
- oh my, another exception…

What about this:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/36952/The-Orange-Box-1-5-Million-Console-Sales-Significantly-More-On-PC

…and so on, and so on…

Some other views about http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512

So what is our conclusion here, it’s hard to make a good game, even harder to make a great game… Great games, if you want look at it that way, were always been a exception, and always will be. But that’s how the world is. There is only one Harley Davidson, there is only one Fallout, and there is only one Baldur’s Gate. In those times piracy was also an issue, but you didn’t here any complaints from developers. Because the sales will always be good to the people that can make a quality product. For all times quality will always be the major factor in buying something, and satisfied customers will always be the best messengers.

p.s. @shatner: I didn’t conveniently ignored your arguments, I just don’t know who Ensemble guys are… I presume they made Halo, but I don’t care. I play Pc games only. And also, I never said that piracy isn’t a problem, I just said that It’s not such a BIG problem as some of the publishers are saying…

It’s not necessary to prove someone’s revenue is hurt by the theft of their produce, it’s common sense.

The article makes a statement declaring piracy is harmful. If you dispute that then the burden of proof is on you as you’re the one opposing the original statement.

But again, we’re back to people claiming that if they can’t see sales figures for games that aren’t sold or can’t see accurate tracked data for piracy (like that’s ever going to happen for any ‘underground’ movement) then piracy cannot possibly be an issue. It’s a dependancy on fractured logic and bluff.

If you’re unable to get your head around the concept and effect of theft then I have only one thing to say to you:

Can I borrow £20?

Umm…the console version of CoD4 sold a lot more because the market for consoles is much bigger than PCs. Spouting that as proof that piracy is a big problem is just ignorance.

LOL

There are hundreds of millions of PC’s (including gaming PC’s) in the world fella (as opposed to a measly 20-30 million next-gen consoles!). The potential for the PC Gaming market dwarfs that of anything that any console could hope for, Wii included.

When you look at markets like China, the potential for PC gaming sales is totally immense, and it’s already massive, even now.

To say that the console market is bigger than the PC market is just plain wrong.

If you want proof of piracy harming sales figures, the ONLY proof you need are the big developers leaving PC development, either totally, or making it an after-thought, and switching to consoles.

That speaks for itself

See this for more proof!:

—“Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, recently told GTdaily a similar story to that of Crytek’s Mr. Yerly. Epic’s Unreal Tournament 3 servers received over 40 million attempts at illegitimate access using pirate keys (keys are the serial codes need to install the game and play it online). These games cost $50 each, and like with Crysis… these millions of potential buyers (or at least interested gamers) for Unreal Tournament 3 also had the option to try a free Unreal Tournament 3 demo, you know, instead of stealing years someone else’s hard work. I suppose this shift from PC to console game releases is a natural one for developers like Crytek and Epic. Epic has been taking this approach for a while now by shipping Unreal Tournament 3 for the PC and the PS3, which increased sales of the game to 1.2 million worldwide.”—

@shatner: OMG… no one sane enough would claim that piracy isn’t harmful. Of course it is.
Grand theft auto is also harmful (i don’t mean the game:-)), but cars do sell in Eastern Europe where the percentage of stolen cars is the biggest…
Cod 4 and the Crysis came out on the market almost in same month. COD 4 did great on market, Crysis didn’t. Crytek claimed that the because of piracy they didn’t had any bigger commercial success. And so I ask again, why did Crytek had a problem with piracy, and Acitvision (or Infinity Ward) didn’t?

Psychotext: and how many times have you read where MS and Sony have paid a developer to produce a game just for their console? I know a few people who developed PGR and where paid a bucket load by MS to keep it Xbox. This is just an evolutionary step to keep console sales higher than PC sales, therefore, reinforcing that the game was Pirated on the PC.

