Can piracy help the video game industry?

[admin]

Scott Steinberg has written a guest article on CNN that talks about piracy, and hints that perhaps piracy isn't going to kill the video game industry. Scott Steinberg is the head of technology and video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global and has been involved in the video game industry for many years.

Pointing to the fact that an "arms race" exists between publishers (with increasing amounts of DRM) and hackers, Steinberg insists the current strategy just isn't working. Evidence seems to back up his claim, with popular games like Modern Warfare 2 being widely pirated, and Ubisoft's harsh DRM system widely condemned, and yet still eventually hacked. Even the PS3 has now been hacked.

And even lawsuits, like the Australian man sued for $US 1.3m for distributing a copy of Super Mario Bros. Wii online that didn't even work, hasn't seemed to stop the tide of video game piracy.

Steinberg the points to the success of social media games like FarmVille, distributed and played for free, but with virtual items that can be purchased, and argues that if games were distributed at a lower cost, or even free, then this would solve the piracy problem, and income can arrive via paid online content and services.

So perhaps it's very much a case of "if you can't beat them, join them".

More:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/09/09/video.game.piracy/

[drfsupercenter]

Ultimately, I think people buy the consoles and then pirate the games for them... companies should focus on making better hardware ultimately. I know the CEO of Sony actually admitted to making money off PSP piracy because of everyone buying the consoles just to hack them.

[admin]

Problems is that these companies usually have to make a loss on hardware, as otherwise, nobody would be able to afford them (real price of the PS3 at launch was probably closer to $1000).

I buy lots of PC games when they're on sale on Steam for a couple of bucks each (for example, got Mass Effect for $4.99 a couple of months back), but I would not buy the same game for $49.99 or whatever the normal retail price is. But if the game is really good/anticipated, like Starcraft 2, then people will still buy them, regardless of the price, although there is a limit to how much people will spend each month (for example, the month that Starcraft 2 came out on the PC, video game sales took a dive).

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah, I got Portal for free when Steam gave it away that one time...

Other than the PS3, though, those costs are hugely exaggerated, I'd bet that a Wii, for example, only costs like $50 to manufacture. The other $150 is huge profit for Nintendo. Just a guess, I don't know exactly, but I do know that companies have a way of lying about how much it costs them to produce so people don't realize they're making HUGE profits.

[admin]

Yeah, I got Portal for free when Steam gave it away that one time...

Me too

(great game as well)

Other than the PS3, though, those costs are hugely exaggerated, I'd bet that a Wii, for example, only costs like $50 to manufacture. The other $150 is huge profit for Nintendo. Just a guess, I don't know exactly, but I do know that companies have a way of lying about how much it costs them to produce so people don't realize they're making HUGE profits.

The Wii was profitable from the get go, the Xbox 360 took a year to be in profit (but not much), and the PS3 I think has only just become profitable, that's after 4 years already. Microsoft lost billions every year in the video game section until a year or two ago, when they started making a small profit.

So only the Wii's approach guarantees profit, but the problem with the Wii now is that it seems rather outdated compared to the other consoles.

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah but I was referring to the PSP specifically. That, and the DS, DSi, whatever - with flash cards being as cheap as they are.

There really isn't an easy way to pirate anything for the Xbox 360, only the really knowledgeable people can do it, the majority of users like myself have no way of accessing anything like that so I don't think Microsoft needs to be too concerned. The Wii is much easily hacked with Bannerbomb and all, but yes it's somewhat outdated, either way I think most of the *hackable* consoles are profitable.

[Budreaux]

There really isn't an easy way to pirate anything for the Xbox 360, only the really knowledgeable people can do it, the majority of users like myself have no way of accessing anything like that so I don't think Microsoft needs to be too concerned.

Seriously?
Hacking an XBox is rather simple....
JTagging an XBox is not so simple, but not that hard either.
My son's Xbox has a 1TB harddrive and have MAME, SNES, and Sega Gen emulators running with every game ever released for them.
Once an XBox is hacked properly, transferring files via your home network is the simplest thing to do since it has ftp support.

[drfsupercenter]

It may not be hard to an experienced hacker but to the average person it is. You can google "homebrew channel" and instantly find a guide for hacking your Wii, nothing more than an SD card is needed... with Xbox 360 you need special equipment, you have to take it apart and void your warranty (last I checked) etc.

[Budreaux]

It may not be hard to an experienced hacker but to the average person it is. You can google "homebrew channel" and instantly find a guide for hacking your Wii, nothing more than an SD card is needed... with Xbox 360 you need special equipment, you have to take it apart and void your warranty (last I checked) etc.

I prefer the term Reverse Engineer........

[EDIT] Have any of you seen these Letter/Number strings being automatically posted at the end of forum posts like mine? It isn;t just this forum, it's any forum and it just started a couple days ago...trying to figure out how and why it is happening.

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah I saw that, and googled it, found only one other post by you LOL

Not really sure what that is, have you scanned your computer for viruses lately?

[admin]

That's weird, I've deleted the text for you. Is it only forums (and only vB forums), or just any text submission (you can try Google Translate to see if the text is being added automatically or not).

I've seen this mentioned on a couple of forums though (here, and here).

Try a different browser and see what happens.

[Abuilder]

The same thing reported at:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?362296-Anyone-know-what-these-numbers-are-about

Run malwarebytes?

[Budreaux]

The same thing reported at:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?362296-Anyone-know-what-these-numbers-are-about

Run malwarebytes?

Running it now.....I've not updated it lately so if it doesn;t find anything, I'll update and try again and hope it is a new comer that has been corrected.

80334454-4E38-7AEA-CFCB-A493A55D4861
1.02.28

[Budreaux]

That's weird, I've deleted the text for you. Is it only forums (and only vB forums), or just any text submission (you can try Google Translate to see if the text is being added automatically or not).

Appears to be just vB forums....not doing it on the phpBB site. The other site I'm a member at that is vB is doing it as well.

80334454-4E38-7AEA-CFCB-A493A55D4861
1.02.28

[admin]

Must be some kind of malware or something that only affects vB forms ... does it happen on all browsers?