[revol68]

Originally Posted by kalniel

While I agree it's unwise for a company to jump on piracy as a reason for bad sales, it's also unwise for people outside of the company to automatically assume that they are making it up and don't have any evidence.

Whenever any company complains about piracy on the PC it's instantly shot down for some reason, yet most of the companies I've heard anything about have actually got a fair amount of proof that piracy is rampant for the games (even longer term too). Sure, there's not a 100% correlation between pirated copy and lost sale, but it's still a higher correlation than you'd think, given people don't generally waste time downloading and continueing to play a game that they think is rubbish.

Demos are a tricky one - most companies have tried them and they have different effects for different genres. I actually thought the DMC demo was very good - it addressed the two big uncertainties I have about PC games: will it run on my system and what is the control scheme like? Everything else I can get from comparing detailed game reviews.

Regarding treating the PC as an afterthought I think that's an absurd suggestion to be honest. PC versions cost WAY more and generate much LESS revenue than a console version, so unless a company is deliberately trying to break into the market and establish a proper effort there it's not worth doing in the first place. I know a huge amount of effort was put into the PC version (hence the delay of course, it wasn't just for the sake of it) so to say it's just an after-thought is completely inaccurate.

but Capcom have no evidence it's piracy, the game is only out less than a month. Piracy is also an issue faced by EVERY game on the PC, so that doesn't affect the fact that DMC4 has sold poorly in relation to other PC games. There was no marketing for the game on the PC and like I said the type of gamers it appeals to most likely have it for a console 5 months ago. And Capcom have a long history of treating PC gamers like crap with lazy ports since Street Fighter, Resident Evil 1 up to last years Resident Evil 4 which had worse graphics than the PS2 version (bar resolution obviously). Yes they put effort into porting DMC4 but i'm afraid it's too little too late, all the effort in the world means nothing when it's 5 months late and most people who wanted to play it have played it, it's not exactly a AAA series like GTA, Resident Evil, or Metal Gear Solid. If Capcom want to break the PC market then they will just have to put up with the extra effort and reduced profit margins in that market, not throw out something 5 months late and then complain when it doesn't sell.