Shatner: Maybe numbers was the wrong word, more like actual research evidence instead of blasting out the same old line over and over again. Oh yeah, I have several friend who enjoy playing Halo 3 and haven’t paid for it, along with all of their other 360 games a well.

G1GAHURTZ: I agree with what you are saying there, but, case in point, the most successful game is the most pirated. It doesn’t matter if a game is aimed at casual or hardcore players, it’s going to an audience who wants it. I know several hardcore players who only play the Sims, so are they casual? The point is, piracy hasn’t hurt the sales of the Sims in anyway.

Again, going back to what I said above, where is the research and the results from said research which proves that piracy is having such a profound effect on the sales of games.

Anyway, I’m probably not dong a good job here but I’m sure the guys at RPS are doing a better job. Go read what they have to say here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/10/08/endwar-delayed-because-piracys-killing-pc/

Well for a starters what does the closure of Ensemble have to do with piracy ? As far as I am aware Microsoft closed them down in an effort to reduce costs so they could afford to lop another 50 bucks off the xbox 360. I could be wrong but since you are making the claim that Ensemble is a victim of piracy I believe the burden of proof is on you.

Just because the article makes a statement does not remove it from the burden of proof. If an article makes such a statement it should be backed up with facts and figures. As far as I can see they have provided no proof and are just stating the usual party line of “piracy is killing the PC” rubbish to justify their lack of any effort they put into the PC market.

When a PC game gets held back that is the reason for sales suffering. You just need to look to the example of the orange box, a game that sold very well on the 360 and PC but when it was launched some months later on the PS3 didn’t do all that well. I believe it will be the same with Bioshock on the PS3, I can’t see that doing incredibly well with it being over a year after the 360 and PC version. Hm I wonder why that is ? Is it perhaps the fact people already BOUGHT the game for the console since they weren’t prepared to wait.

We already know the real reason why they delay games for the PC and it has nothing to do with piracy and more to do with Microsoft. They are on record as saying that if the PC version is released at the same time as the console version then copies of the console version suffer because people would rather buy the game for the PC. So they only way that the consoles can compete with the PC is to take the PC out of the equation all together.

So is piracy killing the PC industry ? nope admittedly it isn’t helping the PC industry what is killing the PC industry is developers like Ubisoft whoring themselves to Microsoft.

@G1GAHURTZ that story regarding 40 million hits was a blatant lie and Mark Rein even confirmed it was a lie :-

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/05/05/rein-strikes-red-line-through-40-million-utiii-pirates-story/

“Epic VP Mark Rein has confirmed that a story claiming he said Unreal Tournament III’s PC servers had been hit by 40 million pirated keys is incorrect.

“I don’t recall saying that particular number,” he said, speaking to videogaming247.

“We’ve certainly had lots of invalid attempts to access our servers and piracy is definitely a problem in our industry but I don’t know where that particular number came from.”

Kalain: They’re paid a load to make exclusive games so that platform holders have differentiators to attract new customers and so that income is increased (licensing cut). They obviously need to be paid because they’re going to lose out on the sales they would have got from the other platforms.

It doesn’t necessarily (or likely) follow that MS and Sony would pay developers to say that PC gaming is in trouble because of piracy. Sales for most games show that anyway.

G1GAHURTZ had it right when he said that the games that do well on the PC are the ones that you either can’t pirate (WoW) or appeal to people that generally don’t pirate (Sims).

So what about music industry?! You don’t see many musicians as homeless do you now? And we all know how much illegal downloads goes on to the music albums, songs etc.

Nintendo 64 had almost perfect protection against piracy – cartridge. On the other side you had Playstation with cd games. And cd is so easy to copy isn’t it…

So why didn’t Sony speak out against piracy then?! Maybe because they didn’t want to, maybe sony was implicated in making that fantastic piracy chip which allowed you to play copied cd games… Maybe…

The result was that Nintendo 64 was history.
In this case, you don’t need to be a genius to see that piracy actually helped Sony to be what it is today in video games industry…

@ Kalain:
Like I said before. The real proof that piracy is having such an effect on PC gaming is the indisputable fact that developers are abanding PC and going to console.

