quote: Original post by Kylotan
I think prices need to drop.

It''s interesting, but an undiscussed side-effect of eliminating piracy would probably lead to more expensive products.


Mike

"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Frederick Bastiat, The Law

quote: Original post by a complete moron
Ok, we work for money ok, but i think cie are doing enough money no? all the big company that are loosing money with piracy don't need this money.

You really are a complete fool. Sure, the lion's share of the profits may go to the publishers, but they are the guys who probably fronted the cash to develop the game in the first place. Is it so unreasonable of them to expect to get their investment back, maybe even a bit of profit on the side?

quote:
and yes the pirate are the good guys, why? cause like napster piracy let you try the game to see if you like it. look, do i realy want to buy a game that i will play for 10 hours and said "the AI is just too crapy..." and you stop playing the game, well it's a control of quality

If this was the only reason games were copied, then I wouldn't care about this. But it isn't. Besides, it isn't a very good argument anyway because publishers invariably give away free demos.

quote:
and here just for fun for all the one who bitch against piracy, i expect you don't have any mp3 on your computer, cause you just don't make sense, cause those 2 things are the same.

All the MP3's on my computer are ripped straight from CD's I legally own. None of them are shared. Plus I rarely listen to them anyway, the only reason I ripped them was so I could listen to them on my MP3 CD player (which was stolen a while ago)

quote:
right now everybody dont care about each other and knowledge is given to the ones who got money to pay for it (and im lucky to have money cause i can have education and i can pay 100$can for a programation book (just bought game programming all in one and it's really good)

I bet you everything you learn in that book could have been learnt off the internet for free. Of course, that may require a little bit more effort on your part to actually find that information.

quote: Original post by Vetinari
It's interesting, but an undiscussed side-effect of eliminating piracy would probably lead to more expensive products.

Perhaps - but that assumes you can completely eliminate piracy by means of some copy protection.

Assuming you can't (which seems to correlate more closely to reality, since all games seem to get cracked eventually) then quite simply, I don't think the industry can afford to raise prices.

The argument of "We must raise prices in order to make up the losses caused by piracy" is completely upside down - it is against the whole point of capitalism. Imagine if you were selling burgers, and your competitor started giving burgers away for nothing - would you increase the price of your burgers to compensate for lost revenue? Of course not.

Piracy may be illegal, but I think it is about time the industry faced up to reality and realised that they have to do a better job of competing with it, rather than using it as an excuse for higher prices.



[edited by - Sandman on March 28, 2002 6:31:15 AM]

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
You. Are. Lame.

Ahhhh, actually I think you meant to say "j00 R L4M3". At the very least, there''s probably a better chance he would understand you.

quote: Original post by Kylotan
I think prices need to drop. Computer games cost a lot more than videos, DVDs, and music CDs, yet they tend to provide less hours of entertainment.

Oh yeah, right. I can''t remember the last time I purchased a DVD and got more than 4 hours of entertainment. I cant remember the last I purchased a game and got less than 10 hours of entertainment (a lot of games give me more like 30-50 hours of entertainment...unreal tournament probably gave me 200 hours, if not more).

CD''s (on the other hand) are a different beast all together. For most people, they dont offer the same type of entertainment. A DVD or video game provides primary entertainment, but a CD is usually supplemental entertainment (you almost always listen to it while doing something else). Its hard to place it into the same value scale: it is both more valuable (provides larger number of hours of entertainment) and less valuable (is usually used as supplemental entertainment).

Its not only MMORPGS that can benefit from the web and its effects on piracy. I just signed up to stream my games over the web with a publisher, so the games are effectivly rented. You can''t pirate them because the executable never reaches your PC. Once everyone has broadband this will be much easier, and even small budget games can make money this way.

And BTW dont kid me that piracy only hit big guys with lots of money. I dont even earn enough to live off from my games and they still get pirated. The pirates dont give a damn whose sales they hurt.

http://www.positech.co.uk

quote: Original post by Sandman
Piracy may be illegal, but I think it is about time the industry faced up to reality and realised that they have to do a better job of competing with it, rather than using it as an excuse for higher prices.

They don''t use piracy as an excuse for higher prices. If we agree that lowering piracy will increase sales, that it follows that prices will raise.

Lowering piracy may see an increase in price discrimination for some apps, which would give lower prices to certian groups (like academic versions), but that''s a different matter entirely.




Mike

"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Frederick Bastiat, The Law