The Witcher 2 - Roundup #3

Really, I wish that piracy could be suspended or stopped to see how the argument that piracy is moving developpers to consoles is non sense.

The video game market is now mature and very, very surprisingly, the game dedicated platform (console) has prevailed over the multi-use platform(PC), a so untypical situation that indeed, studies have to be funded to show why it should have been otherwise.

Developpers move to consoles because that is where the buck is. And the buck is there because consoles as a dedicated platform, have come to dominate the market as the primary solution for people wanting to video games.

The article skips that little point and outlines piracy as the primary factor.

Piracy has effects but not the one to get the developpers moving to consoles.
 
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Piracy has effects but not the one to get the developpers moving to consoles.

Wouldn't the developers themselves know this best? Why would you know better than they do ?
 
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And the buck is there because consoles as a dedicated platform, have come to dominate the market as the primary solution for people wanting to video games.

I don't agree, nor do games publishers or hardware manufacturers or market researchers.

People are buying discrete, gaming, graphics cards for their PCs. In spades. There aren't many reasons to buy a gaming graphics card for a PC when it doesn't need one to do all the other things a PC can do. The conclusion must be that people buy gaming graphics cards (cf workstation cards) to play graphically intensive games on their PCs.

The numbers involved are huge - a quick look at Jon Peddie Research shows it dwarves the number of people who own consoles, despite the fact many of these cards cost as much as a console.

Again, the conclusion is that there is a very large market out there for people who want to play games on their PC, that in fact is several times larger than a console market - the hardware alliance estimated a while back that the gaming install base was over 200m PCs.

Server logs (for multiplayer games) also show that very large numbers of people are playing, or attempting to play PC games.

Yet despite this, the numbers sold at retail and digital are lower than consoles, by a factor of 4-5 as quoted by the bethsoft guy.

Whatever you label the reason for it, more people are buying console games, despite more people playing PC games. That drives businesses to create more console games.
 
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I admit that I have never followed gaming piracy… I don't read articles, studies or magazines about games all that much - I'm much more interested in music and I have read a bit about music piracy when I had the chance. And there is one fact which was quite surprising the first time I read about it and I keep coming across it again and again: since Napster, CD sales have dropped noticeably, as expected, however the overall profits of the music industry have actually gone up! There are other sources of course: concerts, ringtones and all sorts of merchandise. Yet what is annoying is that music companies keep bringing up low CD sales to excuse any compromise they might make.

Now what this tells me is that there are often not enough data offered to a layman like me to reach into a truly accurate conclusion. If I hear 'piracy results in less CD sales and that leads to less profit for the music industry' I would probably find it perfectly logical and I would accept it as such… but after I've read some very convincing arguments that this is simply wrong, things got more complicated. Now saying the opposite, that piracy is responsible for the increased profits, would also be equally presumptuous… I just see two facts: a. piracy and b. increased profit and not the line that might connect them; as far as I know they are completely irrelevant.

Something like this goes on in this article… I see a lot of numbers but I keep thinking there's something missing. An example that draw my attention is this:
Only 20% of games that begin production will ever finish. Of those 20% that are finished and released to the market, only 20% of them will ever realize a significant profit… that equals 4% of games that start production return a significant profit.
Now this… does not compute… I don't get it. My common sense tells me that if your chance of not loosing money in your work is only 4% then… you would simply do something else! Instead there are new games coming out every single day! So there's something off here. I'm not saying that this figure is a lie or even slightly imprecise, I have no reason to believe that, but I am saying that there is something here that they are not telling me. For example the profit this 4% makes might be enough to fully cover the loses of the rest 96% and leave enough for anyone involved to live comfortably, if that's the case then it's not a valid argument for proving that working in the game industry is risky. I'm not saying that's the case, I'm saying I'm not given enough data to think it isn't possible.

Unfortunately it seems to me that such techniques, presenting me with two facts without proving they are somehow related and letting me just choose to connect them on my own, are very very common. Journalists do it all the time. It might work in a forum post if it stimulates discussion, I don't know, but when I read an article or, even more importantly, a study I expect to be given all the necessary data that lead to a clear conclusion and I won't to see the lines that connect them.
 
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People are buying discrete, gaming, graphics cards for their PCs. In spades. There aren't many reasons to buy a gaming graphics card for a PC when it doesn't need one to do all the other things a PC can do. The conclusion must be that people buy gaming graphics cards (cf workstation cards) to play graphically intensive games on their PCs.