Even though the PC market should be bigger.

You don’t need any more proof than that. If there was nothing wrong with the PC market, then companies like Epic and Crytek would stick to doing what they do best, which is making PC games.

I mean, lets face the simple facts. When someone downloads a copy of COD4, they aren’t spending $50/£30.

Which means that the people who made the game are losing money.

So even if you take it at it’s lowest currency, then just say 300,000 illegal copies of COD4 were downloaded, then that’s $15 MILLION!

That’s no chump change.

Even if only a fraction of those 300,000 would have bought the game anyway, it’s still a considerable sum of money down the drain.

All that any PC developer has to do is look at figures like those and say, ‘you know what, $15,000,000 could fund the next two versions of our game. Forget the PC, were switching to console.’

It’s as simple as that.

@ charmers:

OK, fair enough, so the number is wrong (it did seem a little wild anyway…) but the reality is that the point still holds. Any PC developer who tracks their game data after release will tell you that the number of people playing the game will always be higher than the number of copies sold.

The point of mentioning Ensemble is that they’re responsible for a series of extremely highly regarded PC exclusive games that have sold big numbers (million+). The point was that our friend m3nac3 should speak to them with regards to the effects of piracy and how it affects the revenues for PC titles. M3nac3 doesn’t seem to keen to speak to any developers other than his cherry-picked ones that ‘prove’ (to him at least) that piracy isn’t an issue.

The closure of (another) good studio just happens to be coincidence. But there’s an insinuation that bad games don’t sell and developers close as a result. The fact is, bad games DO sell. They sell astonishingly well. And a game being good isn’t enough for it to sell (Psychonauts? Okami? Beyond Good and Evil?).

To assume that quality is the sole measure of commercial success is to discount marketing, pricing and a huge array of economical and commercial factors. All this just to suggests “good games sell” is the beginning and end of the argument of commercial success.

And, as mentioned before, selling is one thing, profiting is another.

The myriad of factors involved in grasping the financial ebb and flow of an entire industry is pretty daunting. Anyone attempting to boil it down to “good stuff sells good” is only demonstrating the limitations of their own comprehension.

Stuff like WoW or any subscription based service can be profitable because they’re difficult to play illegitimately. Even then, there’s a huge amount of MMOs that don’t break even.

Steam is a very nicely disguised DRM system. And as Tonka also pointed out, that’s all what consoles are too. The appeal of PSN/XBL download only games with less investment and less risk of piracy are the sweetest spot in game development at the moment.

You’ll see more and more ways of disguising DRM in order to stave off piracy in the future.

The same could equally be said for the consoles, there are more people playing the game than bought the game. You just need to look at the 360 and see it is heavily pirated, I will admit not as much as the PC but there is still a massive piracy scene on the 360. Then there are game rentals how many console gamers just rent there games ? That is a problem that effects both the 360 and PS3. Strange how we hardly hear about all this though isn’t it … oh no all we ever hear is the PC is doomed because of Piracy.

Now to the almighty of games COD 4, here is a clue for you a lot of people didn’t actually think it was any good. I played the demo and thought it was pathetic and would only be worth paying a budget price of £15 for 5 hours of single player gaming (I find multiplayer boring). Now could it be the fact the single player aspect of the game was pathetically short or was it down to piracy that the game lost sales ? We will never know, meanwhile I am still waiting for COD 4 to drop to a budget price level, nearly a year later. I do know this many COD 2 players hate COD 4 it is too arcadey and dumbed down for their tastes. So you have to wonder what was the REAL reason for the poor sales of COD 4, naturally publishers and developers will blame piracy before blaming their own product.

