You can't really use 3D Realms (small studio) or Gears of War (lots of outsourcing, engine development costs not in production budget) as representative of the industry, nor can you use whether or not a publisher would greenlight a sequel as a metric for success. Sequels are generally cheaper to make than new IPs.
And as for PS3 only having like 5 million-sellers, I'd bet there are actually more than that. Reliable data is hard to get from Europe and Asia. And bear in mind that million-sales break-even mark is for bigtime releases, not every game ever. Most games don't need that many sales to tread water, but again- this thread is about the big names and big budgets.
We're talking atypical cases here, folks, not averages- more Halo 3, less Puzzle Quest.
So, basically, I can't use real life examples of games with 10million dollar development costs, but I can use an analysts made up numbers? That makes sense.
Makes sense to me. Prey was bought and sold like four times in its decade-long development cycle, and Epic's $10m figure doesn't include what they spent on UE3. Even for high-profile titles, those are unusual- and in any event, both were either crossplatform or console-exclusive at launch and thus not very indicative of PC gaming.
subedii, you seem to be arguing in favor of a more indie approach to PC game development for guys like Chris Taylor. I don't think he (and people like him) want to do the indie thing all over again when they can continue making games the way they want by focusing on consoles.
The only reason I threw out that one-million-as-break-even number was because a few people seemed to think a million sales was a smashing success for a game like Crysis. It's not. It's okay, not great (it definitely "deserves" more, in my opinion). It certainly doesn't prove the vitality and viability of the PC market. We can continue crunching numbers and stuff but even assuming the best of all possible cases, if you're not making World of Warcraft or The Sims, you're probably not making much money in PC exclusives. Guys who have been doing it for a long time are recognizing the trend.
What about Canada? We've typically been a little more consumer-oriented when it comes to copyright law, although, once again, that may have changed
Its worth noting that copy/downloading games/music etc its PERFECTLY LEGAL IN CANADA AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT SELL IT FOR PROFIT OR ANY OTHER REASON. However,we have a Tax on ALL storage devices (from ram to ipods to hardrives) to supposedly pay off the minor cost of piracy. And what most people dont know is that all the money accrued from that tax (last estimates have it in the high billions) still hasnt been divived up. The RIAA and other industries have been fighting over it for years but its still under canadian goverment control untill its figured out who to give it to. It pretty much ensures there will never be any serious anti-piracy laws in Canada if it might cause that tax law to default.
And as many others have said,Piracy killing games is pure unmitigated BULLSHIT. Online piracy is just like modern day sea piracy (which still goes on on a large scale). If it was really harming sales to a serious degree games simply wouldnt get made because because after awhile even succsessful games would be losing money. Piracy is *always* blamed because Game companies are business and telling your board of directors/stockholders that the game didnt sell well because it was a shit game never goes over well. Instead you tell them it was piracy and keep your job and company open.
Blizzard is both a good and bad example. Bad because NO ONE else is Blizzard. Good because Blizzard is clever like monkey and isnt afraid to make the tough choices. Anyone Remeber Starcrafts spawn system? it basicly encouraged 7 of your friends at a lan not to buy the game. But made the game so damn good,that you were a loser not to have it.
Blizzard has always understood what matters: Its better to make a game fun and accessible enough that anyone can play and sell 10s on milllions of copies and lose that 10% profit then sell a simple million and get 100% profit. Just like they understand that one Legendary game will make more money then 5 mediocre games.
Edit: Alot of what Chris Taylor said annoys me. But the fact that he said a mouse and keyboard is meh insantly bankrupted every single bit of my respect for him. Your strategic zoom aint gonna cover that heresy asshole.
It makes sense that if you spend an exhorbitant amount of money developing an engine like Unreal Engine 3.0, you'd need to sell at least a million copies of Gears of War to break even on its development if you include the game dev + UE3 development. Fortunately for Epic, they can (and are) licensing that engine like crazy. As well as using that engine to develop more games on it; the 'game only' budgets for Gears and UT3 were a tad lower than the average HD game.
For other developers, they have 2 options. License an engine on the cheap, or build one up from the ground. The former is cheaper and perhaps leads to good results. the latter can cost a heck of a lot for a great engine (Crysis) and require a ton of sales to break even (Crysis), or they can focus on less ambitious things and use more basic engines that work well for the purpose of the game.
If they go the route of Crysis, then yeah, I can see it needing 1M+ sales to profit. I think Crytek wants to license their engine.. but they're facing stiff competition from Epic; and I don't remember Crytek first engine ever licensed all that much.
Edit:
Something to bear in mind about the PC industry is that online distribution is starting to grow; and not only is that not counted in software sales (NPD/CT/MC)*, but developers reap a hell of a lot more direct profit from games than they do when they publish retail.
* NPD will start tracking monthly fee-based games; but not online distributed games (like Steam) sales numbers
It makes sense that if you spend an exhorbitant amount of money developing an engine like Unreal Engine 3.0, you'd need to sell at least a million copies of Gears of War to break even on its development if you include the game dev + UE3 development. Fortunately for Epic, they can (and are) licensing that engine like crazy. As well as using that engine to develop more games on it; the 'game only' budgets for Gears and UT3 were a tad lower than the average HD game.
For other developers, they have 2 options. License an engine on the cheap, or build one up from the ground. The former is cheaper and perhaps leads to good results. the latter can cost a heck of a lot for a great engine (Crysis) and require a ton of sales to break even (Crysis), or they can focus on less ambitious things and use more basic engines that work well for the purpose of the game.
If they go the route of Crysis, then yeah, I can see it needing 1M+ sales to profit. I think Crytek wants to license their engine.. but they're facing stiff competition from Epic; and I don't remember Crytek first engine ever licensed all that much.
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
Cronus on
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
I know, I remember them reporting that. They have Europe to thank for that, as comparatively their first month NPD for NA were less than 100k sales. As a side note, piracy is pretty badly rampant for the game too.
Crysis is happy with their sales, they've stated as much.
But they also poured tons of development and production cost into the thing.
I was just saying that this route - tons of cost, resulting in the need for higher sales - is just one route developers can take. It's probably the more risky route, in the current state of PC gaming. I can see how this sort of game can require a million sales to break even. But as a general rule of thumb for the HD systems and general PC games of that caliber, $15M development/publishing costs and 500k break-even sales are the typical numbers.
But as you brought up, Crysis indeed managed to eek out over a million sales. And it is suggested that Crysis will at least have some "legs" in sales as people progressively have better gaming machines to run the game, and thus be able to buy it to play it.
subedii, you seem to be arguing in favor of a more indie approach to PC game development for guys like Chris Taylor. I don't think he (and people like him) want to do the indie thing all over again when they can continue making games the way they want by focusing on consoles.
I think we're having a problem with communication here because that's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm saying that the indie route is a viable one in order to reach success. People seem to be suggesting that because costs have risen you NEED to make a big budget game that HAS to sell in the millions. I disagree with that.
The only reason I threw out that one-million-as-break-even number was because a few people seemed to think a million sales was a smashing success for a game like Crysis. It's not. It's okay, not great (it definitely "deserves" more, in my opinion). It certainly doesn't prove the vitality and viability of the PC market. We can continue crunching numbers and stuff but even assuming the best of all possible cases, if you're not making World of Warcraft or The Sims, you're probably not making much money in PC exclusives. Guys who have been doing it for a long time are recognizing the trend.
A million units has always been a pretty large number for PC exclusives, I'm not saying otherwise. I also believe that a million for Crysis is a good number. I also feel it could have sold more, but if I'm honest, I put that down more to the hardware requirements than piracy (and that ties back into my earlier rant about the hardware industry). Put it this way, it's enough for them to warrant a sequel for it, so I would consider that a success. I also don't believe even Crytek expected it to sell 2-mil or beyond. That wasn't their target audience. There was an interesting interview with one of the lead Devs from Crytek on the GFW podcast some time ago on this subject, you might be interested in it (I don't remember what date but I'm sure it's listed in the details).
As for the vitality and the viability of the PC market, again, this is where I was mainly talking about the niche to medium (gah that sounds stupid, but I hope you know what I mean) market companies. I pretty much expect any company that's capable of it to go multiplatform in order to make more money where possible. It's stupid not to. However, that in itself doesn't make the PC market less viable. Companies like Stardock and CD Projekt have pretty much proven that there's room for games that sell a million or less and that's considered a good, solid hit (Heck, Witcher did so well for CD Projekt that they're essentially re-vamping the entire game for free). If CD Projekt do Witcher 2 and can make it multiplatform without sacrificing what made the first one good, they should do it.
Understand, I'm not saying that companies should remain PC exclusive. I don't even believe they should be console exclusive if they truly intend to make a big budget title, it's just not feasible with the kinds of costs involved in making them. I think Chris Taylor has the right idea in going multiplatform (although honestly, I feel he's got the wrong game to do it. Even C&C3 only shipped around 400-500,000 odd units on 360, and SupCom has far less people that know or care about it). But that doesn't mean that smaller scope projects with smaller costs can't exist. If that were the case a game like Sins wouldn't exist and wouldn't be doing really well right now. I say "really well" when I don't expect it to top 1.5 million units at the very most. That doesn't matter, becuase success is measured differently there, especially when you factor in the fact that they're getting a lot more money per unit via online distribution.
