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[Xbox-Scene]

Gamesutra Dev Opinion: Sharing Games is form of Marketing Posted by XanTium | December 12 17:03 EST

From gamasutra.com: Following an article on the state of piracy in the December 2006 issue of sister magazine Game Developer, programmer McKay Salisbury has written in to vigorously refute it, suggesting in this editorial that "sharing music and games is a form of marketing". Basically what I'm saying is that me pirating 1 game from Blizzard over a decade ago got me introduced to their game-making abilities, and I'm hooked. I'm a dedicated brand consumer. Sure, Interplay is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, but that's because they stopped making good games. If you ask me, sharing music and games is a form of marketing. If your content sucks, you'll "lose money" to piracy, because people will see that your content sucks. If your customer likes your stuff, either they're too cheap to have bought it in the first place, or they'll buy it, or something else you make later, because it's a product worth buying. $3,000,000,000 in losses due to piracy? But I want to know how much revenue that has and will generate because there are badly packaged versions of your product floating around the streets of Hong Kong, and around the Internet." Read More: gamasutra.com

[gg22mm]

He's got some sort of point... I think...  

[rasstar]

This guy is obviosly an idiot. How can sharing games be marketing? The point is the person wouldn't have to buy the original hence they lose a potential sale. Those guys downloading games from newsgroups and torrents are surely not buying the originals and the same goes to music. I remember I use to buy music cds then I stopped when the backup thing came about and I never bought another CD since. Now I just pay for Napster to go and get unlimited music.

This post has been edited by rasstar: Dec 12 2006, 10:27 PM

[throwingks]

QUOTE(rasstar @ Dec 12 2006, 04:32 PM)

...I remember I use to buy music cds then I stopped when the backup thing came about and I never bought another CD since.

QUOTE

Now I just pay for Napster to go and get unlimited music.

[Crackmonger]

People will pirate virtually anything because the demand for an item goes up infinitely when it's free.  Counting every single pirated copy as a lost sale is one of the fallacies of the industry.  McKay is certainly exaggerating because there are people out there that will just never buy anything that can be pirated.

I see piracy causing a force across the entire market that drives all profits down very slightly and equally.  A good release and a bad release will probably both lose like 0.1% of potential sales due to piracy.  If your product sucks, people aren't going to buy it - period.  However, there may still exist close to the same number of pirated DVDs of "Crash" and "Gili", simply because both are a bargain at the price of free.

This post has been edited by Crackmonger: Dec 12 2006, 10:41 PM

[eX_Do0mY]

He's got a point.

I downloaded Counter Strike Source, ended up buying it, showed my friends, and they all bought it.  There, file sharing has generated at least $1000 in favor of VALVe.

[HyperG]

i've practically said the same thing in a video i made a few years ago (search youtube for piracy the never ending addiction).

[yaazz]

The reason I don't pirate is it takes like 4 hours to download an xbox 360 game (650kb * 60s/ 7gb) or I can just drive up to the store and buy it in 10 minutes. Plus I only really play games online and Xbox + backups== not smart

[mas10]

Hahahha u pay napster to download music?    What the Hell man. music is still free to download last time i checked

[tgm4883]

QUOTE(mas10 @ Dec 12 2006, 04:29 PM)

Hahahha u pay napster to download music?    What the Hell man. music is still free to download last time i checked

He was pointing to the fact that he doesn't want to break the law.  It is illegal to download music, unless you live somewhere like canada.

[osotogari]

QUOTE(Xbox-Scene @ Dec 12 2006, 11:10 PM)

If you ask me, sharing music and games is a form of marketing. If your content sucks, you'll "lose money" to piracy, because people will see that your content sucks.

isn't that Y thay put out demo's so people can try and see if thay want to buy or not to?
you can find demos of most games out to see if you like it without pirating

[Kenosto004]

The reason I used to pirate games was due to the fact that I hated that if you bought a game and the game was crap or had technical flaws you were and still are stuck with the game because stores wont take them back. Well the developer still gets paid and you at best get 20% of the value for your game for trading it in. To me thats crap, you should be able to get your money back for crap like that. I would be mad as hell if I went to mc donalds and bought a burger only to find crap in a bag then was told I can get 20% of my money back for the crapI aquired, I mean give me a break. They would have gotten paid and it would have made no difference to them. Look at EA sports they have released darn near the same game since 2001 and people still buy madden with the hopes it will be revolutionary and its the same crap as last year with a new price tag. If you try it and dont like it you waste 60 bucks or well 40 with trade ins. BTW yes I read reviews on games and they arent allways accurate since Superman Returns was fun to me but got 4.6 in most review for example.

[mlapaglia]

QUOTE(Kenosto004 @ Dec 12 2006, 05:54 PM)

 I would be mad as hell if I went to mc donalds and bought a burger only to find crap in a bag

isn't all stuff from mcdonalds crap?  

[Martinchris23]

It still stuns me how the media industry get away with making us gamble our money.

In any other industry, you get to try the product. Whether it be clothing, food or even a new car. You get the ability to refund if you are not satisfied, or not purchase if you decide it's not for you (in the case of clothing at least).

The media industry are hoping their millions spent on advertising/trailers/gimmicks will overshadow the serious lack of content within. Once we've bought in, we cannot return the goods.

My example - I bought FIFA 07 for the 360. The game is full of flaws. The ball sometimes returns to the centre spot for no apparent reason, it crashes more times than I would care to mention and the commentary is almost always wrong. This to me is a fault.

To Electronic Arts (et al), it's a bug. Nevertheless, I went to return the goods under the Sale of Goods act. I was told it wasn't valid enough for a return, since the disc itself wasn't faulty.

Every piece of media (cinema included) should be on a try before you buy basis. Games should have a 24 hour policy. Game in the UK used to have a 10 day no quibble policy, which was great (and I believe now stopped). All stores should offer you at least a day to sample the goods. If they are as good as the price you would pay then there wouldn't be an issue.

There's the sting - we all know that a lot of the stuff out there isn't even worth the cost of a blank DVD.

It's about time the media industry was brought into line with the rest of the consumer world and give us the choice whether we really have to keep this piece of crap game just because we were suckered into buying it.

Martin

[mortyblack]

i agree with this guy in the article...

first of all its the price tag on these new games, and specially consol games are very expensiv. at top of this everyone knows that the xbox360 consol eat dvds from time to time becouse of a designer fault with the dvd player... the second is you dont know what is good or what is crap before you have played it for a while..... this stop me from buying games for a new console...  


in the meanwhile i download like MAAAAD!!1!....


but when they are fading out the old console like the old xbox, i go on a SHOPPING SPREE and BUY all the good games i wanted. this for a nice price and nearly nothing compered to what it costed when the games was new and expensiv....

a lesson a game company and microsoft will never learn, if you got the rigth price for a product the more it will sell, the higher price the more people will download it...