Now lets look at the Orange box a title that outsold both the ps3 and 360 versions on the PC. Even though Episode 2 was incredibly short there was so much crammed in that people felt like they were getting a bargain and quite happily paid the $40 for it. So what is valve doing right that ubisoft aren’t doing ? Maybe it’s because valve offer games that are WORTH the money and offer a delivery system that people WANT to use and first and foremost Valve focus their gaming on the PC first and foremost.

But then I guess that is too much work for Ubisoft isn’t it, it’s much easier for them to blame piracy and provide crappy ports that don’t run all that well and have dumbed down gameplay that doesn’t appeal to PC gamers then when the game bombs hey we can blame it on piracy. The laughable thing about it all though is some people actually fall for it.

@shatner:
can you tell me where did I said that “quality is the sole measure of commercial success” … or DID I said it was a “major factor”?! Witch ISN’T the same! So stop twisting someones words to prove that your right. That’s lame dude…

You said that I cherry-picked developers? Like Activison, Bioware, Blizzard, Valve are some little developers that no one knows… What kind of argument is that? And speaking of arguments you don’t have any proof what so ever that Ensemble was closed because of piracy… Did YOU asked them?

If you are so sure that piracy is the main factor of low sales on pc market, or any market, answer me this:

1. Cod 4 and the Crysis came out on the market almost in same month. COD 4 did great on market, Crysis didn’t. Crytek claimed that the because of piracy they didn’t had any bigger commercial success. And so I ask again, why did Crytek had a problem with piracy, and Acitvision (or Infinity Ward) didn’t?

2. Why Nintendo 64 is history? (they had perfect piracy protection)

3. Why there is no homeless musicians?

4. Why did Bioware sold every Rpg game they made in millions of units?

If for Blizzard/Vivendi (Vivendi = Activison), the biggest publisher on the world, is PC market good, than that’s enough for me. Same goes for Bioware (they hold 90% RPG games on PC), and Stardock. They are not exceptions, they very big portion of PC market today. And that’s a fact!

I don’t mind this attitude so much, to be honest.

The reason why I don’t is because those games really are suited more to consoles, the future of the PC lies with indie devs. Despite some claims, it’s not true that games need a huge amount of people or big budgets to make them. It’s doubly not true that a good game needs these things, and games like World of Goo, along with brain-mulchy stuffs released by companies like Caravel Games and Spiderweb Software prove that big companies aren’t needed for great games.

This is probably a good thing, because it means that the requirements for games on the PC can be scaled back, and those with older machines can run them. It also means that other OSes will become better supported, as many indie developers are making games for Mac and Linux as much as they are for Windows now. It’s not hard for them to put together a Linux build, and they’ve said so themselves.

So then what we have at the end is something that really is much akin to the tech-hippie love-in we had with home computers back in the day. Consoles can push the boundaries, and they can have better hardware included with each generation. This means that the hardware arms race can be left to the console manufacturers, and graphics can be pushed to the limit and shown at their best on bloody humongous HD televisions, something that the humble monitor could never match up to.

I don’t know if this is the way it’s actually going to go, though.

But I’m hoping, and with numerous people backing Ubuntu, Google releasing their own Linux distro, and bunches upon bunches of indie developers going from strength to strength, that could well be the future of PC gaming as we know it. With only the occasional crappy port thrown the PC’s way, which we can all merrily ignore in favour of the better casual/indie offers that’ll be available.

To be honest, whenever I see that piracy is a reason for not making a PC release, I think that’s absurd. When I see that, I see it as the developer plaintively stating in a most pitiable way that they wish to leave the PC behind. And if that’s the case then let them. The PC can survive without them, but all this excuse making about why the PC isn’t a viable platform is only going to make them more and more unpopular with those who own consoles and a PC. They should just go their own way and be decisive about that without feeling the need to explain it and apologise for it.

Again, sorry for being an opinionated windbag.