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
I know, I remember them reporting that. They have Europe to thank for that, as their first month NPD were less than 100k sales. As a side note, piracy is pretty badly rampant for the game too.
Crysis is happy with their sales, they've stated as much.
But they also poured tons of development and production cost into the thing.
I was just saying that this route - tons of cost, resulting in the need for higher sales - is just one route developers can take. It's probably the more risky route, in the current state of PC gaming. I can see how this sort of game can require a million sales to break even. But as a general rule of thumb for the HD systems and general PC games of that caliber, $15M development/publishing costs and 500k break-even sales are the typical numbers.
But as you brought up, Crysis indeed managed to eek out over a million sales. And it is suggested that Crysis will at least have some "legs" in sales as people progressively have better gaming machines to run the game, and thus be able to buy it to play it.
How do you know piracy is rampant for this game? How many of those people that did download Crysis would have bought it?
People always go on and on about piracy of PC games, but it's not going to really impact your sales. I'll let Warren Spector speak for me hear: "I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"
The reason PC game sales are down is because people buy games off of Steam, or Driect2Drive, or GoLoader, or EA Link. It's pretty ridiculous to think that everyone who buys a PC game does so buy driving to GameStop or Walmart.
Cronus on
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
I know, I remember them reporting that. They have Europe to thank for that, as their first month NPD were less than 100k sales. As a side note, piracy is pretty badly rampant for the game too.
Crysis is happy with their sales, they've stated as much.
But they also poured tons of development and production cost into the thing.
I was just saying that this route - tons of cost, resulting in the need for higher sales - is just one route developers can take. It's probably the more risky route, in the current state of PC gaming. I can see how this sort of game can require a million sales to break even. But as a general rule of thumb for the HD systems and general PC games of that caliber, $15M development/publishing costs and 500k break-even sales are the typical numbers.
But as you brought up, Crysis indeed managed to eek out over a million sales. And it is suggested that Crysis will at least have some "legs" in sales as people progressively have better gaming machines to run the game, and thus be able to buy it to play it.
How do you know piracy is rampant for this game? How many of those people that did download Crysis would have bought it?
People always go on and on about piracy of PC games, but it's not going to really impact your sales. I'll let Warren Spector speak for me hear: "I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"
The reason PC game sales are down is because people buy games off of Steam, or Driect2Drive, or GoLoader, or EA Link. It's pretty ridiculous to think that everyone who buys a PC game does so buy driving to GameStop or Walmart.
The assertion that direct downloads is responsible for a greater impact on sales than piracy seems to have an equal amount of handwaving and making stuff up. I mean, this is based on what? We know that Steam still refuses to undercut the pricing of retail channels because developers -- including Valve -- are afraid to lose that market. That's not a real good sign.
I think people keep bringing up Crysis partly because it's one of the higher end games on the market. As was posed several pages ago, people pirating Crysis probably have a fairly powerful machine, and is it reasonable that they would have spent $600+ on their computer and simply refused to buy any games for it if they couldn't get them for free?
How do you know piracy is rampant for this game? How many of those people that did download Crysis would have bought it?
This is an old argument.
But I'll just say this --
For a game that only achieved 85k sales in the US, I would say that piracy is pretty rampant for the game when, over a month after its release, there are still 150,000 people leeching off of a single torrent for the game (especially considering there are probably other sources of the game in torrent format in other places). I got these numbers from someone else on this forum, as I don't even look into this seedy underbelly of the internet even for curiosity's sake.
Even if you assume that 1 out of 5 of those pirated copies are "lost sales" copies, that's 30,000 lost sales.
Considering that, over a month after release, the number of pirated copies is just about double the number of sales of the game in one major region, I'd say that this is pretty bad. especially since it doesn't account for all of the copies pirated during that first month when the game was hot, especially when you consider that this was only one of probably many sources that provide a link to pirate the game.
I hate piracy.
People always go on and on about piracy of PC games, but it's not going to really impact your sales.
I think it does.
There's an indie dev on this board who has sold something like 400 copies of his game. And even he found his game on a torrent site. Blugh.
I'll let Warren Spector speak for me hear: "I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"
If he's allowed to use "anyone" so generally then I can tell you that I personally have known at least 5 people who would have bought the games had they not been able to get them for free.
They buy their console games no problem. But PC games? They'll happily buy $200 video cards. Then download PC games as they please. because they are "saving so much money."
The reason PC game sales are down is because people buy games off of Steam, or Driect2Drive, or GoLoader, or EA Link. It's pretty ridiculous to think that everyone who buys a PC game does so buy driving to GameStop or Walmart.
I agree that Digital Distro is becoming more prevalent. I mentioned that above. Valve recently revealed that they have achieved 15 million Steam accounts. Even if people aren't by and large buying games via Steam, it has to be at least a fairly significant portion of sales.
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
I know, I remember them reporting that. They have Europe to thank for that, as their first month NPD were less than 100k sales. As a side note, piracy is pretty badly rampant for the game too.
Crysis is happy with their sales, they've stated as much.
But they also poured tons of development and production cost into the thing.
I was just saying that this route - tons of cost, resulting in the need for higher sales - is just one route developers can take. It's probably the more risky route, in the current state of PC gaming. I can see how this sort of game can require a million sales to break even. But as a general rule of thumb for the HD systems and general PC games of that caliber, $15M development/publishing costs and 500k break-even sales are the typical numbers.
But as you brought up, Crysis indeed managed to eek out over a million sales. And it is suggested that Crysis will at least have some "legs" in sales as people progressively have better gaming machines to run the game, and thus be able to buy it to play it.
How do you know piracy is rampant for this game? How many of those people that did download Crysis would have bought it?
People always go on and on about piracy of PC games, but it's not going to really impact your sales. I'll let Warren Spector speak for me hear: "I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"
The reason PC game sales are down is because people buy games off of Steam, or Driect2Drive, or GoLoader, or EA Link. It's pretty ridiculous to think that everyone who buys a PC game does so buy driving to GameStop or Walmart.
I have to point out that you're dismissing conclusions from developers (who by the way would know how much money they make off digital distribution) while pulling wild speculation out of your ass with no numbers to back it. It's a fact that hundreds of thousands of people are pirating major releases (Just check the download numbers for any torrent). We don't have any digital distribution numbers, but I sure as hell will wager that that's not why PC sales are so lackluster because they wouldn't be complaining if they were selling in large numbers online since they have access to that information.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
I know, I remember them reporting that. They have Europe to thank for that, as their first month NPD were less than 100k sales. As a side note, piracy is pretty badly rampant for the game too.
Crysis is happy with their sales, they've stated as much.
But they also poured tons of development and production cost into the thing.
I was just saying that this route - tons of cost, resulting in the need for higher sales - is just one route developers can take. It's probably the more risky route, in the current state of PC gaming. I can see how this sort of game can require a million sales to break even. But as a general rule of thumb for the HD systems and general PC games of that caliber, $15M development/publishing costs and 500k break-even sales are the typical numbers.
But as you brought up, Crysis indeed managed to eek out over a million sales. And it is suggested that Crysis will at least have some "legs" in sales as people progressively have better gaming machines to run the game, and thus be able to buy it to play it.
How do you know piracy is rampant for this game? How many of those people that did download Crysis would have bought it?
People always go on and on about piracy of PC games, but it's not going to really impact your sales. I'll let Warren Spector speak for me hear: "I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"
The reason PC game sales are down is because people buy games off of Steam, or Driect2Drive, or GoLoader, or EA Link. It's pretty ridiculous to think that everyone who buys a PC game does so buy driving to GameStop or Walmart.
I have to point out that you're dismissing conclusions from developers (who by the way would know how much money they make off digital distribution) while pulling wild speculation out of your ass with no numbers to back it. It's a fact that hundreds of thousands of people are pirating major releases (Just check the download numbers for any torrent). We don't have any digital distribution numbers, but I sure as hell will wager that that's not why PC sales are so lackluster because they wouldn't be complaining if they were selling in large numbers online since they have access to that information.
You don't need to be so hypocritical even though this is the internet. Lets see where should I start. I had no numbers, while you say hundreds of thousands firmly pulling that out of thin air. Somehow I'm the one dismissing concerns from PC developers and yet I quoted a prominent PC game developer. The complaining really needs to be looked at closely. When people point to Crysis which just went platinum we know they were wrong. When people point to Halo 2, one can say that it was a 2 year late vista only port which made Wii Sports look like a PC friendly game.
Games are going to continue the trend of multi-platform development, because you can sell more copies of a game on more than one platform.
Cronus on
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
there are still 150,000 people leeching off of a single torrent for the game
That number is completely ridiculous. 150,000 people simultaneously downloading Crysis? Still? Months after release? No, jesus no. That's unreal. I doubt it ever got a tenth of that number at its peak.
Also, why do people assume that those who pirate Crysis have uber computers. Yeah, you need an uber computer to play Crysis. No, you do not need an uber computer to pirate Crysis and have some laughs at the slide show it plays on your 5 year old PC.
I don't think anyone can say anything about how sales correlate to pirated copies. You can pick some arbitrary fraction like "if even 1 out of 10" had bought X game, Y company would have made $TEXAS, but who the hell knows how accurate that figure is? There are so many factors that play in to an entertainment purchasing decision. Especially in PC games vs Console there are a range of other factors that you don't find with consoles. A console player doesn't worry about whether it will run on his system, or whether the game is stable.
