Endless Paradigm

bsanehi Wrote: [ -> ]

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]I know a few people who won't even get a Vita until it can pirate.

So how does that count as them losing money...

Because the Vita is sold at a loss to Sony. They earn money on games. All someone who buys the console and pirates does is drive Sony into the ground.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]

bsanehi Wrote: [ -> ]

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]I know a few people who won't even get a Vita until it can pirate.

So how does that count as them losing money...

Because the Vita is sold at a loss to Sony. They earn money on games. All someone who buys the console and pirates does is drive Sony into the ground.

I'm not sure if Sony is losing any money because the PS Vita hardware cost $160 to make... and the pirates need to buy the proprietary memory sticks and they would have to get 16GB or 32GB to be able to pirate.

Also the manufacturing cost goes down every year as they start making the Vita from cheaper materials, so by the time hackers are able to run PSVita games wee would see PSVita slim.

lunarღ Wrote:Unfortunately no, Crisis Core isn't on there either. =(

Also I never heard of the UMD Passport thing and wondered why it doesn't exist here.

I know D: Until Crisis Core is up there im holding back. But Crisis Core was only ever a UMD release.

And UMD passport isn't in the the West because the "Demographics of umd sales" wasn't up to scratch. They pretty much decided that not enough people actually own psp games outside of Japan. Which is true to an extent.

Grey Ghost Wrote: [ -> ]

lunarღ Wrote:Unfortunately no, Crisis Core isn't on there either. =(

Also I never heard of the UMD Passport thing and wondered why it doesn't exist here.

I know D: Until Crisis Core is up there im holding back. But Crisis Core was only ever a UMD release.

And UMD passport isn't in the the West because the "Demographics of umd sales" wasn't up tp scratch. They pretty much decided that not enough people actually own psp games outside of Japan. Which is true to an extent.

because of piracy? xD

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]You wouldn't say that you can't afford a new fridge-freezer, and go out and 'borrow' one.

No, I wouldn't download a car either.

Quote:Because of the ill-fate of the PSP's piracy, people seem to expect the Vita to be hacked in the same way, as if it is a given or that they deserve the hack, doing everything to thwart the earning of the games studios that actually keep the console they play games on alive. Every copy lost to piracy is an extra $10 or so that wee could use making our next game that bit better, but no, people want that immediate satisfcation, blindly not thinking about the impact that could have on the developers who spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours making that game for their enjoyment, or the fate of the studio, the company that made the console, anything.

If pirating were to happen there would probably be nothing worth pirating other than a few good console exclusives. Kinda like the Nintendo DS which has sold tremendously well considering it has the ability to be able to play pirated games via flashcart and able to emulate it on your computer.

Quote:People can oppose piracy all they want, but there is no way anybody i ever knew with a PSP that pirated that bought the game when they had enough cash after completing it on a pirated version, not even myself.

I own a hacked Wii. Pirated Xenoblade because it was European exclusive. Preordered as soon as it became available over here. Must be because the game wasn't anything special after you finished playing with it, that means you were never going to buy it anyways.

Quote:Who would buy what they already finished? They'd be basically buying the game for the privilege of it gathering dust.

I love owning physical copies of games.

Quote:The thought of 'I can't afford, I won't get' seems to be lost on any software, multimedia platform today. It's now a case of ''I can't afford, I'll pirate it and act as if I was never going to buy it in the first place" when in actual fact, if there was no such thing, people would have the patience to save up for a little bit and get what they earned."

People don't think that way. They simply pirate the software do what they have to do with it and most likely forget about it.

Quote:Just to be ruined by people that think it's OK to do everything your license to the software does not state you can do. With the watery and quite frankly, completely bullchocolate excuse of 'backups' to cover it up. I don't know what the hell people even do with their games, to lose them so much they warrant taking 'backups' of them. I don't believe the word 'backup' for a millisecond, I'm not retarded. You wouldn't go into a game retailer and 'borrow' the game off the shelf, so why do it online?

Because it's more convenient. PSN still has a long way to go if they really want people to buy their titles online with that whole DRM they place. Another reason why physical copies and these backups(a feature that I love in gaming these days) are a whole lot better than using their software to restrict it. Not to mention the overpriced digital copies of games.

Quote:There are some people with a conscience, but seriously, they are in the devastating minority.

Sadly yes, but if people just buy a PSP only to pirate every single game on it then they must really be bored and don't want to spend anymore then they have to. Then again the PSP was a piece of spoon.

