PC Gaming and Piracy: Must Read Article
- Thread starter CmdrGoob
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You may have a point there, although I use GamersGate exclusively because I'm a total raging Paradox fanboy, while my wife uses Steam because she gets moist over online shooters. In an ideal world that kind of market segmentation means every type of customer gets well served.Eggo said:
Well a surprising amount of applications require good graphics cards. Especially other media-related things, such as Flash and Photoshop and Sony Vegas and such. When this software gets updated new graphical capabilities may be possible, and a new card may be in order.CmdrGoob said:
I think the sales in the computer game market is a clearer indicator of the number of frequent PC gamers than the graphics card one due to the reasons Shade Jackrabbit mentioned, assuming you augment it with a reasonable piracy estimate. In which case getting higher than 12-15 million doesn't really make sense.
Way I see it nothing (for me anyway) has come out on the PC and just for the PC, looking forwards there is only two games I want, Diablo 3 and Empire: Total War, last game I brought for m PC was in the cheap zone, Sim City Societies. Whereas my console got nicely hit up with COD: WAW , Fallout 3, and begrudgingly, SmackDown! vs RAW 2009.
If somethings cross platform, I'd rather get the console port as it's easier to get going with and I've not got to check component, software and Operating System compatibility issues. But I'm just lazy like that, and so are a lot of people I know, especially parents buying gift
If somethings cross platform, I'd rather get the console port as it's easier to get going with and I've not got to check component, software and Operating System compatibility issues. But I'm just lazy like that, and so are a lot of people I know, especially parents buying gift
Yes, but like I said, there just isn't figures to support the notion there's nearly as many frequent PC gamers as graphics cards sold unless you believe in a vast underground conspiracy of pirates that outnumber legitimate buyers by 10:1. Aside from which, we all know graphics cards have many functions, aside from people who just buy them because they exist.
Well, OK, let's just go with 12-15 million hardcore PC gamers. How many 360 gamers are hardcore gamers? Let's say all of them, to be conservative. Let's say 12 million PC gamers, to be conservative. That means very roughly twice as many hardcore 360 gamers as PC gamers, even being very conservative at overestimating 360 gamers. Fallout 3 sells better on 360 at a 3:1 ratio as estimated in that article, not 2:1. CoD4 sells at a 4:1 ratio estimated in that article, not 2:1. Crysis sells 1.5 million copies. Gears of War 2 sells 2 million copies in it's opening weekend alone. The PC sales are clearly underperforming badly even with our conservative estimates.EzraPound said:
Actually, that's rather interesting. Based on the articles estimates, we're looking at piracy figures that are almost as much as the sales figures at least for AAA releases. If that's the case, and piracies are mostly a lost sale for AAA games, then the rates at which PC games are consumed is roughly in line with the rates at which 360 games are consumed considering our estimates of the sizes of their respective markets.
All the other media industries that deal in visual media, to be precise. Magazines put together page-layouts, movie industries do 3d effects, as well as compose posters and edit film.CmdrGoob said:
And of course, every single game company that MAKES the games needs the hardware to run them, and they may or may not be factored in. But don't forget that Flash is used corporately very often, for advertisements. And the envelope is always being pushed.
We know essentially all Xbox 360 owners are frequent gamers because they forked over the money for a device that's proprietary use is playing games, in contrast to graphics cards, which - like I said - are obviously usually bought for other reasons, suggested by the disparity between PC game sales and graphics cards sales. And did I mention that the PC market is far less advertised in than console markets, naturally causing major releases to not sell as well? Or that 12-15 million isn't a generous estimate if Crysis sold 1.5 million copies, considering piracy (one third of Wii owners have Mario Kart, for christ's sake)? Or - wait for it - that games like GTA IV are far less apt to command massive hype for PC when developers release them months and months after their console brethren?
How about every single industry that does anything related to graphics? Each of them needs a bleeding-edge computer for every single one of their peons. I'm not going to say that PC game piracy isn't a huge issue, but I think you're severely underestimating the proportion of gaming-fit PCs that are bought by institutions rather than individuals.CmdrGoob said:
1) I already did estimate all 360 owners as hardcore gamers, so I don't know what you are complaining about. But regardless there have to be at least a few who only got it for a few exclusives or got it to casually try out gaming.EzraPound said:
2) I've used examples of cross platform games released simultaneously on both platforms - advertising for Fallout 3 isn't particularly 360 specific.
3) Are you estimating the size of the PC market based on PC games sales to justify the proposition that games sales for the PC are adequate given the size of the market? Becuase that would be circular.
4) I've only used examples of cross platform games released simulaneously on both platforms - Fallout 3 and Call of Duty 4. And let's not forget, more publishers are doing this to stop piracy of the PC version canibilizing sales of the other versions. The fact that this then further depresses sales of the PC version, which will then further act to even slow down or stop ports coming to PC. That's a death spiral.
im sorry, but do you have ANY idea the system recources it takes to do some of the more complex shit in autocad? and try rendering ANYTHING without a half decent graphics card and a couple GB of ram. i can wait. besides, we all know its physically impossible to pirate console games. einsteins famous "a=n^3" calculation, which we all know becomes "a=n^3/0" when applied to consoles thats "assholes=normals cubed divided by 0" in case i fucked up my math speak.
I would love for someone to provide me real stats on Pirating instead of this hyperbole and borderline schizo line that corporations are toting. Where are we getting these magical numbers discussed here? Do pirates magically answer exit polling during pirating?
Are you pirating? Please check yes or no. Oh and include your IP address and Mailing Address. Seriously you can't track piracy because most sites can't or won't track the amount of downloads nor would they release such information on their own. Not to mention this doesn't even factor in pirating in its many other forms. Like when I make CDs and hand them out on the street just in spite of EA.
Seriously though when is the PC Gaming Industry just going to fess up that they are a bunch of lazy, scum ridden corporate tools who no longer offer any innovation or challenge? Instead they much prefer porting shit titles that console gamers are in love with then can't understand why they don't sell. Until the Gaming Industry comes to grips that they actually have to develop real content and make games that either actually work out of the box without the need of gigabytes worth of patching or is just simply fun then they will continue to die and deservedly so. Blaming the death of the Market on Piracy is a cop out.
Are you pirating? Please check yes or no. Oh and include your IP address and Mailing Address. Seriously you can't track piracy because most sites can't or won't track the amount of downloads nor would they release such information on their own. Not to mention this doesn't even factor in pirating in its many other forms. Like when I make CDs and hand them out on the street just in spite of EA.
Seriously though when is the PC Gaming Industry just going to fess up that they are a bunch of lazy, scum ridden corporate tools who no longer offer any innovation or challenge? Instead they much prefer porting shit titles that console gamers are in love with then can't understand why they don't sell. Until the Gaming Industry comes to grips that they actually have to develop real content and make games that either actually work out of the box without the need of gigabytes worth of patching or is just simply fun then they will continue to die and deservedly so. Blaming the death of the Market on Piracy is a cop out.
Only if it's ass is "torrent downloads as counted by torrent search sites". Now granted that's the only form of piracy you can even have a hope of counting.Rajin Cajun said:
So what you're really saying is that going on the counts from the torrent sites is possibly a large underestimate.Are you pirating? Please check yes or no. Oh and include your IP address and Mailing Address. Seriously you can't track piracy because most sites can't or won't track the amount of downloads nor would they release such information on their own. Not to mention this doesn't even factor in pirating in its many other forms. Like when I make CDs and hand them out on the street just in spite of EA.