I hadn’t heard anything about it other than it was being made, so I couldn’t really comment on it. That said, however, I’m just not in to the whole MMO idea anyway.
My experience with pirates is that 99 out of 100 pirates WOULD NOT have bought that product/game anyways. But there is that 1 out of every 100 that would have actually bought the product— if it wasn’t available for free from pirate outlets. Publishers try to claim that every pirated copy is a lost sale, but it isn’t remotely true. However, pirates try to claim that piracy doesn’t hurt sales— and for things where you have a tremendous amount of content made (like many music artists), this is true as they get exposure and generate interest in the rest of the content— but for small content amount makers (game and application makers, etc) this isn’t true.
If a game company made 100 games per year, getting pirated regularly would generate interest in their other games, and therefore raise sales. But when you only make 1 game every couple of years, being pirated does prevents some sales, which means less money for the game maker. Any fan that can afford your product really should buy it if they want more such products in the future.
Pirates will always find a way to crack a product. So companies have to find a balance between protecting their products, and being a bother to their legimate customers. If they bother the customers too much, the customers will go get a pirated version, because it’s less bother and less risky to their computer then the actual product. Have enough do that, and you won’t have any sales, or have to raise your price so much that no one can afford your product, and you go out of business.
Just to pipe in a bit: top brand software (be it an OS or hit game) equals the sales of top brand music. In some cases (like office applications and system os) it exceeds them. On the flipside, lesser known software is distributed through piracy more rigorously than lesser known music.
While people might argue that piracy does not impact sales (which I think is false; but that’s a dead horse already), it does impact corporate decision making. Part of the PSP abandonment by third parties is due to the rampant problems with that. Perceived or true, it doesn’t matter. Everyone from CAPCOM to Gamestop have an intense dislike of the PSP, due to the lack of attention Sony has worked on stopping piracy on the handheld. And their way of punishing Sony for that, is lowering their support of the system. There’s endless articles and data sheets about that plastered on the Internets. The entertainment industry is like a balance: corporate investment on one side; customer purchase on the other. It doesn’t matter if piracy influences one or both - it just needs to influence it… which it obviously does. There have been canceled PSP titles, due to a developer thinking the risk does not outweigh the benefits… coughDevilMayCrycough
A good example would be God of War: Chains of Olympus. It generally holds high reviews with hardcore fans and passive gamers alike, yet the incredibly dismal sales (just under 1 mil total I think) surprised everyone… even those who hated Chains of Olympus. Piracy for it however, was incredible… millions upon millions of unique downloads. So even if the 10 million pirates would not have bought Chains of Olympus, were it pirate proof, the investors aren’t enthusiastic about making another one. You have to provide them a reason why Chains of Olympus failed, and how you’ll not make a second one follow the same path. Hard to do that, when there’s no “hard answer” that can be explained in black and white: which means no investor interest.
In the end it just hurts the gaming base. The PSP major selling point, was it’s ability to provide a “multimillion dollar budget” handheld game. Seeing as how few want to step up to that plate, we’re not getting the epic stuff we could have enjoyed. Meh… I’m a DS nut anyways… did I mention Rune Factory 2 has twincest?
To be blunt, “99 out of 100 wouldn’t have bought anyway” is just as extreme a figure as the content industry’s “100 out of 100 would have bought if they couldn’t pirate”. It therefore seems to me that it’s just as wrong for pirates to use it to support their position, as it is for the movie industry to use the equally-bogus copy-for-copy “estimate” of losses. The true figure is almost certainly somewhere in between.
I have seen research on music downloads which indicates that the effect of file-sharing is mixed: their data demonstrated an effect that varied based on popularity. (I haven’t got a link, but this was a real bona-fide study.) The less-popular works seemed to be helped, while the megahits seemed to be harmed. This appears to support what the pirates have said, AND what industry says:
Pirates say sales go up because it is free advertising. This appears to be supported by the fact that relatively little-known acts got a boost. The free exposure does seem to indicate people discovered them thru sharing, then went out and bought copies. The basis for this effect would be that there are a significant pool of individuals who would have liked the property all along, had they only but known. The imperfect knowledge distribution means not everyone knows something is there that they don’t even know they want. By eliminating barriers to experimentation, filesharing may make it easier for these people to find new things.