Quote:What happened to the days when people were people were happy with what a device did as standard? People seem to expect every single device to be an all-singing-all-dancing supermachine that does everything ever. Or more irritatingly, that they are owed that super device and complain to "Sony" when their device doesn't let them (for some reason, I wonder what it could be) do that.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making your device work the way you want it to. Just the like the iPod and Android phones. iPod requires jailbreak to theme it and able to pirate. Android needs to be rooted to gain access to many tweaks and hacks and it has so much freedom that you are even able to pirate it.(even without rooting it :p)

Quote:The tone of all of these articles is all geared toward the coming closer to running 'backups' you know my feelings on that poo poo. All everyone is waiting for is that green light to piracy. I know a few people who won't even get a Vita until it can pirate.

If so then I guess the generation of handheld gaming is coming to an end. If Sony just kept the Vita part of it then it might have avoided these issues. But sooner or later the Vita is inevitably going to be hacked.

You can blame the hackers, the community, the pirates but it all comes down to the gaming device. It's a fudgeing gaming device, who wouldn't want a library of games on it? Yea the PSP is able to do it but Vita is oh so much better at it.

Quote:And just to let you know, I couldn't care less about what any of you have to say against me.

I know that pirating is bad but if people were never going to buy the games then they don't appreciate it for what it is. I love video games and probably have spent a lot of money and at least most of years playing with them. I love supporting developers but I hate what Sony is doing with the device. I honestly think it's a great device riddled with so many things that are unneeded. But you have to take into consideration of people who want to buy the game/people who need to buy(the fans). If the game does a bad job at selling it's because noone was really interested in the first place. Same could be said with music/software/media.

Quote:Also the manufacturing cost goes down every year as they start making the Vita from cheaper materials, so by the time hackers are able to run PSVita games wee would see PSVita slim.

Though it's Sony's tradition to do the slimline stuff the only way I would buy the slim is if it had TV-out which would have made a huge difference in sales for the Vita.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]

Grey Ghost Wrote: [ -> ]

lunarღ Wrote:Unfortunately no, Crisis Core isn't on there either. =(

Also I never heard of the UMD Passport thing and wondered why it doesn't exist here.

I know D: Until Crisis Core is up there im holding back. But Crisis Core was only ever a UMD release.

And UMD passport isn't in the the West because the "Demographics of umd sales" wasn't up tp scratch. They pretty much decided that not enough people actually own psp games outside of Japan. Which is true to an extent.

because of piracy? xD

Obviously :p

Im kinda disappointed though, i got a butt-fudge load of UMDs so looks like imma hold on to my psp and just use a Vita for actual Vita games...

A lot of people seems to think that the issue of piracy is split between 2 extremes.
- People who think "every game pirated is a sale lost", and that piracy is the cause of why the industry is dying.
- People who think "piracy has almost no detriments, (or even benefits), to the industry".

I think both of these views are naive, product of one sided thinking.  It's obviously somewhere in between.

SkyDX Wrote: [ -> ]Now wee add piracy to the mix:

-» The situation is pretty much the same only that wee have the option to "get" A, B and C either way
-» There is the possibility that all three are now pirated but people who flat out pirate anything they can get are very unlikely to buy anything either way since they most likely simply cannot really afford buying games
-» Having no piracy would simple increase the likeliness of them to buy things, not actually surely make them buy games
-» Piracy comes with it's own problems, sometimes complicated, warranty, bricking the device, loss of online functionality etc.
-» Assuming now wee still buy A, B and pirate C
-» If wee like C, wee might still buy it out of support/for online, or wee become uninterested in it after a while, so a sale is still uncertain

So if companies say that each download = a lost sale they are pretty much talking poo poo^^ All piracy does is making the "uncertainty factor" of a sale fluctuate in either a positive or negative way that nobody is able to foresee.

"A model is only as good as it's assumptions", is what my statistics lecturer used to always say.  Assuming that the only, or overwhelming majority of people who pirate stuff are those who can't afford to buy, or otherwise won't buy anyway, is unrealistic.