This whole "piracy is the #1 problem with PC gaming" just reeks of the dumb crap that gets thrown around in RIAA/MPAA arguments. The PC gamer has been getting consistently reamed with retarded and invasive anti-copying mechanism, ever sagging production values, and a general increase in competition in the form of quality gaming alternatives found on consoles.
Consoles are really shining now. They're doing all the things one would expect from a PC - online gaming, voice chat, buddy lists, matchmaking, custom soundtracks - and they're doing it better and cheaper. That's why PC gaming is dying, because consoles practically are PCs, not because of some small dumb crap like piracy.
Would you believe me if I told you I wasn't at all surprised by that 150k-leeched torrent? That I actually expected it to be higher given that high-pop torrents grow nonlinearly?
Because I'm not surprised. Seriously, no hyperbole or exaggeration. Remember earlier in this thread when I said PC piracy rates would blow you away? Yeah...
* The number one Real-Time Strategy Game of all time, Gamespy 2004
* Best Game of All Time, PC Games 1998
* Gamer's Choice Award, Best Real-Time Strategy Game, PC Gamer
* 1998 Blister Award Winner, "Best Strategy Game of 1997", Electric Playground
* 1997 Game of the Year, GameSpot
* Best Strategy Game of 1997, GameSpot
* Best Multiplayer Game 1997, GameSpot
* Best Music 1997 GameSpot
* Included in Gamespot's "Greatest Games of All Time" Feature
* 1997 Game of the Year, GameSpot Reader's Choice Awards
* 1997 Best Strategy Game, GameSpot Reader's Choice Awards
* 1997 Best War Game, Happy Puppy's Golden Fire Hydrant Award
* 1997 Best Strategy Game, PC Guru Magazine, Hungary
* Best RTS Game, GAME.EXE Magazine, Russia 1998
* Best Game of the Year 1997, PC Soulces, France
* Silver Trophy Award, PC Magazine Loisirs, France
* Top Game Award for Five Consecutive Months, PC Jeux France
* Best RTS Game 1997, Reader's Choice Award, PC Gamer Online
* Best Real-Time Strategy Game 1997, The Adrenaline Vault
* Best Strategy Game 1997, Reader's Award, Games Domain
* 1997 Game of the Year, CompuNews
* 1997 Best Sound/Music, GamePen
* Best Strategy Game of 1997, Gamezilla.com
* Game of the Year, Game Review Central
* Best Real-Time Strategy Game of 1997, Ultra Game Players Magazine
* CG Choice Award, Computer Gaming World, 1998
* Best of the Best A+ Award, PC Games 1998
* Family PC Tested-Recommended, Family PC 1998
* Stamp of Approval, Computer Games Strategy Plus
* Editor's Choice Award 1997, Online Gaming Review
* Special Achievement in Music 1997, Online Gaming Review
* Best Game of the Year 1997, Honorable Mention, Online Gaming Review
* Best Game of 1997, Reader's Knockout Poll Award, Games Domain Review
* Best PC Game of 1997, Video Games Palace
* Gaming Product of the Year 1997, MeccaWorld
* Best Strategy Game of 1997, Gamesmania
* Gold Player Top-Rated 5 Star Award, PC Games Germany
* Gold Award, PC Action Germany
* Top Rated 5 Star Award 1997, PC Gaming World UK
* Platin Award, PC Power
* Innovation in Gaming Award 1997, PC Review
* Editor's Choice Award, Game Worlds Network
* Editor's Choice Award, Gaming Age
* Editor's Choice Award 1997, All About Games
* Awesome! Award 1997, Game Briefs
* Killer Game Award 1997, The Cheater's Guild
* OGR Preferred Award, Online Gaming Review
* X-Picks Dazzler for 1997, Gamecenter
* Hot! 4 Star Award, GAMERZedge
* Hands-On Award, PC GamePro
* Editor's Pick Award 1997, GameSpot
* Buy Now! Award, San Francisco Guardian Plug & Play
* Star Player Award, Games Machine
* GamePower's 4-Lightning Bolt Award 1997
* GamePen's Best of E3 Award 1997
* Top 12 Games of Autumn, PC Games Europe
* Hot Property Award 1997, MeccaWorld
Not a fucking chance.
Yes, I've played TA. I didn't like it. I thought it felt terribly generic.
subedii, you seem to be arguing in favor of a more indie approach to PC game development for guys like Chris Taylor. I don't think he (and people like him) want to do the indie thing all over again when they can continue making games the way they want by focusing on consoles.
I don't really see why this is such a bad thing. If people want to make big budget games, then yeah they should probably focus on the markets that are more mainstream. PC gaming isn't really that right now, and PC games have always been focused on niche markets with exception of a few years around 1997-2002 or so. And honestly big FPS games and the like were only really huge on PCs back then because there was no other alternative, if someone wants to do a big 30 million dollar FPS now, I don't see any reason why it's inappropriate that they'd choose the 360.
Looking back at the genres that have been historically successful on pc, discounting FPS games for which until the PS2 and XBox there was really no appropriate console to run, you have stuff like RTS and TBS games and RPGs. Generally more "thinky" games with lower graphics budgets. Games like the Civilization series, Balders Gate 2, Starcraft, the diablo series, Sims/Simcity, etc.
None of these games really had gigantic budgets today compared to something like crysis, yet they were all successful and profitable.
And if you look at what's successful now, in terms of not just sales but raw profitability vs investment? Sins of a solar empire, Galciv2, Witcher, Sims 2, notice a similarity between those and the games mentioned before?
there are still 150,000 people leeching off of a single torrent for the game
That number is completely ridiculous. 150,000 people simultaneously downloading Crysis? Still? Months after release? No, jesus no. That's unreal. I doubt it ever got a tenth of that number at its peak.
No, 150k is really, truly the actual number. From an actual torrent site.
Also, why do people assume that those who pirate Crysis have uber computers. Yeah, you need an uber computer to play Crysis. No, you do not need an uber computer to pirate Crysis and have some laughs at the slide show it plays on your 5 year old PC.
I don't think anyone can say anything about how sales correlate to pirated copies. You can pick some arbitrary fraction like "if even 1 out of 10" had bought X game, Y company would have made $TEXAS, but who the hell knows how accurate that figure is?
It's called conservative estimation. If you ask me, even if 1 out of 150,000 pirated copies is a "lost sale," I'd think it was 1 lost sale too many.
The reason I use the "1 out of 10" line is because the usual counter argument is, "You don't know how many of those pirated copies are lost sales!"
But I think it's fair to assume that some pirated copies are lost sales. And that a small fraction of them - say 1 out of 10 - is not an unfair estimation.
So yeah, when you look at 10% of pirated copies and it's still a significant number, I think it's fair to say that piracy is hurting sales in at least a noticeable manner.
There are so many factors that play in to an entertainment purchasing decision. Especially in PC games vs Console there are a range of other factors that you don't find with consoles. A console player doesn't worry about whether it will run on his system, or whether the game is stable.
And too often I find people that I've talked to say, "I'll just download this to test it..." or "I'll just download this to see if I like it..." and then "go out and buy it if it's good." But then just play through and enjoy the game and not buy it. Whether or not that was a "lost sale" doesn't change the fact that a person benefitted from enjoying the full game without paying for it.
This whole "piracy is the #1 problem with PC gaming" just reeks of the dumb crap that gets thrown around in RIAA/MPAA arguments.
Did I say that it was the "#1 problem"? No, I didn't. I just said it was a significant problem.
The PC gamer has been getting consistently reamed with retarded and invasive anti-copying mechanism, ever sagging production values, and a general increase in competition in the form of quality gaming alternatives found on consoles.
Consoles are really shining now. They're doing all the things one would expect from a PC - online gaming, voice chat, buddy lists, matchmaking, custom soundtracks - and they're doing it better and cheaper. That's why PC gaming is dying, because consoles practically are PCs, not because of some small dumb crap like piracy.
Agreed, but I also agree that piracy is a problem compounding the issues related to PC gaming.
Besides console competition, there's also the 'reputation' - true or false - that PC Gaming is both expensive as a hobby, and time consuming and difficult to get everything - hardware and software - working properly.
I think the problem is with the demographics. The people most likely to have a system capable of running it, just happens to be the same as those with the knowledge of where to go to download/pirate games for free.
It's funny because I've met many people who admit to pirating games, yet I know they earn more than enough to buy them.
That's the sickest, saddest thing of all right there.
I've been occasionally checking the sales figures for new PC games vs the amount of people downloading off torrents lately.
Torrents win every time, often by a massive margin.
With Crysis, there was an individual torrent with well over 150,000 users at one time. Two months later, it's still going strong with almost 10,000 users. There are a couple of other Crysis torrents with thousands of users still active.
Over the past two months, how many people have pirated Crysis, just from these torrents? How many of those people would have then copied the game and handed it out to friends? The number of gamers playing Crysis legitimately is dwarfed by the people who have copied the game.
The most common attitude to this issue among gamers is to say "LOLOL pirate hysteria. Don't copy that floppy LOL". But it really is something that has spiralled out of control, and I bet that most of the people who are pirating PC games can afford them... after all, they can afford to buy a machine to play the games on.