Where this logic appears to run into problems is megahits: they don’t NEED the exposure. Everyone already knows about megahits, therefore there is no real significant portion of the population who doesn’t know about the megahit. Therefore, there is a much smaller pool of people who are potential new sales from filesharing. This leaves only the downside: People who would have bought a copy (because they want to own it) but didn’t, because hey, free is moar bettar. You can cite supply-and-demand all you want, the truth is, entertainment’s demand curve is funny-looking. There’s a certain group of people who are largely price-insensitive: they wants it, because it is awesome. It’s their precioussss. A significant portion of these people are going to pirate, because it’s free. Sure, there is also the competing effect of “Bob spends $X/month on entertainment. Bob still spends this with filesharing, he just gets more.”, but it doesn’t compensate – it just is less of a loss.
Now, the key part of this analysis is that megahits produce far more revenue than unknowns. From a cultural perspective, it encourages a more diverse market. This is – everyone (even industry) will agree – a good thing. But the problem is, the gains in the “long end” of the long tail, are more than offset by harming the megahits because most of the profit is concentrated in the megahits.
That’s the gist of the research I read. Then there are niche markets, like PP. I don’t think anyone’s studied them. But it seems pretty clear to me that we seem to be a third category. We are significantly hit by piracy. In fact, when I was at a con one year, there was a visual novel panel - where the guy running the panel was using a pirated copy of the game as a demo. When I called him on it, and gave him the “this game sold like 2000 copies, WTF are you doing? DOn’t you want more?” spiel, he got kind of quiet … then said “… but I already have it”. I wanted to have him thrown out of the convention. (I didn’t; next year he was back, with legal copies and having obtained permission.)
But at the same time, there are a LOT of people who would buy games like this, but they don’t know that anyone is putting them out in english – or even that these kind of products exist. There is a market for even very-ecchi-but-not-adult anime, let alone h-ovas; but nobody knows about visual novels.
So, does piracy hurt or help?
I think I should dispel a popular misconception, that the big console companies see “pirate downloads” as a potential lost customer. This isn’t quite so.
Before a “mega budget” game is even produced, there’s a lot of work put into evaluation, estimation, and research on potential sales. This is what basically determines how much money developers can “borrow” to create the title. Case in point: there are about 22 million PSP units between the US and Europe. 32 million if you include Japan. Your “average” super hit is expected to sell within 5% to 10% of these owners. Therefore you’re looking at an estimate of 1 to 3 million worldwide. Thus a title like Gods of War was expected to be 1.5 million to 3 million - give or take a few hundred thousands.
This is why the DS gets waaaay more attention than the PSP: it has a mind boggling 80+ million units sold. Selling one hundred thousand copies of a single game (which is good for low end companies), is a mere fraction of 1% bought handhelds.
Anyways… the number of units needed to be sold for Gods of War to be a success - at least by the investors - was already determined before the game goes to stores. Anything above that, is of course pure gravy and highly desired, but reaching the target number is enough to guarantee a sequel. In the event that target number is not reached, the investors want answers. This is where the piracy argument enters the equation. If a game gets high reviews from customers and industry experts - as was the case for Gods of War - its difficult to explain why the game sold so poorly. Why didn’t people get the game, if the game is so loved? It becomes more difficult to appease the investors, when they discover that a well loved game was illegally obtained ten million times.
Thus it isn’t that 10 million people would have bought the game: it’s that the target number wasn’t reached, and there’s no reasonable explanation why that target number was not reached, when all data indicates that it should have. Now some say the estimate aims too high. Sometimes it does… but when less than 5% of a gaming base purchases the title, yet at least 50% of it claims the title a must own: there’s something wrong. Especially if the number of piracy downloads would easily constitute that 50% mark many, many times over.
Yes. Investors only care about the profit margin: not all of them mind you, but enough to make that statement true. However developers need these investors to make the kind of game customers want. Therefore if you screw the investors, you screw the developer, which in turn just screws the customers. Of course it’s easy to blame piracy for everything that goes wrong - which is sorta the problem to begin with: companies crying wolf or shifting blame. However there’s no doubt that piracy has made HUGE negative impacts on various titles: which only fans the small fire into a raging blaze.
So to make a long story short: if there are 10 million pirate downloads of a game that sold less than 1 million, when it should have easily sold 2 or 3… there’s a problem. If the problem can’t be centered on the fact that it’s a bad game - because 95% of the gaming population claim its a great game - then the developers are in a nightmare situation. They can’t tell the investors, “we made a bad game” or “customers hate our game”. They come to the meeting saying, “we made a great game and customers consider it one of the best games ever made for that console… but no one bought it.” Thus the investors only have one answer: “no more money for you.” Then you have a fanbase waiting for a sequel that will never come, and developers upset that they can’t find an answer to the problem they have.
Basically it just results in a situation where companies feel the PSP market sucks, because nothing they create will sell in decent numbers. Thus getting a high budget PSP title is impossible. End result? PSP owners get shafted and the handheld dies a slow death.
