Ubisoft: EndWar PC Impacted by Piracy [Oct 08, 2008, 09:31 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Videogaming247 quotes Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater
on how piracy is a reason Tom Clancy's EndWar is appearing on consoles
first, with plans for a PC edition remaining vague (story). He
says this of a PC version of the voice-controlled RTS game: "To be honest, if PC
wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the
same day as the other two," also saying: "You know, the level of piracy that you
get with the PC just cannibalizes the others, because people just steal that
version." He goes on to agree with dire predictions about the impact of piracy
on PC gaming: "But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially
what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off
instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC."
But why? What is the difference between releasing concurrently versus releasing a year later? Not saying you're wrong, I just need an explanation because I don't see the connection.
I'll take a stab at this. With titles like Mass Effect, or Bioshock, or CoD4, each are major releases on all platforms and receive a ton of marketing surrounding their launch. In Bioshock's and CoD4's case both were pretty high profile piracy issues and surely caused a lot of headaches for the companies. (for the PC version)
I think a delayed launch for mass effect avoided most of that issue because when the game launches much later less people pay attention to it. So if it gets pirated it's not as big a deal.
I suppose the logic is by not having a PC version on the market they think more people will go out and buy or rent the console version. They view this version as more secure.
I think it's a glass half full / half empty situation. They can sell the game only on consoles and get higher sales on that platform and accept lower sales on the PC side. Or they can do a simultaneous release and take lower sales on console versions, higher sales on pc versions and have highly visible piracy to deal with.
I think it's a wash in the end, but one side doesn't involve having the higher ups freak out when their game shows up on the torrents.
And it's possible that despite all the fees that come with selling games on consoles that they make more money per copy sold on the consoles than they do on the PC. there is also very likely kickbacks from the console companies for only offering a game on consoles for a period. Sony and MS do not get their commission when a copy sells on the PC so both companies are likely to offer financial benefits to companies that give consoles first shot at a new game.
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