I'm also going to pull out the old Infinity Ward COD4 card:
On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).
subedii, you seem to be arguing in favor of a more indie approach to PC game development for guys like Chris Taylor. I don't think he (and people like him) want to do the indie thing all over again when they can continue making games the way they want by focusing on consoles.
I don't really see why this is such a bad thing. If people want to make big budget games, then yeah they should probably focus on the markets that are more mainstream. PC gaming isn't really that right now, and PC games have always been focused on niche markets with exception of a few years around 1997-2002 or so. And honestly big FPS games and the like were only really huge on PCs back then because there was no other alternative, if someone wants to do a big 30 million dollar FPS now, I don't see any reason why it's inappropriate that they'd choose the 360.
No argument here. I'm just trying to help shed some light on why this shift away from PCs and towards consoles is happening, not to mention convince people that it's happening at all. I'd love to live in a world where developers who take risks in PC gaming are rewarded more often than they're punished, but we've been trending away from that for some time.
OP: What's with the assumption that Taylor's views have to be business-driven (and therefore, sinister) instead of innovation-driven? It's like saying the mouse and keyboard is the ultimate form of control and we should just pack it up and go home.
I love how the instant any PC developer deviates from the PC gaming superiority groupthink, no matter how beloved he is or how acclaimed his past accomplishments are, PC gamers go on the defensive and try to marginalise him and his games. It's weird seeing this thread given how well received SupCom was here. O_o
I read somewhere that at one point, there were more people playing multiplayer on Starsiege:Tribes servers than the number of copies of the game sold. Tribes as we all know was wildly successful and led to two sequels. Someone earlier also mentioned StarCraft and it's spawn install feature that let multiple people install from a single disc and play on a LAN. There are all old games, circa pre-2000, but it seemed that those games, at least to some extent, USED piracy to launch them further into the market.
Piracy seems to be pretty much a fixture of PC gaming. Companies have been trying the stick approach for the longest time, culminating in crap like Starforce installing rootkits and all that good stuff. It seems unspeakable, but could game companies use piracy to increase sales? After all, if someone is taking the time to pirate your game, at the very least you know they're interested in your product.
It seems like what happened with Tribes is that they, be it intentional or not, let their game be easy to pirate. The game spread like wildfire and while many may have played for free, had a blast, and never gave Dynamix a nickel, others who got hooked did buy the game, or perhaps one of its sequels.
I want more developers to try hooks like that. Give away the single player but charge for multiplayer, or vice versa. (It should be relatively easy to enforce non-pirate multiplayer, I mean if the CoD4 people KNOW pirate keys are being used, just ban them) Or bundle in your old games (ala HL2 in the Orange Box) with your new. Or hell, even break up your game into chapters and let the player decide how far they want to pay for. Kind of like how people hate paying $20 bucks for a whole CD when they only want a couple songs, break your game into chunks and let the consumer decide what they want to pay for instead of that fat $50 dollar up front fee.
Yeah, listening to the latest gfw, it's pretty clear that Chris Taylor really is into the whole consoles=$$$ thing, and doesn't really like PCs at all anymore
I think the problem is with the demographics. The people most likely to have a system capable of running it, just happens to be the same as those with the knowledge of where to go to download/pirate games for free.
It's funny because I've met many people who admit to pirating games, yet I know they earn more than enough to buy them.
That's the sickest, saddest thing of all right there.
I've been occasionally checking the sales figures for new PC games vs the amount of people downloading off torrents lately.
Torrents win every time, often by a massive margin.
With Crysis, there was an individual torrent with well over 150,000 users at one time. Two months later, it's still going strong with almost 10,000 users. There are a couple of other Crysis torrents with thousands of users still active.
Over the past two months, how many people have pirated Crysis, just from these torrents? How many of those people would have then copied the game and handed it out to friends? The number of gamers playing Crysis legitimately is dwarfed by the people who have copied the game.
The most common attitude to this issue among gamers is to say "LOLOL pirate hysteria. Don't copy that floppy LOL". But it really is something that has spiralled out of control, and I bet that most of the people who are pirating PC games can afford them... after all, they can afford to buy a machine to play the games on.
Wow that's some great evidence of rampant piracy there. A forum post. Clearly the authoritative source of piracy. I sincerely submit my surrender to your irrefutable evidence of the death of PC gaming. This clearly is the death and not like the last 8 deaths of PC gaming. This is it. Yup.
Cronus on
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
I read somewhere that at one point, there were more people playing multiplayer on Starsiege:Tribes servers than the number of copies of the game sold. Tribes as we all know was wildly successful and led to two sequels. Someone earlier also mentioned StarCraft and it's spawn install feature that let multiple people install from a single disc and play on a LAN. There are all old games, circa pre-2000, but it seemed that those games, at least to some extent, USED piracy to launch them further into the market.
Piracy seems to be pretty much a fixture of PC gaming. Companies have been trying the stick approach for the longest time, culminating in crap like Starforce installing rootkits and all that good stuff. It seems unspeakable, but could game companies use piracy to increase sales? After all, if someone is taking the time to pirate your game, at the very least you know they're interested in your product.
It seems like what happened with Tribes is that they, be it intentional or not, let their game be easy to pirate. The game spread like wildfire and while many may have played for free, had a blast, and never gave Dynamix a nickel, others who got hooked did buy the game, or perhaps one of its sequels.
I want more developers to try hooks like that. Give away the single player but charge for multiplayer, or vice versa. (It should be relatively easy to enforce non-pirate multiplayer, I mean if the CoD4 people KNOW pirate keys are being used, just ban them) Or bundle in your old games (ala HL2 in the Orange Box) with your new. Or hell, even break up your game into chapters and let the player decide how far they want to pay for. Kind of like how people hate paying $20 bucks for a whole CD when they only want a couple songs, break your game into chunks and let the consumer decide what they want to pay for instead of that fat $50 dollar up front fee.
There are such things as free demos.
Did Blizzard ever do the spawn thing again after Starcraft? I'm almost positive that Diablo 2 didn't have it.
It seems like what happened with Tribes is that they, be it intentional or not, let their game be easy to pirate. The game spread like wildfire and while many may have played for free, had a blast, and never gave Dynamix a nickel, others who got hooked did buy the game, or perhaps one of its sequels.
Another thing people miss: Even if people pirate a complete playable game they will often buy the game when/if they can. Why? Because gamers by definition are collecters to varying degrees. Many of us are on the obessive end. Its not good enough to have a mere copy! we want the real thing. And the figurines,and the posters,and the collectors and the online special pet and the etc etc. Again,Blizzard has made an institution of this recently starting their figure lines (I bet Games workshop is REALLLY regretting not letting Blizzard license that IP).
I love how the instant any PC developer deviates from the PC gaming superiority groupthink, no matter how beloved he is or how acclaimed his past accomplishments are, PC gamers go on the defensive and try to marginalise him and his games. It's weird seeing this thread given how well received SupCom was here.
I love how people love to take the moral highground and decry the people giving objection. PC gaming superiority is old news. Its proven that consoles have original games just as good if not better then PCs. Just as its proved dual development and/or ports to multiplatforms often result in watered down PC games. How would you like it if Halo was suddenly PC only hmmm?
Besides,the Wii-mote is the epitome of gaming control right now for everything but Flight simulators. The mouse and keyboard is a fuckton better for control then a damned controller. I learned that waaaay back when i tried to use a controller for duke nukem 3d versus my buddy who had learned to use mouse and keyboard at a lan.
What i dont understand is that if all these companies can track all these pirated games,why dont they ban the cdkeys? I mean,what the fuck are they for anyways if your not able to use them to differentiate. I mean its getting redudant mentioning them,but Blizzard annually bans literally hundreds of thousands of keys across all their games.
Edit: Forget to mention. I wonder how much it cuts into the profit marging all these fucked up cdkey/registration weird arcane rootkit anti piracy measures. Versus guys who dont even bother?
Did Blizzard ever do the spawn thing again after Starcraft? I'm almost positive that Diablo 2 didn't have it.
Nope,but the only games that came out were diablo 2 and WoW. Wow obviously wasnt spawnable (or it was,but it was still subscription). And trying to spawn Diablo 2 probably wasnt feasible at the time given its ridiculius (for the time) size. 4 CDs! thank god DVD roms came along. Imagine how many CDs Supcom would be.
Did Blizzard ever do the spawn thing again after Starcraft? I'm almost positive that Diablo 2 didn't have it.
Nope,but the only games that came out were diablo 2 and WoW. Wow obviously wasnt spawnable (or it was,but it was still subscription). And trying to spawn Diablo 2 probably wasnt feasible at the time given its ridiculius (for the time) size. 4 CDs! thank god DVD roms came along. Imagine how many CDs Supcom would be.
What about Warcraft 3? Wouldn't that be the most analagous game to Starcraft?
It's the single player games that get pirated to hell and back, Vytae. Rest assured the folks you meet playing CoD4 online aren't likely to be pirates.
The huge swaths of bans Blizzard lays out periodically meant to curb cheating, not piracy. Right?
I read somewhere that at one point, there were more people playing multiplayer on Starsiege:Tribes servers than the number of copies of the game sold. Tribes as we all know was wildly successful and led to two sequels. Someone earlier also mentioned StarCraft and it's spawn install feature that let multiple people install from a single disc and play on a LAN. There are all old games, circa pre-2000, but it seemed that those games, at least to some extent, USED piracy to launch them further into the market.
