First, games are getting bigger but that doesnt mean portable games will. The only BIG portable game I can recall right now is GTA on the PSP, and if loading times keep getting longer you'll be out of the bus before you can even finish your level, and thats bad for players, and whats bad for them is bad for bussines. And when did I say something about writable media? the DS cards are not so different fin engineeering from MMC cards an other flash media, the diference is that those [DS] cards are ROM, and thats what I said, that sony may use cartridges in the next PSP if the prices keep going down. And as SFD told you, there's way more people using iTMS rather than any other P2P system. I wont deny that back in 2001 and 2002 illegally downloaded music was everywhere, but we're in 2006, 4 years later and things have changed a lot. And the market is already changing: take a look at X360 arcade and tell me if those games couldnt be in a ipod-like portable? with 4GB Nand of internal storage is more than enough, and with DRM already in the house piracy is almost impossible, not totally but difficult enough to most people to stay away from the idea. And FUCK the stores: publishers are already angry at the benefits those shops get from used games. If they could get rid of game stores forever, do you think they're going to hesitate just a second? not a chance...
Well...I'm not *QUITE* sure that there's more people using the iTunes Store to get music files than there are who use file sharing systems (even if you add together all the legitimate places to buy music files). I expect it would be a close call actually, but if anything I would say there's probably more people using file sharing. I was talking specifically about the iPod market which is a bit more mainstream than the general MP3 audience. I was also only talking about my own experience based on people I know (in the real world, since people we know online are a heavily skewed sample). Watch me hedge. I agree with your ultimate point, but I don't know if there's any good way to make the argument. Except maybe like MadHatter said, either the market will change (to downloaded content) or else it will stagnate (and then start to slide and then collapse). I just see it as inevitable. It's often hard to convince people of that not so much because of the business problems (there really aren't any more than there are with hard media), but because we are such materialists, so it's hard to accept a life without physical media. Especially among groups like us where, for instance, what are essentially consumer frenzies tend to be described as "collections." But minds will change, especially once they see more and more people "getting by" without media, that kind of social encouragement goes a long way. ...word is bondage...
Without gamestores, how would people buy games? Of course that is hwere gamestores make most of their money, thru used game sales, but in order for that game to be "used" someone has had to had to buy it at one point, so game companies still make their money. Publishers need to give more of that money to the developers who slave over the crappy games they release.
Through the internet, onto some kind of writable medium, I think is the suggestion above. Xbox had a hard drive, and as far as security goes it was a trainwreck. Sony chose to include a flash reader in the PSP and it was pirated pretty much from day one. Writable media lends itself to piracy. Building a system solely around a writable form of storage sends out a pretty strong message to developers - the only videogame system I can think of so far that fits that bill is the Gamepark, and it's fairly clearly aimed at the homebrew market. If we're talking way off in the future, then yes, new distribution methods are bound to arise. I really doubt that'll be the case for the second Sony handheld. According to this article, which is 10 months old, says Apple had sold 400 million downloads since the service opened (back in 2003 was it?) and has a quote from some guy saying they were selling 500 million tracks a year. Last I heard of Kazaa, there were 5 million people on it at any one time (probably massively reduced now). How long do you think it takes that 5 million to download 100 tracks? Not 3-4 years, anyway. That's not including bittorrent stuff which I also read takes up 1/3 of all internet traffic. iTunes doesn't. Fair enough, I don't really know many people with iPods, they don't seem to have become a fashion accessory where I live yet, but I can certainly see how that sort of demographic would go in for easy legal downloads. ? Good point, I'd not really considered lost profits to stores. Is it outweighed by the threat of rampant piracy? I think they'd also want to keep the stores on anyway - I know I often walk into a game store and end up impulse purchasing something I would never have considered on play.com or ebay. There's got to be a fair quantity of extra cash in their pockets from impulse purchases. Sales would have to be seriously flagging before it was worth kicking stores altogether.