As far as things go though… on the PC, the title I’ve been looking forward to most this year is World of Goo, and on the PS3 it’s more stuff like Mirror’s Edge, LittleBigPlanet, and so on. And it’s not due to the lack of hardware either, as at the moment I have a particularly butch gaming laptop but… I’m thinking that this time I might just let it slip, and not just jump into the next generation of hardware which’ll come along within the next year or so. I don’t see the reason to really update PC hardware all that much currently anyway, considering the games I’m looking forward to.

And I still find it funny that one of the better selling PC titles this year was Audiosurf.

But yeah… time to wrap this up, as I’ve already made an essay out of this post now.

“There are hundreds of millions of PC’s (including gaming PC’s) in the world fella (as opposed to a measly 20-30 million next-gen consoles!). The potential for the PC Gaming market dwarfs that of anything that any console could hope for, Wii included.”

I’m not sure I understand your “including gaming PCs”. Exactly what other kind of PCs are useful to include in this discussion? I have 2 computers here at work. Neither of which will ever see a game played on them. There are, I believe, 4 working computers at my parent’s house. Only one of those plays a game, and one game at that, WoW. Want to know why? Because the only game my mom has ever wanted to play on the PC has been either WoW or Solitaire.

The only reason the PC market sells as much as it does is because of the casual games like Sims games and WoW. Those sell so much not because they aren’t pirated, but because the number of people who would play a game like the Sims or WoW is much larger than people who are interested in playing CoD4.

So tossing around numbers like “hundreds of millions” is pointless since you can’t draw any direct connection between the number of PCs that exist and the number of PCs being used to play games like CoD4. That same lack of connection doesn’t exist for the consoles.

I was simply pointing out that the potential of the PC market is much bigger than what the console market has to offer.

I was responding to a claim that the console market was bigger than the PC gaming market, which is simply untrue.

There are also console games like the xbox LIVE arcade games that could probably run on a 10 year old PC, so the technical demands of the game weren’t in question.

If I released solitaire 2, I wouldn’t want to put it on any of the consoles. It wouldn’t need a gaming PC to run on either.

I could sell this game for 1p per copy and I’d make way more than I would developing a AAA console game for £4-5 million over 18-24 months.

If you personally don’t play games on any of your PC’s then you can believe that there are many people who do, so I don’t think that your ‘well my Mum and me don’t do it’ point really works.

Anyway, the point was that if you’re a developer that want’s to be the best and make the most money, the real figures say that you can make an easy “killing” on the PC, but the real-life facts say that you’re actually more likely to make more money on console when it comes to non-casual games.

Maybe someone should teach him how to search for games at a torrent site , type xbox360 in the search for torrents field….

piracy is an issue… but not the main issue… crappy DRM , bad port of the game , lack of advertisements

and the main cause of low pc sales ? pc version arriving half a year later… when the console version already sold millions….

@Giggy

“If you personally don’t play games on any of your PC’s then you can believe that there are many people who do, so I don’t think that your ‘well my Mum and me don’t do it’ point really works.”

Did I or did I not say that I have a gaming laptop? My presence has been seen at RPS, which is a purely PC gaming blog. It’d be a bit silly for me to read and participate in such things if I wasn’t a PC gamer.

So yes, I am a PC gamer. I’ve even posted here about PC games which I’ve played, and yes… I’ve played the pap that the mainstream seems to like, too. (Crysis)

So, no… that wasn’t my point at all. That was just some completely absurd red herring of a tangent you went off on, assuming that what I was talking about had anything to do with my mother’s gaming desires. So… have fun with that tangent, I’m not going to really argue it because I’m tired of getting into slimy, political-tactics-biased arguments on Teh Internet.

Just so you understand, though (to put it as simply as possible): My point was primarily that mainstream releases on the PC of late have been pretty much made of suck, and that indie releases have been much more interesting, on the whole.