Piracy seems to be pretty much a fixture of PC gaming. Companies have been trying the stick approach for the longest time, culminating in crap like Starforce installing rootkits and all that good stuff. It seems unspeakable, but could game companies use piracy to increase sales? After all, if someone is taking the time to pirate your game, at the very least you know they're interested in your product.
It seems like what happened with Tribes is that they, be it intentional or not, let their game be easy to pirate. The game spread like wildfire and while many may have played for free, had a blast, and never gave Dynamix a nickel, others who got hooked did buy the game, or perhaps one of its sequels.
I want more developers to try hooks like that. Give away the single player but charge for multiplayer, or vice versa. (It should be relatively easy to enforce non-pirate multiplayer, I mean if the CoD4 people KNOW pirate keys are being used, just ban them) Or bundle in your old games (ala HL2 in the Orange Box) with your new. Or hell, even break up your game into chapters and let the player decide how far they want to pay for. Kind of like how people hate paying $20 bucks for a whole CD when they only want a couple songs, break your game into chunks and let the consumer decide what they want to pay for instead of that fat $50 dollar up front fee.
There are such things as free demos.
Did Blizzard ever do the spawn thing again after Starcraft? I'm almost positive that Diablo 2 didn't have it.
I play tons of demos. All are really short, abruptly start and abruptly end, and rarely if ever make me want to purchase a game. To be honest I use them as benchmarks: How well can my computer run this game?
I'm talking about actually breaking apart a game and selling it piecemeal. The CoD4 demo was painfully short, the only thing I learned about the game was it's as scripted as ever and nightvision is cool. The demo wasn't bad, but it didn't excite me that much. I haven't bought CoD4, and I don't know if I ever will. However, if for example I could pay $5 and play the first 1/8 or 1/4 of the game, I'd gladly do that. Similarly, I've heard really good things about CoD4 multiplayer. I would pay $10 just to play that by itself.
Why would a company do this instead of letting people like me simply wait for price drops?
Relevance. I probably won't care that much about CoD4 in a few months when it falls to a price I'd snag it at. I'd be more likely to do the micro-purchases now rather than remember to get it in a few months time. Likewise, multiplayer tends to fade with time. I'd want to hop into the servers now, not in a few months when lots of people have moved on.
Of course there's the overhead of chopping up the game and then distributing it, but with digital distribution like Steam it makes these ideas much more manageable and realistic than in the past with CDs in brick and mortar stores.
I love PC gaming too. I really, truly do. But the guys who are protesting so furiously about stuff like this are in denial.
And yes, I am aware this happens every few years. I am also aware that I have never seen it include "name developers" (Peter M, etc) joining in.
PC Gaming is on the ropes. Lets hope for a new Bioware to RPG in the 90's dynamic.
Well the thing is again I don't think PC gaming in general is on the ropes. I think what is on the ropes and has been for the past 5 years or so (starting last generation and really coming into full effect this generation) is "technology" PC games.
The way I see it in the past there have been 2 kinds of games that were really focused on PC.
The first are games that really benefit from a mouse and keyboard. MMORPGS, rts games, tbs games, top down RPGs (especailly ones that are less action focused). These tend to be more complex in terms of user interface needs than a console controller can really handle. These also tend to have graphics on the less complex end of the scale and generally can thus run on most computers out there. These I feel are doing fine on computer. Again see the sucess of the Total War Series, Civilization series, Sins of Solar Empire, Witcher, Neverwinter Nights series, Galciv 2, Dawn of War, World of Warcraft, Sims/Simcity, Company of Heroes, the list goes on and on. These games have been profitable and done well considering the amount of money that was put into them.
The second are the "technology" PC games. The games that were on PC not because the platform really added much to playing them, but because the PC was the only thing around with enough steam to run them. I consider first person shooters (yeah yeah mouse/keyboard but ever since goldeneye showed it's possible to have decent fps controls on a pad I think that's less of an issue, and that was a long time ago), first person rpgs, racing games, etc in this category. These are going away from PC for a number of reasons. They tend to have big budgets and need a large market to break even. The XBOX 360 and PS3 are a third of the price of a comparable computer. They both have online support. They both have PC quality graphics. They both have a much larger install base, are easier to develop for, and are less vulnerable to piracy. It's natural that developers making a high technology game are going to be looking at consoles, and I think it would be a serious mistake for someone making this type of game to not at least consider doing a simultaneous release xbox 360 port. One of the reasons I think UT3 didn't do well was it was just on the wrong system, if they had released it in November on the 360 I think it would have seen some very significant sales numbers.
Supreme Commander I think had the problem of trying to be both 1 and 2. I think that if it had been scaled down a bit in its technological goals and been more playable on a wider variety of computers, it could have been a fairly successful RTS, especially with the money saved on the budget from the same scaling down. On the other hand, if they had taken the time to develop an effective gamepad control system a year ago and released it on the 360 last year, I think it could have also done well. With reasonably good marketing it might still have a chance if the control scheme they've developed ends up working out.
Wow that's some great evidence of rampant piracy there. A forum post. Clearly the authoritative source of piracy. I sincerely submit my surrender to your irrefutable evidence of the death of PC gaming. This clearly is the death and not like the last 8 deaths of PC gaming. This is it. Yup.
Hey, you don't have to be such a dick about it.
I don't like piracy. You can do a quick google and find thousands of leeching going on for just about any game.
Feel free to brush it off, but I'm not going to.
Did Marlor lie? Probably not. What evidence do you want? The game is not new any more. People aren't going to pirate in numbers like that at this time. I can't show you a fucking screenshot of the torrent site, whatever it may be.
Stuff like this isn't officially tracked. It's tracked by piracy sites. What the fuck kind of 'evidence' do you want? There isn't any, beyond going to the site and seeing for yourself. That's what Marlor did. Big fucking deal. I never claimed to have irrefutable evidence; I even stated, in my first fucking post, that this is where I got the number from. I could go tally up several right now, several months after the game is released, from torrent sites. But that would serve no purpose as time since the game was released has already passed.
Oh, and I never claimed the "death" of PC gaming, ass. If you had any idea what I've been saying about PC gaming, you'd have known that I believe that it's very much alive. Just not in the traditional sense.
I'm wondering how many of those people just downloaded Crysis to see how it ran on their machine. I know a single person in real life who actually played the damned thing (as opposed to running it as a benchmark), and he bought it.
It seems like what happened with Tribes is that they, be it intentional or not, let their game be easy to pirate. The game spread like wildfire and while many may have played for free, had a blast, and never gave Dynamix a nickel, others who got hooked did buy the game, or perhaps one of its sequels.
Another thing people miss: Even if people pirate a complete playable game they will often buy the game when/if they can. Why? Because gamers by definition are collecters to varying degrees. Many of us are on the obessive end. Its not good enough to have a mere copy! we want the real thing. And the figurines,and the posters,and the collectors and the online special pet and the etc etc. Again,Blizzard has made an institution of this recently starting their figure lines (I bet Games workshop is REALLLY regretting not letting Blizzard license that IP).
I love how the instant any PC developer deviates from the PC gaming superiority groupthink, no matter how beloved he is or how acclaimed his past accomplishments are, PC gamers go on the defensive and try to marginalise him and his games. It's weird seeing this thread given how well received SupCom was here.
I love how people love to take the moral highground and decry the people giving objection. PC gaming superiority is old news. Its proven that consoles have original games just as good if not better then PCs. Just as its proved dual development and/or ports to multiplatforms often result in watered down PC games. How would you like it if Halo was suddenly PC only hmmm?
I don't care about claims of "watered down" PC games - I played the first Splinter Cell on PC and it was fine. And since I've got a decent rig for development purposes, that wouldn't - and in fact, didn't bother me much in the cases of Halo 1 and 2 PC.
This didn't change the fact that those were console titles, best played on consoles where they were supported better (and rightfully so, given the console / PC user number breakdown).
Besides,the Wii-mote is the epitome of gaming control right now for everything but Flight simulators. The mouse and keyboard is a fuckton better for control then a damned controller. I learned that waaaay back when i tried to use a controller for duke nukem 3d versus my buddy who had learned to use mouse and keyboard at a lan.
I don't understand this. First you say the Wiimote is the epitome of control... and then you say the mouse and keyboard is a fuckton better for control than a controller. I'll assume, then, that you don't class the Wiimote as a controller.
In any event, I disagree. The Wiimote provides a novel approach, to be sure - enabling designs that could not work, or work as well with a regular controler. On the other hand, the now-orthodox twin-stick multi-button controller does a much better job, in my mind, in dealing with hardcore combo-based games.
I just did a very quick search and found one Crysis torrent with over 1300 leechers right now and found a total of about 8700 people total downloading it before I gave up looking.
This is four months after release and who knows what the total number of downloaded copies might be.
No one thinks this is a problem?
Either way, piracy is pretty deplorable and I'm married to someone who used to do it regularly but has pretty much stopped. His philosphy has always been "most games are shit and I won't pay money for them until I know they're good." And he did buy them if he liked them. But I know most pirates do not.
I don't understand why people think it's okay to enjoy a game and not feel that the people that made it should get something for it. It's only $50 for a new PC game. Maybe I'm just rolling in mountains of money (and I'm not), but I don't really think it's that much, not for what I get out of it. Would you work without compensation? Probably not. The individual developers are getting paid, but the ambiguous number of lost sales isn't good for the company.