K, the thing is when talking about legal downloads and illegal ones we have to separate those in the US from those in the rest of thw world, why? becos what the RIAA and the MPAA has done here is way ahead anything any other entity has done anywhere else in the world. Just an example: in many countries of europe is simply not illegal to download pirated music. If we compare internal US P2P against internal use of iTMS, Napster and others is almost crazy to say P2P networks have the major share. And about DD and "real" media, well the problem is that as I said before industry dont give a fuck about about us, and that sucks, cuz the casual consumer is going to buy a game even if is printed on dog shit. So when DD comes around is the end for "normal" media. No, but why DD would start such "rampant piracy"? you can get a DVD writer for less than $50 and a modchip for PS2 for $30, and then copy rental games or download them, yet less than 5% of PS2 owners in the US have modchips installed. With DD there's going to be DRM all over it, and if you thought running a PSP game from the Duo was a pain in the ass (with all the patchs and new versions) prepare yourself cuz DRM is going to be even harder to hack. The reality is that DD would, at best, under no-control situations, push piracy almost at 10%, but thats it, but then publishers no longer have to share their profits with stores, nor have to buy media (like cartridges and optical) to print their games. If DirectFlix ends being succesful you can bet the games industry is to follow in the on-demand distribution service (DD).
Provide a source. I've backed my claims up. Provide a source. Not saying you're wrong, but you can't just go pulling numbers out the air. Anyway, DD would generate piracy because it makes it that much easier to download games onto your console and play them. What is this mystical DRM you speak of? It's not like it's a new technology, my interpretation of the phrase has generally been toward music/video rather than games. "DRM" has been around since the NES lockout chip days if you're looking at software, and it's always been worked around. Providing a writable medium just makes it one step easier. Provide a source. Actually, you can't: you're just speculating. In which case, you really shouldn't be passing off randomly guessed statistics as something approaching truth.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of traffic over filesharing systems is movies or software these days. Things have changed a lot from the Napster days. I don't really know how much is music currently, but probably less than 20% by bandwidth and at least less than half by number of users. Right, one step easier. But as you say, it's always been broken. So those two statements cancel each other out to a certain extent. There have always been people that pirated games (and movies and music and everything else that has a copyright), even back when games were on cartridges and there was no Internet. Games started being sold on compact discs which are much easier to pirate, did that spell disaster for the video game industry? No. The Internet came along and made it easy for just about anyone to have access to pirated games, did that destroy the industry? No. That doesn't mean that the suits at every company involved in video games (and movies and music, etc.) isn't worried about the change that's coming. Some of them think it spells doom, but they're almost certainly wrong. (Personally, I wish they weren't, I wish they would continue to sit on their asses as they have been and thereby write themselves into history leaving the world open to entirely new kinds of business, but I don't think that's likely to happen.) I do I agree with you, though, that Sony's next handlheld most likely won't rely on this kind of distribution for its games. At least not solely...it wouldn't surprise me if it was a significant option as it already will be for the Xbox360 and Revolution. Sony tends to be behind the curve on things like this because as was discussed earlier in this thread, they're such control freaks. That is absolutely false. ...word is bondage...
1-I recall those statistics from a ton of different reports and articles, some from the ESA, others from various GDCs, Gamasutra and others are from people inside the industry I know. Anyways, your source gets it from the register and while that's not a piss-poor source is has had some critics in the past. The reality is that you cant just rely on the mainstream media, cuz most of the time they publish only what is good for them. Dont you remember daily radar?. 2-You're joking right? DRM is going to be implemented in EVERYTHING by hardware, is not a crappy chip in your cartridge nor a stupid piece of malware, we're talking big security measures here. Obviously there's gonna be a way to crack it, but as hard as it gets the more the people thats going to desist and buy the original. 3-Yeah, I am, like any analist I'm speculating based on how piracy has changed from cartridges to CDs. You want irony? not only you can make your own copies today with very little money and equipment (in the cartridge era it was imposible for a kid to copy his games) but today piracy is proportionally lower than in those days. Why? well becos in those days there were just a few laws against game piracy, and the law enforcement was low too, so any idiot could order half-a-ton of pirated cartridges from taiwan and sell them in his store. Today, if they catch you selling modchips (at least in the US) fines are pretty high ($50000 high) and you could end up doing jail time... Anyway, SFD I didnt say is legal, but that it isnt illegal, becos they cant arrest or sue you if you download in certain countries like spain.