I hope that works…

M3nac3, your insistance that N64 had perfect piracy protection really shows just how poor your grasp is of the scope, issue and widespread problem that piracy had and still has. N64 was blighted with plenty of piracy – enough to put a significant dent in its sales revenue. Go and research the Doctor 64 manufactured by Bung.

And whilst you steadfastly and consistenly refuse to acknowledge every publisher and developer I mentioned that contradicts your theory that PIRACY IS FAB! I’m sure you’ll not mind if I return the favour in respect of your comical arguments. Go speak to some developers and publishers instead of misquoting and ignoring facts and historical events. Your argument only stands up if others have as little familiarity with the subject matter and mechanics of the industry as you seem to demonstrate.

Incidentally, I never outright claimed your entire argument was based around the “good games sell bad games don’t” playschool theory. Perhaps you should re-read my post and pay particular attention to the word “insinuation”.

In fact, paying more attention would probably be my best advice to you. It’s certainly better than choosing to ignore and overlook facts that Pirates don’t like the sound of because if makes them feel a bit uncomfortable with the theft they freely conduct and attempt to justify.

Zero piracy wouldn’t automatically mean better games. Conversely better games won’t mean zero piracy (quite the opposite) – so that ‘quality’ issue is a massive smokescreen put out by pirates or beneficiaries of pirating to distract from the core issue: pirates are thieves.

There’s no justification for piracy beyond “I’m not prepared to pay for something so I’d prefer to steal it instead”. In my book, if you’re a pirate, a supporter of piracy or attempting to dismiss the significant harm that piracy does to the industry then you’re all pretty much as dispicable as each other.

Shatner is your name really George Bush ? Because :-

“In my book, if you’re a pirate, a supporter of piracy or attempting to dismiss the significant harm that piracy does to the industry then you’re all pretty much as dispicable as each other.”

Sounds an awful lot like “you are either with us or against us”. No one here is defending piracy, nearly everyone here is decrying the crap that is being spouted about piracy. Ubisoft are just another in a long line of developers that use piracy to cover up their own failings. These days companies are very quick to blame piracy on poor sales rather than blame their own shoddy practices and products. Hey it works because people like you believe them.

I would bet any money they will blame piracy on poor sales of Brother In Arms – Hells Highway. But guess what I am a PC gamer but I am not buying it, wanna know why ? It’s because I am SICK to death of world war 2 games. I don’t expect Farcry 2 to do well either for the simple reason it will be a crap port that will barely be playable on the majority of machines, but I bet any money they will wheel out the piracy excuse YET again. I will of course try the demo if the company decides to bother to do one. If they don’t bother then I won’t bother handing over my hard earned money to them.

See how it works I am a customer if they want my money they better start earning it, instead all we ever hear is “boo hoo piracy”. How about they start producing games I WANT to play, how about they start priducing games that can take weeks to finish instead of being able to finish them the same day you buy it. How about they start promoting the PC version with a decent demo so I can try the game out and see if it is something I want to buy. How about they do all those things and shut up trying to find a scape goat excuse like piracy.

Sounds an awful lot like “you are either with us or against us”

Dress it up however you like: Piracy is theft.

You either support theft or you don’t.

There’s never any justification for it. Particularly when the theft concerns luxury goods like videogames.

Charmers, with all due respect, unless you are familiar with the economics of publishing and development you’re simply in no position to point the finger back at a publisher or developer that says piracy is harming their market.

As I mentioned before, nobody has brought ANYTHING beyond opinon and anecdotal evidence (and some humourously selective comprehension) to counter Ubisoft’s claim. But in order to do that properly you’d need to have as intimate an understanding of the economics of game development and the commercial markets as they do. Which, I’d bet morriss’ 360 on, you don’t.

So the rest is just your word against theirs. Except you don’t make or sell games and they do – and have done so for years.