Yes a lot of people who buy will still buy, and a lot of people who pirate will never buy, but people who stay still aren't important, what's important is the group of people who will shift positions because of piracy (that is, change from buy to not buy, or vice versa).  Having studied business/economics, you shold know that one of the primary factors which influences consumer's purchase decisions is the price.  This is well documented and explained in every single economics textbook out there, noone can argue against it.  Now, piracy is essentially free, so I think it is very reasonable to say that given the option, a whole lot of people will substitute from $80 to buy a game, to $0 to pirate the same game.  However, in order to reach a solid conclusion, wee must also consider the opposite side of the shift - from not buy, to buy, because of piracy, and compare the two.  People come up with a whole lot of colourful ways of trying to explain that, I will quickly review some of them in the spoiler below (to save space).
Lets just say I think only a very small minority of people who are originally unwilling to fork out money will somehow become willing to do so after obtaining the thing for free.  Much much smaller than the amount of people who will switch from $80 to $0.  So in conclusion, I believe piracy definitely does have a detrimental effect on sales, how big that effect is I can't tell without statistics, but it's probably something significant.



Note: I'm just saying piracy IS detrimental to the industry.  I'm not saying I'm against piracy, because I'm a pretty big pirate myself.  I just don't understand why pirates try to be all self righteous about it, it's like going to a shop, stealing some shit, and saying, I'm right to 'borrow' because I [insert bullshit here].

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]My so-called hatred is not unjustified.

It largely is.  You've made statements in the past, and when criticised, often don't reply.
Which implies unjustified statements.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]I quizzed a developer I think it might have been from Guerrilla Games or some other studio as to why there were so little games in the West for the PSP. He explicitly told me, the developer: "Because the PSP is so riddled with piracy one man will buy the game, upload it online and everybody and the mother will use the 'backup' (he made little quotes with his hands) to play the game instead.

So you're taking the word of a (potentially very uninformed) developer.
Very funny, because it's often not the developer who actually sells anything or even makes strategic company decisions.  In other words, they're probably just either making things up (happens very often) or just repeating the stuff his manager made up.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]Because of how easy it was to circumvent security on the PSP people never even seemed to think about actually buying the game.

Easy?  Seriously?!
You have to run a system exploit, which destabilises the system and has a good potential of bricking the console.  This also means reading a fair bit on how to do it.  That's assuming custom firmware was installable, otherwise, it's constantly executing the exploit.
PC games, on the other hand, is usually a download, run crack, install and play.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]People seem to think they're owed games at a lower price, and that they still should play games even if they can't afford them. Which doesn't apply to any other markets than multimedia. You wouldn't say that you can't afford a new fridge-freezer, and go out and 'borrow' one.

If I couldn't afford a new fridge-freezer, and could somehow get one for free without depriving someone else of one, I definitely would do it.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]The PSP showed a lot of promise, but because of the hideous levels of piracy there was virtually no money to be made from it over here.

Do you have any proof or study to back up that claim, or is this codswallop from a media company's PR person?

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]blindly not thinking about the impact that could have on the developers who spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours making that game for their enjoyment, or the fate of the studio, the company that made the console, anything.

I'm sure you do realise that developers rarely get paid a commission, so regardless of how good or bad a game is, they get paid the same amount.
The studio cops the effect of piracy, and last time I checked, most of these big studios earn billions in profit each year.  At the same time, often overworking their game developers.
The studios don't care about their developers.  They don't care about their consumers.  As anyone in business knows, a company's sole aim is to make money.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]becoming a developer thing gives me a whole new sense of appreciation for the tireless work that devs put into games

Jobs require effort.  I never would have guessed.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]You wouldn't go into a game retailer and 'borrow' the game off the shelf, so why do it online?

Because no one actually gets deprived of property.  Moot point?  It's actually a significant difference.  If you think it's moot, you won't be able to explain piracy.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]Not once have I ever known anyone to buy a game after pirating it. I've known people get new games for PSP online without a single thought of ever buying it, no matter how much they wanted it. There are some people with a conscience, but seriously, they are in the devastating minority.

Last time I checked, only like 5% of PSPs are hacked.
Stats may have changed, so take with a grain of salt, but unless you have figures to back up this idea that it is a minority, I simply cannot take your argument seriously.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]What happened to the days when people were people were happy with what a device did as standard?

When companies didn't try to lock everything down, make everything proprietary to price gouge consumers, and try the very best they could to own the device you paid for.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]People seem to expect every single device to be an all-singing-all-dancing supermachine that does everything ever.

And why not?  If I put the effort into making my fridge-freezer be an "all-singing-all-dancing supermachine", I should have every right to do so.  If the manufacturer doesn't want to do it, fine, but they shouldn't sue me because I made the modification.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]Companies, developers, studios are not your friends. They don't owe you anything. You shouldn't expect them to bend over and do everything you ask.

Similarly, consumers are not company slaves, and wee shouldn't have to bend over and expect them to pound us in the donkey.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]They're here to earn as much money as they can.