Just to keep this quote in context... . So you're saying that sharing and downloading pirated music is illegal, but that it is not illegal. Let me just quote you again from what you originally said... According to what you said earlier, it is that downloading pirated music is not illegal. That makes it legal to download pirated music in europe. However, people living IN europe can easily point out that it is illegal to download pirated music. But then you just said.... . WTF? What's your source?
1-You're just making a claim that the statistics you quote are from such organizations, conferences, and "people you know". Hell, I can claim that I know shit loads of people in the industry. And I really do!! If you're going to post numbers, label things as facts, etc. then post a credible source. Remember "My World News: Where whatever I say is true" is not a credible source. Gamasutra, ESA, and IGDA archive their reports on the web. They are accessible and open to the public. So please, take your time and find the documents and post them otherwise, everything you claim is just a claim. Now you can't say you're analyzing because that is a common cop out when making such claims. By saying that, you're saying that everything you said is just speculation, that includes the comparisons/statistics, etc. that you posted, not true at all. So please, post a credible source.
Just trying to figure out what justifies his latest statement. After stating earlier that downloading pirated music is legal in europe, and then tries to correct SFD by saying that he never said downloading pirated music is legal, but that it is not illegal to download pirated music.... Do you get it now?
Yes, it was quite difficult, nearly IMPOSSIBLE, for a kid to put a cartridge into a copier along with a blank floppy disk (oh and those floppies were SO expensive!) and press the copy button. It was nearly as hard to plug the copier into the system, load the backup off the floppy and play it. You're right, copying a CD is leagues easier than that. Never mind that you actually need a mod chip to make the copies run (didn't need a mod chip to use a copier). But hey, what do I know? I'm just a poster on a little Intraweb board. -hl718
You're talking about DRM as if it's some big new initiative in the gaming world, and you're talking about it in quite general and unspecific terms. Do you mean TPM-style piracy protection? Because that's a "crappy chip"+"malware", among general nastiness it provides the means to make the PC a closed hardware format - much like consoles have been for a long time. Or are you confusing it with the HDMI program/analog hole legislation/audio DRM being pushed at the moment (none of which would affect console/handheld games piracy)? The point is that copy protection and digital lockouts have been in consoles for ages (and are only just coming to PCs), a good example being the Dreamcast - didn't stop it from being broken wide open. The potential for that to occur with software downloads is far higher. UMD's may never be pirated, but with a flash reader in the PSP it's not an issue. Having a writable medium as your sole source for data is dangerous. With an iPod that danger is passed on to the music industry, with a gaming device the danger is shouldered by the company that created it and anyone who develops for it.
Yeah becos an EEPROM machine could be found anywhere, shit those were at walmart right? At that time youhad to be a computer wiz (or know one) to get that kind of stuff. Xbox has a softmod, and PS2 has one too, and you can get a DVD writer and DVDRs anywhere, and if you dont have the software, google it. About DRM, yeah is not perfect, and I never said that, but you cant deny the fact that using pirated games is getting more and more difficult every day. Lets say you got a console with no copy protection and in the user base 15% use pirated games. If your console needs a modchip that number goes down to 10%, and if it needs BIOS changes then its 7%, and if you change the firmware using patches and make it clear the user wont be able to run new games without them, then only a 3% of very skilled users will do it. And about the music, what I meant is that in certain countries music labels cant sue you for illegally downloading music.
How can your first and second paragraph amount to "it was much harder to pirate videogames back in the day" and your third say "pirating videogames is much harder these days"? With regards to copier units, you couldn't get them at Walmart but it's not like they were much harder to find than modchips today. They were certainly much easier to install and use.
You should read up on the technology before you comment on it. Cartridge copiers didn't need EEPROMs and you didn't need to be a bloody computer wiz to run one. Put your cart in the copier, put in a blank floppy and press a button. It was frighteningly simple to pirate stuff in the cartridge days. Why do you think companies started putting copy protection on cart games? -hl718