@shatner:
Were you born near Chernobyl or somewhere near? You really don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you. NO ONE has said that the piracy isn’t bad, NO ONE has said that piracy isn’t theft, and NO ONE has said that piracy is “FAB” (that is my theory – are you insane?!)…

N64 had perfect piracy protection in comparison with playstation 1. And that was the point of that line. So don’t play stupid, as you didn’t know what I was trying to tell you… Ohhh, there is no perfect piracy protection?!, and the warm water has been invented, ohh my, I didn’t know that…

About “your” developers, you mentioned only one – Ensemble. And your argument was that they were closed because of the piracy, and oh yeah “Go ASK Them” argument too… Really mature dude… If you can’t show any articles why did Ensemble really closed down, or some research i.e. effect of piracy that was critical for Ensemble fate, then that argument about Ensemble isn’t really an argument, it’s only your opinion… And It’s a poor one at best…

About Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil etc., that games are the real exceptions… Who knows why they weren’t accepted in gaming community. But I’m pretty sure that the piracy wasn’t the main factor for theirs tragic (non commercial) fate.

“I’m not prepared to pay for something so I’d prefer to steal it instead = a pirate = supporter of piracy = attempting to dismiss the significant harm that piracy does to the industry = you’re all pretty much as despicable as each other”

So…, let’s see did I get this right, if I say that piracy isn’t such a big factor in PC gaming industry as some publishers want to make it (without any proof what so ever)…, I’m A PIRAT! And a despicable one! OMG I didn’t know… Can I ask you again: are you insane?

Please show me some of your figures, I showed you mine (Sins of Solar Empire – 500 000 units, Galactic Civilizations 2 – 300 000 units, COD4 – 10 million units, Orange Box – 1,5 million units etc.).
Don’t tell me your opinion, don’t try to explain your logic to me – just show me some concrete proof that piracy is effecting sales on PC market. If you can’t, shut up. It’s simple as that.

You know, when people start their counter-arguments with a personal dig I know it’s because there’s nothing better they can come up with.

PIRACY = THEFT
THEFT = BAD

See? That’s it. You steal from people, it damages them.

If you’re not capable of understanding that or seek to fluff it up into something it’s not by way of throwing in some VGChartz figurez and waving your arms about and carefully ignoring facts and details that make your argument hollow and empty then you’ve no point arguing in the first place.

Menace, I see you’ve continuing to ignore every point I’ve raised that counters your cherry picked exceptions to the rule, you’ve now made some personal remarks and, on top of that, you’re deliberately acting the victim by suggesting I’m calling you a pirate.

Your ability to comprehend what has been said is getting poorer with every post.

Let me make this very very simple for those with very very poor comprehension skills:

For a commercial company to remain in business the need to control their revenue. They need to forecast and budget. If large groups of people STEAL revenue that is owed to them (by the sale of product) then, wait for it, that DAMAGES THE COMPANY and subsequently, if it is prevailent enough (which in the games industry, it is) it DAMAGES THE INDUSTRY.

Menace (sorry, I’m dropping your the l33tness from your username as I don’t believe you’ve qualify for it), if the best you can do for an industry with THOUSANDS of products and THOUSANDS of companies is to pull 5 or 6 names off the top of your head (minus detailed financial facts and figures, of course) then that really shows how heavily the odds of this scenario are stacked against you , doesn’t it?

That you’re going exclusively on anecdotal evidence against the statements of a commercial company, again, is quite a comical contrast.

Objectively, I’m going to side with informed views of the professional who does what he does for a living over some anonymous guy on the internet who thinks the N64 was never subjected to piracy.

Unfortunately Menace, you’ve lolled yourself out of this argument with your oversights and extremely selective examples and melodrama.

Do let me know what Iron Lore say to you after you’ve spoken to them though. Oh, and don’t forget to look up the Doctor 64 N64 pirating device either.

Perhaps when you stop carefully ignoring all and any facts that don’t go with your predetermined view your comments will carry a bit more weight.

@shatner:

“You know, when people start their counter-arguments with a personal dig I know it’s because there’s nothing better they can come up with.”