I don't really get disappointed with or angry at developers that move primarily over to console development, really. It's completely understandable, it's just sad that there's so little reason for them not to.
I'm wondering how many of those people just downloaded Crysis to see how it ran on their machine. I know a single person in real life who actually played the damned thing (as opposed to running it as a benchmark), and he bought it.
Considering a demo was released several weeks before the actual game came out, very few.
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I never really understood poverty as a defense for piracy. I managed to buy a decent number of games during grad school- a grand experiment in which I discovered that yes, it is indeed possible to live in Chicago on twelve grand a year.
I suppose if this programming thing ever falls through I've always got a backup career helping people detox from all-Ramen diets.
I'm talking about actually breaking apart a game and selling it piecemeal. The CoD4 demo was painfully short, the only thing I learned about the game was it's as scripted as ever and nightvision is cool. The demo wasn't bad, but it didn't excite me that much. I haven't bought CoD4, and I don't know if I ever will. However, if for example I could pay $5 and play the first 1/8 or 1/4 of the game, I'd gladly do that. Similarly, I've heard really good things about CoD4 multiplayer. I would pay $10 just to play that by itself.
On paper, that's not a bad idea. In practice it starts the industry down a dark and dangerous road. On an unrelated note, the demo level for CoD4 is classic Call of Duty fare (it was chosen for the demo for that reason- familiarity). The rest of the game is... well, read some reviews. I'm heavily biased, of course, but I think it's great fun. OT posting done!
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ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
I'm wondering how many of those people just downloaded Crysis to see how it ran on their machine. I know a single person in real life who actually played the damned thing (as opposed to running it as a benchmark), and he bought it.
I never really understood poverty as a defense for piracy. I managed to buy a decent number of games during grad school- a grand experiment in which I discovered that yes, it is indeed possible to live in Chicago on twelve grand a year.
Maybe not everyone lives in the US/UK/Germany/1st world country? My entire pay check could pay for 15 new games total, and my salary is almost twice the one an average person here gets.
And to clarify on the benchmark part, I know a lot of people who simply pirated the game. Thing is, none of them played through it, they just ran it to see how their rig handled it. Most of them download games because they have a silly entitlement mindset, but few actually play said games, they just back them up and never touch them. The people I know who do play games actually do pay for them, be it straight up or after they'd tried the pirate copy.
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Makes sense to me. Prey was bought and sold like four times in its decade-long development cycle, and Epic's $10m figure doesn't include what they spent on UE3. Even for high-profile titles, those are unusual- and in any event, both were either crossplatform or console-exclusive at launch and thus not very indicative of PC gaming.
subedii, you seem to be arguing in favor of a more indie approach to PC game development for guys like Chris Taylor. I don't think he (and people like him) want to do the indie thing all over again when they can continue making games the way they want by focusing on consoles.
The only reason I threw out that one-million-as-break-even number was because a few people seemed to think a million sales was a smashing success for a game like Crysis. It's not. It's okay, not great (it definitely "deserves" more, in my opinion). It certainly doesn't prove the vitality and viability of the PC market. We can continue crunching numbers and stuff but even assuming the best of all possible cases, if you're not making World of Warcraft or The Sims, you're probably not making much money in PC exclusives. Guys who have been doing it for a long time are recognizing the trend.
Its worth noting that copy/downloading games/music etc its PERFECTLY LEGAL IN CANADA AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT SELL IT FOR PROFIT OR ANY OTHER REASON. However,we have a Tax on ALL storage devices (from ram to ipods to hardrives) to supposedly pay off the minor cost of piracy. And what most people dont know is that all the money accrued from that tax (last estimates have it in the high billions) still hasnt been divived up. The RIAA and other industries have been fighting over it for years but its still under canadian goverment control untill its figured out who to give it to. It pretty much ensures there will never be any serious anti-piracy laws in Canada if it might cause that tax law to default.
And as many others have said,Piracy killing games is pure unmitigated BULLSHIT. Online piracy is just like modern day sea piracy (which still goes on on a large scale). If it was really harming sales to a serious degree games simply wouldnt get made because because after awhile even succsessful games would be losing money. Piracy is *always* blamed because Game companies are business and telling your board of directors/stockholders that the game didnt sell well because it was a shit game never goes over well. Instead you tell them it was piracy and keep your job and company open.
Blizzard is both a good and bad example. Bad because NO ONE else is Blizzard. Good because Blizzard is clever like monkey and isnt afraid to make the tough choices. Anyone Remeber Starcrafts spawn system? it basicly encouraged 7 of your friends at a lan not to buy the game. But made the game so damn good,that you were a loser not to have it.
Blizzard has always understood what matters: Its better to make a game fun and accessible enough that anyone can play and sell 10s on milllions of copies and lose that 10% profit then sell a simple million and get 100% profit. Just like they understand that one Legendary game will make more money then 5 mediocre games.
Edit: Alot of what Chris Taylor said annoys me. But the fact that he said a mouse and keyboard is meh insantly bankrupted every single bit of my respect for him. Your strategic zoom aint gonna cover that heresy asshole.
It makes sense that if you spend an exhorbitant amount of money developing an engine like Unreal Engine 3.0, you'd need to sell at least a million copies of Gears of War to break even on its development if you include the game dev + UE3 development. Fortunately for Epic, they can (and are) licensing that engine like crazy. As well as using that engine to develop more games on it; the 'game only' budgets for Gears and UT3 were a tad lower than the average HD game.
For other developers, they have 2 options. License an engine on the cheap, or build one up from the ground. The former is cheaper and perhaps leads to good results. the latter can cost a heck of a lot for a great engine (Crysis) and require a ton of sales to break even (Crysis), or they can focus on less ambitious things and use more basic engines that work well for the purpose of the game.
If they go the route of Crysis, then yeah, I can see it needing 1M+ sales to profit. I think Crytek wants to license their engine.. but they're facing stiff competition from Epic; and I don't remember Crytek first engine ever licensed all that much.
Edit:
Something to bear in mind about the PC industry is that online distribution is starting to grow; and not only is that not counted in software sales (NPD/CT/MC)*, but developers reap a hell of a lot more direct profit from games than they do when they publish retail.
* NPD will start tracking monthly fee-based games; but not online distributed games (like Steam) sales numbers
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Well, Crysis has sold over a million so I imagine that Crytek is pretty happy with how Crysis is doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it broke 2 million before the end of the year.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
I know, I remember them reporting that. They have Europe to thank for that, as comparatively their first month NPD for NA were less than 100k sales. As a side note, piracy is pretty badly rampant for the game too.
Crysis is happy with their sales, they've stated as much.
But they also poured tons of development and production cost into the thing.
I was just saying that this route - tons of cost, resulting in the need for higher sales - is just one route developers can take. It's probably the more risky route, in the current state of PC gaming. I can see how this sort of game can require a million sales to break even. But as a general rule of thumb for the HD systems and general PC games of that caliber, $15M development/publishing costs and 500k break-even sales are the typical numbers.
But as you brought up, Crysis indeed managed to eek out over a million sales. And it is suggested that Crysis will at least have some "legs" in sales as people progressively have better gaming machines to run the game, and thus be able to buy it to play it.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I think we're having a problem with communication here because that's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm saying that the indie route is a viable one in order to reach success. People seem to be suggesting that because costs have risen you NEED to make a big budget game that HAS to sell in the millions. I disagree with that.
A million units has always been a pretty large number for PC exclusives, I'm not saying otherwise. I also believe that a million for Crysis is a good number. I also feel it could have sold more, but if I'm honest, I put that down more to the hardware requirements than piracy (and that ties back into my earlier rant about the hardware industry). Put it this way, it's enough for them to warrant a sequel for it, so I would consider that a success. I also don't believe even Crytek expected it to sell 2-mil or beyond. That wasn't their target audience. There was an interesting interview with one of the lead Devs from Crytek on the GFW podcast some time ago on this subject, you might be interested in it (I don't remember what date but I'm sure it's listed in the details).
As for the vitality and the viability of the PC market, again, this is where I was mainly talking about the niche to medium (gah that sounds stupid, but I hope you know what I mean) market companies. I pretty much expect any company that's capable of it to go multiplatform in order to make more money where possible. It's stupid not to. However, that in itself doesn't make the PC market less viable. Companies like Stardock and CD Projekt have pretty much proven that there's room for games that sell a million or less and that's considered a good, solid hit (Heck, Witcher did so well for CD Projekt that they're essentially re-vamping the entire game for free). If CD Projekt do Witcher 2 and can make it multiplatform without sacrificing what made the first one good, they should do it.
Understand, I'm not saying that companies should remain PC exclusive. I don't even believe they should be console exclusive if they truly intend to make a big budget title, it's just not feasible with the kinds of costs involved in making them. I think Chris Taylor has the right idea in going multiplatform (although honestly, I feel he's got the wrong game to do it. Even C&C3 only shipped around 400-500,000 odd units on 360, and SupCom has far less people that know or care about it). But that doesn't mean that smaller scope projects with smaller costs can't exist. If that were the case a game like Sins wouldn't exist and wouldn't be doing really well right now. I say "really well" when I don't expect it to top 1.5 million units at the very most. That doesn't matter, becuase success is measured differently there, especially when you factor in the fact that they're getting a lot more money per unit via online distribution.