Precisely.  And if this involves overworking their staff, installing malware on PCs or doing public defacement, you can be sure they will do it (in fact, all of these have been done).

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]None of you will listen anyway. People always want what they can't or shouldn't have. And as a prospective PS Vita developer, (I'm developing for it next year), if i could i'd personally go around and punch every single arsehole who took my work for free, that I slaved on, worked to the bone for, to provide a fun way of earning money, where it hurt.

And guess what?  If you work for a studio, you do NOT own any of your work.  Copyright is held by the studio, and as long as they're paying you, no pirate is taking away your work for free.

ProperBritish Wrote: [ -> ]Because the Vita is sold at a loss to Sony.

If that is true, that's Sony's issue on pricing.  Perhaps they shouldn't be selling it at a loss.  If they are, they've clearly considered it to be an advantageous move - that includes the effect of piracy.  You'd be an idiot for not considering that.


Your arguments seem to be mostly based on unjustified claims, speculation and incoherent reasoning.  Hacking is not piracy, even if it is used for it most of the time.

"Zinga i respect you for EVERY SINGLE WORD YOU SAID (and for all you have maked for the customization of psp."

...however....

Piracy...piracy...piracy....-.-
Gets really boring when you start talk about it...is always the same story..
People who are happy because he doesn't spend more money...
aaaaaaaand.....
People who complain because there are people who use it badly...
aaaand...
People who don't proud because it hurts industrial companies...
and...
People who complain and enough.

Each of us thinks differently...
Wee all know that for everything there is a downside...
"The custom firmware or Mod. of ANY CONSOLE" would be useful only for:
1) Improve the look in the console software, adding new features and maybe make it more reliable
2) Make it possible for people who are collectors, to not open (unboxing) their games and play them through the "backUp copy downloaded from internet"
3) (Although it would be an acceptable excuse) to try / play games on certain individuals would not be worth buying at full price ...

In any case, there will always be that person ready to challenge any point of view....so well.. as they say: "live and let live"..
..who wants to appreciate what » well
...who don't....keep it to...........everyone is the star of their choice... =)

Assassinator Wrote: [ -> ]A lot of people seems to think that the issue of piracy is split between 2 extremes.
- People who think "every game pirated is a sale lost", and that piracy is the cause of why the industry is dying.
- People who think "piracy has almost no detriments, (or even benefits), to the industry".

I think both of these views are naive, product of one sided thinking.  It's obviously somewhere in between.

SkyDX Wrote: [ -> ]Now wee add piracy to the mix:

-» The situation is pretty much the same only that wee have the option to "get" A, B and C either way
-» There is the possibility that all three are now pirated but people who flat out pirate anything they can get are very unlikely to buy anything either way since they most likely simply cannot really afford buying games
-» Having no piracy would simple increase the likeliness of them to buy things, not actually surely make them buy games
-» Piracy comes with it's own problems, sometimes complicated, warranty, bricking the device, loss of online functionality etc.
-» Assuming now wee still buy A, B and pirate C
-» If wee like C, wee might still buy it out of support/for online, or wee become uninterested in it after a while, so a sale is still uncertain

So if companies say that each download = a lost sale they are pretty much talking poo poo^^ All piracy does is making the "uncertainty factor" of a sale fluctuate in either a positive or negative way that nobody is able to foresee.

"A model is only as good as it's assumptions", is what stats lecturer used to always say.  Assuming that the only, or overwhelming majority of people who pirate stuff are those who can't afford to buy, or otherwise won't buy anyway, is unrealistic.

Yes a lot of people who buy will still buy, and a lot of people who pirate will never buy, but people who stay still aren't important, what's important is the group of people who will shift positions because of piracy (that is, change from buy to not buy, or vice versa).  Having studied business/economics, you shold know that one of the primary factors which influences consumer's purchase decisions is the price.  This is well documented and explained in every single economics textbook out there.  Now, piracy is essentially free, so I think it is very reasonable to say that given the option, a whole lot of people will substitute from $80 to buy a game, to $0 to pirate the same game.  However, in order to reach a solid conclusion, wee must also consider the opposite side of the shift - from not buy, to buy, because of piracy, and compare the two.  People come up with a whole lot of colourful ways of trying to explain that, I will quickly review some of them in the spoiler below (to save space).

Spoiler:

Argument:  I need to try before I buy, so I need piracy otherwise it's too risky to buy anything.
Reply:  There's plenty of reviews and ratings everywhere for that.  Also, most stores offer returns within 7 days and stuff.

