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."
I keep talking about Value in PC games and here are some upcoming titles and their prices:
Saints Row - 39.99
Dead Space - 49.99
Far Cry 2 - 49.99
C&C3 - 49.99
Fallout 3 - 49.99
CoD:WW 49.99
NFS:Undercover - 39.99
GTA4 - 49.99
Tomb Raider - 39.99
Prince of Persia - 49.99
Burnout Paradise - 39.99
Splinter Cell Conviction - 49.99
How many of those games would be willing to say are going to be "great" PC games? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say none. They are all Console games, maybe great by those standards, but by PC standards they come up very short.
I don't see any reason to lower the bar and pretend this stuff is good software we should all be buying. DoW2 is the only PC game on the horizon that looks worth my money. The rest I'll happily rent on my console because buying it there would make even less sense.
One thing I will say is that it's becoming more common to see PC games down at the $39.99 level, either from the publisher, or by deals within the retail stores, that is a trend I want to see continue.
I don't see how online activations will push prices lower, so I'm not going to support it. I will try and support folks that put out software at a fair price provided they don't insult me with products that are loaded to explode (stop working) like Spore and Crysis Warhead. Both of these are games that I won't purchase simply because of the copy protections systems.
If making great games is hard, it's even harder to make a game so good that despite these DRM measures someone like me will buy it anyway... So good luck with that, shoot for the stars, but don't be surprised when your game fails because while it was good, it wasn't good enough to put up with stupid crap like online activations, and limited installs.
Saints Row - 39.99
Dead Space - 49.99
Far Cry 2 - 49.99
C&C3 - 49.99
Fallout 3 - 49.99
CoD:WW 49.99
NFS:Undercover - 39.99
GTA4 - 49.99
Tomb Raider - 39.99
Prince of Persia - 49.99
Burnout Paradise - 39.99
Splinter Cell Conviction - 49.99
How many of those games would be willing to say are going to be "great" PC games? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say none. They are all Console games, maybe great by those standards, but by PC standards they come up very short.
I don't see any reason to lower the bar and pretend this stuff is good software we should all be buying. DoW2 is the only PC game on the horizon that looks worth my money. The rest I'll happily rent on my console because buying it there would make even less sense.
One thing I will say is that it's becoming more common to see PC games down at the $39.99 level, either from the publisher, or by deals within the retail stores, that is a trend I want to see continue.
I don't see how online activations will push prices lower, so I'm not going to support it. I will try and support folks that put out software at a fair price provided they don't insult me with products that are loaded to explode (stop working) like Spore and Crysis Warhead. Both of these are games that I won't purchase simply because of the copy protections systems.
If making great games is hard, it's even harder to make a game so good that despite these DRM measures someone like me will buy it anyway... So good luck with that, shoot for the stars, but don't be surprised when your game fails because while it was good, it wasn't good enough to put up with stupid crap like online activations, and limited installs.
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