Yeah, it’s so true. But every coin has the other side – and this one is, that there is no other way of talking with people who are saying such BS on regular bases, as you are doing…

“For a commercial company to remain in business the need to control their revenue. They need to forecast and budget. If large groups of people STEAL revenue that is owed to them (by the sale of product) then, wait for it, that DAMAGES THE COMPANY and subsequently, if it is prevailent enough (which in the games industry, it is) it DAMAGES THE INDUSTRY.”

That would be the case if all the illegal downloads are 100% possible customers. But they aren’t.
Many people download games over torrents because they want to see can they run the game, or do they like the game at all. Many new games don’t provide demo. 10 years ago demo was a standard, now it’s almost an exception.
But than again I should thank you; I didn’t know that if you take a illegally large sum of money from some company you DAMAGED IT… ooooh my you are so smart…, I hope when I grow up I can be smart as you…

“Objectively, I’m going to side with informed views of the professional who does what he does for a living over some anonymous guy on the internet who thinks the N64 was never subjected to piracy.”

WTF?! Who said that?! Can you read man? Or are you playing dumb 24/7… or maybe you are not playing at all…

“Menace (sorry, I’m dropping your the l33tness from your username as I don’t believe you’ve qualify for it), if the best you can do for an industry with THOUSANDS of products and THOUSANDS of companies is to pull 5 or 6 names off the top of your head (minus detailed financial facts and figures, of course) then that really shows how heavily the odds of this scenario are stacked against you , doesn’t it?”

My god you are so lame… I pulled 5 or 6 names off the top of my head, witch are the biggest in this business, I posted how much units of games were sold, but I didn’t post any detailed financial facts… Oh poor poor me… What should I do to convince you?, get a job in Activision?!
On the other hand what did you do? Except post your opinion? What proof and financial facts are on your side?!

But It’s obvious you can’t understand that (and many other things witch I repeated 100 times). It seems that you live in a black & white world, and I don’t want to spoiled that fantasy for you…

Good night and good luck

it’s a hell of alot easier to pirate an xbox 360 game vs a pc game.. consoles are way cheaper that their pc counterparts that can run these nex gen games, with a 360 all you do is burn a game and it works, on pc you need cracks and protection emulation.. what fools for not releasing on pc.

You just burn a game and it works? You missed out the bit about opening up the console, working out your drive version, getting the right mod, hoping MS don’t catch you if you play online etc.

*nips into the kitchen*
crumpets anyone? toast with jam? no jam?
i have hot tea, coffee and cold milk.
this discussion needs some culinary expertise before everyone reverts to a badger.
maybe some jam on a crumpet?

Mmm… badger on toast.

Wait, what?

Ok, some point of view from a guy who mostly pirate games.
First. pirating=theft=bad just with a little difference
a nornal theft +thief account = -victim account,
here its not the case, basically when you pirate a game you are not damaging it directly.
Second. and the most important thing. We discuss about money, and in marketing there is a rule. Everybody has his own price for a “thing” (game, music, tv, car, pencil).
You cant expect from somebody who are making 300$ a month to pay 50$ for every game.
Third. An example. Microsoft windows. Does anybody think that people who are pirating games, do have a windows licence?

So finally. This antipiracy effort should be directed to the casual people who are on the edge to buy games but because of the easiness of playing pirated games on PC and the influence of others are not.
Even if could exist a method to make piracy non existent, the people who will buy the game from those who downloaded are well under 10%.
And most of the people who are playing pirated games on PC, they play pirated games on console. Even on console I remember something about the pirateing killed the dreamcast, strangely enough the PS was much more pirated.

So even this recent affirmation about piracy is killing PC is offending my inteligence, if they can manage to attract some people from those 10% to the other side, its all for the better

Yu can found lot of 360 games too, UBI wake Up!
Stop blame PC!
Piraty on 360 is huge!