Argument:  People are going to pirate, and then realize how awesome and totally worth the money the game is, and go buy it to support the developers.
Reply:  Wishful thinking.  Really, how many people do you think are going to do that?

Argument:  Look at anime, anime became an industry here because of piracy, without all the piracy anime would be nowhere.
Reply:  Games already have a mature, developed industry, which is already pretty popular, and doesn't need piracy to spread awareness.  You can't compare that with an industry that used to not exist outside Japan.

Argument:  If you can perfectly afford something, pirating it is morally wrong.  People who can afford it will buy it, and people who pirate can't afford it.
Reply:  Not a whole lot of people will actually put morals above money.  It's like everyone knows cage hens are treated cruelly and stuff, but most people buy caged eggs anyway because they're 1/2 the price of free range.  Well piracy is 0% of the price of buying.

Lets just say I think only a very small minority of people who are originally unwilling to fork out money will somehow become willing to do so after obtaining the thing for free.  Much much smaller than the amount of people who will switch from $80 to $0.  So in conclusion, piracy does have a detrimental effect on sales.

You know I actually agree 100% with you Assassinator. I guess what I wrote came of a bit different than I intended, like said I was tired and wrote it out of boredom >.<
Of course it's naive to say that piracy doesn't cause any issues. Piracy is wrong and I'm all for developers getting their money. My girlfriend develops indie games and I myself made a game with about 5 minute play time in a RPG Maker Engine that took me three weeks to create it so I know the hard work behind it and Proper knows it even better since he codes it from scratch so I can understand his anger on that matter.

What I merely wanted to point out that piracy alone isn't the cause the PSP did bad. If piracy alone would be able to run any system into the ground the SNES/N64/PS1/PS2/PS3/Wii/XBOX360 and DS would all suffer like the PSP did for a certain degree but they don't.

Like you said price is a important factor and to take that into account for another side of videogames, I might exaggerate a bit but I fear the industry itself might run itself into the ground if things continue like they do now on the long run.

I can only talk for Europe now but the average console games costs around 60-70€ by now that's a good 20€ price increase from the PS2 generation. Now why did games become this expensive? In my opinion because of the crazily rising developing costs, the hardware gets better and better, mainstream gamers demand better and better graphics and cinematic experiences and don't think one second about the consequences of what they actually demand.

One thing I noticed this generation the "middle ground" of developers largely crumbled, many dev studios got either closed or bought up by large publishing groups like Activision and EA. And I think "professional" gaming journalism also is to blame here partially, having bad graphics (lets say around PS2 or PS1 levels) means usually that you get a worse press all around and nobody seems to give a damn that graphics are actually mostly only a matter of money and manpower, both things aren't easy to afford. I really have the feeling that cinematic experiences are more important nowadays than actual gameplay...

That publishers do more and more poo poo isn't helpful either... DLC that is supposed to be finished developing six months after a game is found on the release disc, day one DLCs that are "developed after the game was finished" is actually on the retail release... EA banning a users entire Origin account because he was QUOTED by someone that broke the rules and lastly, every MMO that doesn't come close to WoWs subscriptions is automatically labeled a failure to only name a few things...  

So yeah to fix things atleast slighty in my opinion these things would help:

1: Make a demo mandatory for each and every game, timed or content limited. That way interested people can simply get their own opinion. Microsoft already enforces this for the XBOX and WP7, Sony and Nintendo and /PC gaming/Steam should catch up on that

2: Game- (and movies, TV series and such too for that matter) journalists should be disallowed to rate any games whatsoever, be it by grades or percentage values or something else. They should just provide a general review and point out glaring flaws followed by the personal opinion of one or more reviewers nothing more! That would put an end to the Metacritic rating craziness (some publishers pay their developers according to the metacritic rating) and make comparisons between top of the line AAA+ games and "3rd rate developer" games fair again

And lastly 3: Stop pushing graphics to no limits! I'm especially looking at companies like Epic, from what I read they are pushing hardware makers do put even more high end hardware in the next-gen consoles so they can run their precious Unreal Engine 4 and all this essentially does is rise development costs even further and make it even harder to develop games that aren't demoted to smartphones games... Or optionally push graphics all you want but stop treating graphical weak games as something unworthy...

Alright this post was long enough I'll stop here^^

lunarღ Wrote: [ -> ]Lunar's long post

You know Lunar I know wee had our differences but I actually agree with you on many things you wrote, same with you Zinga^^