Maybe that’s now how it goes down in the boardroom, but the media companies (music and movies moreso than games, I think) have definitely used the “pirated copy = lost sale = $X billion in losses” argument in public, trying to influence the policy debate. To some success. So it merits addressing.
I’m not really disagreeing with you, just thinking out loud. :o
For the music industry, I can see how estimation of sales for a singer can’t be determined until AFTER records fly off store shelves (or get a digital purchase on iTunes). The next Idol could be anyone. It’s really at the whims of the fans. Hence all those garage bands and underground rapers, becoming Hollywood superstars overnight…
However movies are generally given an estimation of ticket sales beforehand. You don’t budget a 50 million dollar movie, with the expectation that it will only sell 10 million in tickets. Of course given the VAST number of duds Hollywood releases, whoever do their homework in California needs to hanged and quartered. Then again, you really can’t tell what kind of movie you’re getting until AFTER it’s filmed.
Almost like playing Russian Roulette. 
Seeing how movie ticket sales continue to “break records” each year, thus making more money than the previous year (Ironman and Dark Knight for example), I think the complaints about movie piracy are kinda inflated. I mean you really can’t say piracy is killing the movie industry, when the movie industry is making more money each blockbuster season. DVD sales are always troubling (i.e. licensed anime), so I that I can agree with. But for theater participation, I’m not so certain. At least with music and the game industry, there’s hard evidence of continuing profit loss, regardless of quality. High quality movies continue to get increasing ticket sales.
However, just to repeat myself, DVD movies seems to be an entire different beast altogether. Although in my opinion (and mind you this is only an opinion), I’ve always seen DVD sales as a way for bad movies try to “break even” and good movies to “add gravy”… and I think actors are overpaid. :lol:
Interesting little Freudian slip you have going there … 
lets get back on topic how much longer till your guess for the ship date
“Wake me up when December ends!” :lol:
And as said before, DRM is the topic. You’re the one changing the topic. Go to the official thread if you want to keep asking about the release date.
Really no need to get back on topic, as this topic has pretty much played itself out. If this was the sticky “official” thread for the game, it would be another matter altogether.
I stand by the 1 out of 100 pirated copies = 1 lost sale for software (games and apps), anyways. While that might not seem like a lot, for most software companies, that loss of 1% is important. Most products don’t sell a large number of units to begin with, so every unit counts.
I expect eroge has a higher lost sales rate then apps, os, and non-eroge games. The reason is that I know people that love eroge, but are TOO EMBARASSED to actually order their own. The knowledge that there is a human somewhere that has to take the game, put it into a box, pack it, and address it to them is enough to embarass them so they’d rather go dig through warez sites to get their fix. Sad, but true. While I hope they aren’t many people like them, I expect they aren’t the only ones. Add to it that it can be difficult to know if a particular title is “your sort of story” without talking to people that have played it, and how is a eroge in need of a fix to know if a particular game will scratch their particular itch? That “full featured demo” is just waiting for them so they can find out.
Piracy is going to remain a problem. If the copy protections and DRM get too bothersome, people will definately start avoiding it— but since there will always be crackers out there, the products themselves will be available in various cracked forms out on the net. That’s a tough place for developers and publishers to be in---- lock your product down tight and tick off your legitimate customers, or be nice to them— and risk losing some possible sales because of “piracy”.
today! well I got an email telling me that it is ready to ship :mrgreen:
It’s hard being a Sith in a Jedi world. 
Heh, yet another poor innocent soul :lol: …
Narg does really know how society works.
It’s FUN being a Sith in a Jedi world :twisted: .
Actually i read a study last year that found having just absolute minimum copy-right protection, such as a CD/DVD check, or a one-time DRM check that just loaded when installed and had unlimited uses, but maximum uses in a given period (like 2 in a given month) is the best at reducing piracy while pissing off the fewest number of customers enough that they’d rather not buy it. Or for download games, rather its there is no DRM, but the company just watches bandwidth and its flagged if too many downloads occur in an undisclosed amount of time.
Yea, those can be bypassed easily, especially if your giving it to your friend, but that’s not the level of piracy we’re talking about here (and companies while they don’t really like it, it doesn’t hurt them that much.
The other thing that gets people to buy rather than download for a number of people are special items, especially when they are preorder or true limited quantity items…well it does for people like me. I preordered Luminous Arc 2 because of that…and well because Atlus games tend to hold value. I’ll might be doing that too for Mana Khemia PSP if they offer something.
The Sith are the true masters (see sig)