Piracy versus PC Gaming [Mar 09, 2007, 8:23 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Next Generation recaps a GDC talk titled "The Videogame Piracy Problem:
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest" by id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead about the
impact of piracy on the game industry. They outline how Mr. Hollenshead says the
estimated $3 billion economic loss caused by piracy in 2004 does not include
piracy that takes place on the Internet. There is also an article about this
talk on
Joystiq that focuses on the statement that piracy is a factor in id's
embrace of consoles, quoting Todd as saying "Piracy has pushed id as being
multiplatform." On a related note,
Can PC
Gaming Survive in a Console World (thanks
Digg) recaps a panel discussion on the topic that brought up a similar
point:
Part of the problem is piracy. Big titles get stolen by cyber thieves, and it hurts revenue. "The market," said Capps, "that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works."
Does that mean casual games, which exponentially outsell what PC gaming traditionalists think of as A-list titles, will one day rule? Hilleman made a point: casual is a poor choice of words. The average player on EA's Pogo "casual" game network plays "for 24 hours a week. There's nothing casual about that."
There is some light in the PC gaming world. World of Warcraft, for instance, is a massive hit, and the upcoming Spore looks not only creative and different, but promising. The MMO and other social networking games could become the norm for PC gaming, with big-ticket titles growing rarer with each passing year. Johnson added that MMOs are "successful because you can't pirate WoW. You cannot pirate an MMO. Period." Therefore, he said, "game design on the PC is going to bend toward persistence."
Since the death of the space combat sim really PC=FPS, MMO, and possibly RTS (don't play these).
Aside from this there seems little point in buying PC over console versions of the same game; case in point I paid £5 more for the 2nd hand gamecube version of Resident Evil 4 then the price of the new pc version and the GC version has better graphics.
The seriously crucial point is that developing games for the PC seems to be either the easy end result (sonic riders) or the solid middle ground (Half Life). Nobody will start developing for a machine which may possibly be out 5 years in the future if your lucky - unless they are developing for a pc; in which case it will probably still work
PC gaming is a small niche market and a HUGE middleware market. Epic, Id, Crytek and so on are not gonna turn there backs on the generic PC for a very long time.
This comment was edited on Mar 9, 21:18.
Aside from this there seems little point in buying PC over console versions of the same game; case in point I paid £5 more for the 2nd hand gamecube version of Resident Evil 4 then the price of the new pc version and the GC version has better graphics.
The seriously crucial point is that developing games for the PC seems to be either the easy end result (sonic riders) or the solid middle ground (Half Life). Nobody will start developing for a machine which may possibly be out 5 years in the future if your lucky - unless they are developing for a pc; in which case it will probably still work
PC gaming is a small niche market and a HUGE middleware market. Epic, Id, Crytek and so on are not gonna turn there backs on the generic PC for a very long time.
This comment was edited on Mar 9, 21:18.
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