How do you know piracy is rampant for this game? How many of those people that did download Crysis would have bought it?
People always go on and on about piracy of PC games, but it's not going to really impact your sales. I'll let Warren Spector speak for me hear: "I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"
The reason PC game sales are down is because people buy games off of Steam, or Driect2Drive, or GoLoader, or EA Link. It's pretty ridiculous to think that everyone who buys a PC game does so buy driving to GameStop or Walmart.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
The assertion that direct downloads is responsible for a greater impact on sales than piracy seems to have an equal amount of handwaving and making stuff up. I mean, this is based on what? We know that Steam still refuses to undercut the pricing of retail channels because developers -- including Valve -- are afraid to lose that market. That's not a real good sign.
I think people keep bringing up Crysis partly because it's one of the higher end games on the market. As was posed several pages ago, people pirating Crysis probably have a fairly powerful machine, and is it reasonable that they would have spent $600+ on their computer and simply refused to buy any games for it if they couldn't get them for free?
This is an old argument.
But I'll just say this --
For a game that only achieved 85k sales in the US, I would say that piracy is pretty rampant for the game when, over a month after its release, there are still 150,000 people leeching off of a single torrent for the game (especially considering there are probably other sources of the game in torrent format in other places). I got these numbers from someone else on this forum, as I don't even look into this seedy underbelly of the internet even for curiosity's sake.
Even if you assume that 1 out of 5 of those pirated copies are "lost sales" copies, that's 30,000 lost sales.
Considering that, over a month after release, the number of pirated copies is just about double the number of sales of the game in one major region, I'd say that this is pretty bad. especially since it doesn't account for all of the copies pirated during that first month when the game was hot, especially when you consider that this was only one of probably many sources that provide a link to pirate the game.
I hate piracy.
I think it does.
There's an indie dev on this board who has sold something like 400 copies of his game. And even he found his game on a torrent site. Blugh.
If he's allowed to use "anyone" so generally then I can tell you that I personally have known at least 5 people who would have bought the games had they not been able to get them for free.
They buy their console games no problem. But PC games? They'll happily buy $200 video cards. Then download PC games as they please. because they are "saving so much money."
I agree that Digital Distro is becoming more prevalent. I mentioned that above. Valve recently revealed that they have achieved 15 million Steam accounts. Even if people aren't by and large buying games via Steam, it has to be at least a fairly significant portion of sales.
Was Crysis sold via online distro?
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I have to point out that you're dismissing conclusions from developers (who by the way would know how much money they make off digital distribution) while pulling wild speculation out of your ass with no numbers to back it. It's a fact that hundreds of thousands of people are pirating major releases (Just check the download numbers for any torrent). We don't have any digital distribution numbers, but I sure as hell will wager that that's not why PC sales are so lackluster because they wouldn't be complaining if they were selling in large numbers online since they have access to that information.
You don't need to be so hypocritical even though this is the internet. Lets see where should I start. I had no numbers, while you say hundreds of thousands firmly pulling that out of thin air. Somehow I'm the one dismissing concerns from PC developers and yet I quoted a prominent PC game developer. The complaining really needs to be looked at closely. When people point to Crysis which just went platinum we know they were wrong. When people point to Halo 2, one can say that it was a 2 year late vista only port which made Wii Sports look like a PC friendly game.
Games are going to continue the trend of multi-platform development, because you can sell more copies of a game on more than one platform.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
That number is completely ridiculous. 150,000 people simultaneously downloading Crysis? Still? Months after release? No, jesus no. That's unreal. I doubt it ever got a tenth of that number at its peak.
Also, why do people assume that those who pirate Crysis have uber computers. Yeah, you need an uber computer to play Crysis. No, you do not need an uber computer to pirate Crysis and have some laughs at the slide show it plays on your 5 year old PC.
I don't think anyone can say anything about how sales correlate to pirated copies. You can pick some arbitrary fraction like "if even 1 out of 10" had bought X game, Y company would have made $TEXAS, but who the hell knows how accurate that figure is? There are so many factors that play in to an entertainment purchasing decision. Especially in PC games vs Console there are a range of other factors that you don't find with consoles. A console player doesn't worry about whether it will run on his system, or whether the game is stable.
This whole "piracy is the #1 problem with PC gaming" just reeks of the dumb crap that gets thrown around in RIAA/MPAA arguments. The PC gamer has been getting consistently reamed with retarded and invasive anti-copying mechanism, ever sagging production values, and a general increase in competition in the form of quality gaming alternatives found on consoles.
Consoles are really shining now. They're doing all the things one would expect from a PC - online gaming, voice chat, buddy lists, matchmaking, custom soundtracks - and they're doing it better and cheaper. That's why PC gaming is dying, because consoles practically are PCs, not because of some small dumb crap like piracy.
Because I'm not surprised. Seriously, no hyperbole or exaggeration. Remember earlier in this thread when I said PC piracy rates would blow you away? Yeah...
Doesn't have to be Crysis, just any game getting that many leechers.
I want to believe.
Yes, I've played TA. I didn't like it. I thought it felt terribly generic.
I don't really see why this is such a bad thing. If people want to make big budget games, then yeah they should probably focus on the markets that are more mainstream. PC gaming isn't really that right now, and PC games have always been focused on niche markets with exception of a few years around 1997-2002 or so. And honestly big FPS games and the like were only really huge on PCs back then because there was no other alternative, if someone wants to do a big 30 million dollar FPS now, I don't see any reason why it's inappropriate that they'd choose the 360.
Looking back at the genres that have been historically successful on pc, discounting FPS games for which until the PS2 and XBox there was really no appropriate console to run, you have stuff like RTS and TBS games and RPGs. Generally more "thinky" games with lower graphics budgets. Games like the Civilization series, Balders Gate 2, Starcraft, the diablo series, Sims/Simcity, etc.
None of these games really had gigantic budgets today compared to something like crysis, yet they were all successful and profitable.
And if you look at what's successful now, in terms of not just sales but raw profitability vs investment? Sins of a solar empire, Galciv2, Witcher, Sims 2, notice a similarity between those and the games mentioned before?
No, 150k is really, truly the actual number. From an actual torrent site.
It's called conservative estimation. If you ask me, even if 1 out of 150,000 pirated copies is a "lost sale," I'd think it was 1 lost sale too many.
The reason I use the "1 out of 10" line is because the usual counter argument is, "You don't know how many of those pirated copies are lost sales!"
But I think it's fair to assume that some pirated copies are lost sales. And that a small fraction of them - say 1 out of 10 - is not an unfair estimation.
So yeah, when you look at 10% of pirated copies and it's still a significant number, I think it's fair to say that piracy is hurting sales in at least a noticeable manner.
And too often I find people that I've talked to say, "I'll just download this to test it..." or "I'll just download this to see if I like it..." and then "go out and buy it if it's good." But then just play through and enjoy the game and not buy it. Whether or not that was a "lost sale" doesn't change the fact that a person benefitted from enjoying the full game without paying for it.
Did I say that it was the "#1 problem"? No, I didn't. I just said it was a significant problem.
Agreed, but I also agree that piracy is a problem compounding the issues related to PC gaming.
Besides console competition, there's also the 'reputation' - true or false - that PC Gaming is both expensive as a hobby, and time consuming and difficult to get everything - hardware and software - working properly.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Take it or leave it from Marlor. But I see no reason for him to lie or make shit up.
I'm also going to pull out the old Infinity Ward COD4 card:
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
No argument here. I'm just trying to help shed some light on why this shift away from PCs and towards consoles is happening, not to mention convince people that it's happening at all. I'd love to live in a world where developers who take risks in PC gaming are rewarded more often than they're punished, but we've been trending away from that for some time.
I love how the instant any PC developer deviates from the PC gaming superiority groupthink, no matter how beloved he is or how acclaimed his past accomplishments are, PC gamers go on the defensive and try to marginalise him and his games. It's weird seeing this thread given how well received SupCom was here. O_o
Piracy seems to be pretty much a fixture of PC gaming. Companies have been trying the stick approach for the longest time, culminating in crap like Starforce installing rootkits and all that good stuff. It seems unspeakable, but could game companies use piracy to increase sales? After all, if someone is taking the time to pirate your game, at the very least you know they're interested in your product.
It seems like what happened with Tribes is that they, be it intentional or not, let their game be easy to pirate. The game spread like wildfire and while many may have played for free, had a blast, and never gave Dynamix a nickel, others who got hooked did buy the game, or perhaps one of its sequels.
I want more developers to try hooks like that. Give away the single player but charge for multiplayer, or vice versa. (It should be relatively easy to enforce non-pirate multiplayer, I mean if the CoD4 people KNOW pirate keys are being used, just ban them) Or bundle in your old games (ala HL2 in the Orange Box) with your new. Or hell, even break up your game into chapters and let the player decide how far they want to pay for. Kind of like how people hate paying $20 bucks for a whole CD when they only want a couple songs, break your game into chunks and let the consumer decide what they want to pay for instead of that fat $50 dollar up front fee.
And yes, I am aware this happens every few years. I am also aware that I have never seen it include "name developers" (Peter M, etc) joining in.