And that is not because of new video format that grow more and more demanding by the day and the introduction of HD TV.

The predominance of console games and their port has brought inertia to the PC hardware requirements.

Consoles are somehow five years old and the average life expectancy of a gamer PC used to be around 2 years. Consoles have brought stability and PC video games have grown less graphically intensive relatively to the PC graphics potential than they used to be. Most of the times, you no longer need the last video card generation to play the lastest PC video games with options set on full.

The number of PC gamers is told to be 200 millions people. That is quite a lot of people. And the article reported guess estimates of the number of copies illegally downloaded for some big hits. Hard to connect the two though.
 
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Really, I wish that piracy could be suspended or stopped to see how the argument that piracy is moving developpers to consoles is non sense.

The video game market is now mature and very, very surprisingly, the game dedicated platform (console) has prevailed over the multi-use platform(PC), a so untypical situation that indeed, studies have to be funded to show why it should have been otherwise.

Developpers move to consoles because that is where the buck is. And the buck is there because consoles as a dedicated platform, have come to dominate the market as the primary solution for people wanting to video games.

The article skips that little point and outlines piracy as the primary factor.

Piracy has effects but not the one to get the developpers moving to consoles.

Everything you say could well be true, but that does not change the fact that piracy is hurting pc gaming.
 
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Never said that piracy had no influence. I stated that developpers did not move to consoles because of piracy. They moved to consoles because that is where the money is and it is so because consoles have established as the prefered solution for gamers over PC.
Piracy could be removed and the developpers would not move back to PC.
 
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And what evidence do you have to back up that opinion? The link you were given gave lots of pretty good evidence to the contrary. What do you have, except "I think so"?
 
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The article piles on 'evidences' to establish a pre-known conclusion. A different story.

As to the evidences and their use, it should be noticed I wish piracy could be suspended or annihilated so that the drivel in this kind of articles could be exposed.

It should tell enough about that requirement for evidences.
 
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The article piles on 'evidences' to establish a pre-known conclusion. A different story.

As to the evidences and their use, it should be noticed I wish piracy could be suspended or annihilated so that the drivel in this kind of articles could be exposed.

It should tell enough about that requirement for evidences.

So you have nothing. Thought so.
 
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That is jumping to conclusions.

The article's thesis supports a goal. It ends with calls for measures and has a proactive stance. It means that if the article's thesis is proven true, actions should follow from establishing the roots of the situation. Hence incentives.

Showing that developpers moved to consoles because consoles is where the gaming is done brings nothing like that. It neither advocates for piracy or against piracy. It neither advocates for reshaping the consoles or the PC market. It would be a blank acknowledgement of what led to the current situation. No incentives. Nothing at stake as the developpers have already made their mind on that ground.

It draws the situation of producing work with no incentive, no reward at the end against somebody who plays an agenda (regardless of the validity of each thesis)
Asymetrical situation.

Such, claiming that the fact that consoles have prevailed in the mature gaming environment is based on nothing is jumping to conclusions. Because showing how has no longer value. It would have before the establishment of this situation, it no longer had.
 
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First point, saying that this is low profit on PC that is moving game developers to consoles is the obvious. But that doesn't prove the piracy isn't a part of low profit on PC.

Myself I don't like all those arguing explaining me that pirating hurt nothing. The point is no matter how you look at it, I always pay games for pirates and they never pay games for me. The reason is simple, I buy any game I play.

Why I pay games for pirates? Because the work behind games need that someone pay it, so for a game I pay, I paid it also for the guy who pirated the same game.

And about the arguments that a game pirated doesn't mean a game less sold, that is clear. But you pretend you want simulate there's no more piracy and see the effect. So yes do the experience, on you:
  • First uninstall all pirated games, all pirated music and movies, cartoons, comics, and even books!
  • Second stop pirate anything, music, movies, games, cartoons, comics and books.
  • Now let see what you'll do with your free time, during 1 year, still plenty free games, musics and other legally available, but not all music, games and so on…

Do you know what you'll do? Nope you don't, perhaps you'll then stop pay that high bills for you cell, or won't buy one more drive, or… to buy a few more games or anything than you are used to pirate currently.

Anybody pretending that his piracy change nothing and he would be the same if he stops pirate, is just pure ignorance, they don't know what they'll do because pirating is a large part of their life.
 
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