PC Gaming is on the ropes. Lets hope for a new Bioware to RPG in the 90's dynamic.
Wow that's some great evidence of rampant piracy there. A forum post. Clearly the authoritative source of piracy. I sincerely submit my surrender to your irrefutable evidence of the death of PC gaming. This clearly is the death and not like the last 8 deaths of PC gaming. This is it. Yup.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
There are such things as free demos.
Did Blizzard ever do the spawn thing again after Starcraft? I'm almost positive that Diablo 2 didn't have it.
Another thing people miss: Even if people pirate a complete playable game they will often buy the game when/if they can. Why? Because gamers by definition are collecters to varying degrees. Many of us are on the obessive end. Its not good enough to have a mere copy! we want the real thing. And the figurines,and the posters,and the collectors and the online special pet and the etc etc. Again,Blizzard has made an institution of this recently starting their figure lines (I bet Games workshop is REALLLY regretting not letting Blizzard license that IP).
I love how people love to take the moral highground and decry the people giving objection. PC gaming superiority is old news. Its proven that consoles have original games just as good if not better then PCs. Just as its proved dual development and/or ports to multiplatforms often result in watered down PC games. How would you like it if Halo was suddenly PC only hmmm?
Besides,the Wii-mote is the epitome of gaming control right now for everything but Flight simulators. The mouse and keyboard is a fuckton better for control then a damned controller. I learned that waaaay back when i tried to use a controller for duke nukem 3d versus my buddy who had learned to use mouse and keyboard at a lan.
What i dont understand is that if all these companies can track all these pirated games,why dont they ban the cdkeys? I mean,what the fuck are they for anyways if your not able to use them to differentiate. I mean its getting redudant mentioning them,but Blizzard annually bans literally hundreds of thousands of keys across all their games.
Edit: Forget to mention. I wonder how much it cuts into the profit marging all these fucked up cdkey/registration weird arcane rootkit anti piracy measures. Versus guys who dont even bother?
Nope,but the only games that came out were diablo 2 and WoW. Wow obviously wasnt spawnable (or it was,but it was still subscription). And trying to spawn Diablo 2 probably wasnt feasible at the time given its ridiculius (for the time) size. 4 CDs! thank god DVD roms came along. Imagine how many CDs Supcom would be.
What about Warcraft 3? Wouldn't that be the most analagous game to Starcraft?
Woops,i know which decade im in. Honest!
The huge swaths of bans Blizzard lays out periodically meant to curb cheating, not piracy. Right?
I play tons of demos. All are really short, abruptly start and abruptly end, and rarely if ever make me want to purchase a game. To be honest I use them as benchmarks: How well can my computer run this game?
I'm talking about actually breaking apart a game and selling it piecemeal. The CoD4 demo was painfully short, the only thing I learned about the game was it's as scripted as ever and nightvision is cool. The demo wasn't bad, but it didn't excite me that much. I haven't bought CoD4, and I don't know if I ever will. However, if for example I could pay $5 and play the first 1/8 or 1/4 of the game, I'd gladly do that. Similarly, I've heard really good things about CoD4 multiplayer. I would pay $10 just to play that by itself.
Why would a company do this instead of letting people like me simply wait for price drops?
Relevance. I probably won't care that much about CoD4 in a few months when it falls to a price I'd snag it at. I'd be more likely to do the micro-purchases now rather than remember to get it in a few months time. Likewise, multiplayer tends to fade with time. I'd want to hop into the servers now, not in a few months when lots of people have moved on.
Of course there's the overhead of chopping up the game and then distributing it, but with digital distribution like Steam it makes these ideas much more manageable and realistic than in the past with CDs in brick and mortar stores.
Well the thing is again I don't think PC gaming in general is on the ropes. I think what is on the ropes and has been for the past 5 years or so (starting last generation and really coming into full effect this generation) is "technology" PC games.
The way I see it in the past there have been 2 kinds of games that were really focused on PC.
The first are games that really benefit from a mouse and keyboard. MMORPGS, rts games, tbs games, top down RPGs (especailly ones that are less action focused). These tend to be more complex in terms of user interface needs than a console controller can really handle. These also tend to have graphics on the less complex end of the scale and generally can thus run on most computers out there. These I feel are doing fine on computer. Again see the sucess of the Total War Series, Civilization series, Sins of Solar Empire, Witcher, Neverwinter Nights series, Galciv 2, Dawn of War, World of Warcraft, Sims/Simcity, Company of Heroes, the list goes on and on. These games have been profitable and done well considering the amount of money that was put into them.
The second are the "technology" PC games. The games that were on PC not because the platform really added much to playing them, but because the PC was the only thing around with enough steam to run them. I consider first person shooters (yeah yeah mouse/keyboard but ever since goldeneye showed it's possible to have decent fps controls on a pad I think that's less of an issue, and that was a long time ago), first person rpgs, racing games, etc in this category. These are going away from PC for a number of reasons. They tend to have big budgets and need a large market to break even. The XBOX 360 and PS3 are a third of the price of a comparable computer. They both have online support. They both have PC quality graphics. They both have a much larger install base, are easier to develop for, and are less vulnerable to piracy. It's natural that developers making a high technology game are going to be looking at consoles, and I think it would be a serious mistake for someone making this type of game to not at least consider doing a simultaneous release xbox 360 port. One of the reasons I think UT3 didn't do well was it was just on the wrong system, if they had released it in November on the 360 I think it would have seen some very significant sales numbers.
Supreme Commander I think had the problem of trying to be both 1 and 2. I think that if it had been scaled down a bit in its technological goals and been more playable on a wider variety of computers, it could have been a fairly successful RTS, especially with the money saved on the budget from the same scaling down. On the other hand, if they had taken the time to develop an effective gamepad control system a year ago and released it on the 360 last year, I think it could have also done well. With reasonably good marketing it might still have a chance if the control scheme they've developed ends up working out.
Hey, you don't have to be such a dick about it.
I don't like piracy. You can do a quick google and find thousands of leeching going on for just about any game.
Feel free to brush it off, but I'm not going to.
Did Marlor lie? Probably not. What evidence do you want? The game is not new any more. People aren't going to pirate in numbers like that at this time. I can't show you a fucking screenshot of the torrent site, whatever it may be.
Stuff like this isn't officially tracked. It's tracked by piracy sites. What the fuck kind of 'evidence' do you want? There isn't any, beyond going to the site and seeing for yourself. That's what Marlor did. Big fucking deal. I never claimed to have irrefutable evidence; I even stated, in my first fucking post, that this is where I got the number from. I could go tally up several right now, several months after the game is released, from torrent sites. But that would serve no purpose as time since the game was released has already passed.
Oh, and I never claimed the "death" of PC gaming, ass. If you had any idea what I've been saying about PC gaming, you'd have known that I believe that it's very much alive. Just not in the traditional sense.
Seriously. Why such a dick response?
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I don't care about claims of "watered down" PC games - I played the first Splinter Cell on PC and it was fine. And since I've got a decent rig for development purposes, that wouldn't - and in fact, didn't bother me much in the cases of Halo 1 and 2 PC.
This didn't change the fact that those were console titles, best played on consoles where they were supported better (and rightfully so, given the console / PC user number breakdown).
I don't understand this. First you say the Wiimote is the epitome of control... and then you say the mouse and keyboard is a fuckton better for control than a controller. I'll assume, then, that you don't class the Wiimote as a controller.
In any event, I disagree. The Wiimote provides a novel approach, to be sure - enabling designs that could not work, or work as well with a regular controler. On the other hand, the now-orthodox twin-stick multi-button controller does a much better job, in my mind, in dealing with hardcore combo-based games.
This is four months after release and who knows what the total number of downloaded copies might be.
No one thinks this is a problem?
Either way, piracy is pretty deplorable and I'm married to someone who used to do it regularly but has pretty much stopped. His philosphy has always been "most games are shit and I won't pay money for them until I know they're good." And he did buy them if he liked them. But I know most pirates do not.
I don't understand why people think it's okay to enjoy a game and not feel that the people that made it should get something for it. It's only $50 for a new PC game. Maybe I'm just rolling in mountains of money (and I'm not), but I don't really think it's that much, not for what I get out of it. Would you work without compensation? Probably not. The individual developers are getting paid, but the ambiguous number of lost sales isn't good for the company.
I don't really get disappointed with or angry at developers that move primarily over to console development, really. It's completely understandable, it's just sad that there's so little reason for them not to.
Considering a demo was released several weeks before the actual game came out, very few.
I suppose if this programming thing ever falls through I've always got a backup career helping people detox from all-Ramen diets.
edit: also, http://xkcd.com/386/
edit2: okay, one last thing.
On paper, that's not a bad idea. In practice it starts the industry down a dark and dangerous road. On an unrelated note, the demo level for CoD4 is classic Call of Duty fare (it was chosen for the demo for that reason- familiarity). The rest of the game is... well, read some reviews. I'm heavily biased, of course, but I think it's great fun. OT posting done!
I still need to get it as a benchmark.
And to clarify on the benchmark part, I know a lot of people who simply pirated the game. Thing is, none of them played through it, they just ran it to see how their rig handled it. Most of them download games because they have a silly entitlement mindset, but few actually play said games, they just back them up and never touch them. The people I know who do play games actually do pay for them, be it straight up or after they'd tried the pirate copy.