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About LinkBacksTrue, but I think it was inept management of the string of comapnies that ran the Amiga business that can be credited with that.Originally Posted by directhex
True, but I think it was inept management of the string of comapnies that ran the Amiga business that can be credited with that.
"In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."
Yup. Piracy didn't kill the Amiga (just like it didn't kill the 8bit machines before it) but Commodore sure as hell did. The Amiga basically stood at a standstill for many years hardware wise and eventually the PC caught up and eclipsed it. Third party companies were providing the hardware advances towards the end (68060 add-on boards/picasso cards) rather than the parent company.
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What he said.
Certainly insofar as utility products that people rightly or wrongly consider more or less essential.
Concerning entertainment software it's a bit trickier - piracy on the PC platform is rampent, yet hasn't resulted in any increase in price. In fact PC games are far far cheaper than they used to be in both actual and real terms. For whatever reason, profitability on the PC platform for AAA games is way lower than it used to be, and it's this that causes developers/publishers to jump to console platforms, which while not immune to piracy see much less impact on the market because of it, despite the much higher prices of games.
About the only thing you can conclude is that, in the entertainment sector at least, prices are not in any way the cause of piracy.
Piracy is one of those things that you can discuss till you are blue in the face. Granted when I was a lot younger and at school we all used to swap cassetes for the C64, most times just sticking the tape in a dual cassete player would run one off for yourself, then after you finished the game erased the tape and swapped something else. So origionals were bought and played then swapped. But yet the Commodore 64 was the best selling home computer of its era and software sold. I used to go into town every other Saturday and buy a new game, £10 for the tape version and £15 for the disc version. Not forgetting back then the games had to be programmed for multiple systems like Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX, C64 and then also not forgetting the 16 Bit versions of the same games on the ST and Amiga. Now though most household PC's have Windows on them so they don't have to program for multiple different makes of machine. Granted there are variations in the hardware right across the board but that is still nowhere near as bad as having to programme the same thing for multiple different systems each with their own OS.
Today however, prices are high when it comes to getting the latest version of paintshop or a Microsoft OS. I sprung for Vista Ultimate last year and must admit has been worth every penny. I have had to contact Microsoft on 2 occasions now with regards to problems with the OS. First time right out of the box after installation my key had already been used, go figure how that one happened. Swift call to Microsoft and gave them all the details they needed and requested and I was issued a new key directly from them. 2nd time was a few weeks ago, SP1 killed my installation so contacted them again to restore my system without having to do yet another format. Thankfully they managed to pull through for me and the issue was resolved.
Overall the experience with the Microsoft staff was excellent and quite fun, just chatting away about life in general while he was looking through his error code files and I was doing the suggestions on my side. Licenses pay for customer support as well as just what you hold in your hand. So more pirates could inevitably cost jobs, this can have a knock on effect.
Just for example, team working on Crysis. Don't pull in as much as they hope to and decide to actually start creating games for consoles. This could quite easily have turned into, damn we havn't made enough money on this one and we need to downsize staff. This then creates a longer wait for games that are due for release on the PC platform due to fewer members of staff.
Then think about all these people pirating games and whatever other software they can get their hands on. How many pirated games users call tech support when they can't get it running? Bet the number is pretty high, once again costing money.
Margins on the software will be getting smaller and smaller all the time due to piracy, so companies have to look elsewhere to be bringing money in. Now if there is a game I am thinking about getting either myself or a friend will buy it. I bought Crysis shortly after release and played through it even though I found it uninteresting and boring, the friend however loves it. I uninstalled the game and gave it to him, in return he gave me Doom 3 and Quake 4. Fair trade I personally thought and no piracy involved at all.
As for the whole pricing thing, yeah games are getting really expensive again. In a family environment with 3 kids I can't always afford to be purchasing a game on day of release. So I hold back a few weeks and there it is on the 2nd hand shelf at approximately half the price. I got Farcy this way, 3 weeks after release £14 for a 2nd hand origional, not to shabby at all!
So its the mentality of having to have the newest releases there and then and not being prepared to shell out for them. When in reality, sitting back and waiting a few weeks will get you the origional at a cheaper price. Sounds like it is coming down to bragging rights with mates that one!
On the other hand though, licenses for Operating Systems are getting quite steep. Yeah I did cough up for Vista, but couldn't justify paying for Office also as I only use it occasionally. So I decided to give Open Office a shot and think it is equally as good for my needs costing me nothing at all!
I think the whole pricing structure needs to be examined and we need quantity not just quality with Triple A titles. Medal of Honour Airborne for example, looked and played extremely well start to finish. Thing is though I bought it on release for the PC costing me £35, it took me just over 7 hours to complete it start to finish and seeing as I don't do multiplayer felt a bit ripped off.
So it ends up feeling like we are not getting our moneys worth out of games now, regardless of the platform. RPG's are really good for longevity and thankfully that is where my heart is at the minute with PC gaming. Shooters though now seem to be just a quick fix. This could be something else that contributes to piracy.
You can see whay pirates do it to an extent, however like mentioned you don't see piracy as much on the newer consoles. I would not modify my 360 or the Wifes Wii just to be cheap and get a few extra games for next to nothing. Hate to think that if something went wrong with the console you have voided your warranty. I think this helps stop the piracy side of things on the consoles now. Trouble with the PC is that it is just to easy to do it so pirates are turning back to PC's for their games fix which is inevitably hitting the industry.
If anything, the cost of piracy has decreased both in hardware (no need for external storage medium these days), and effort (a few clicks as opposed to having to manually swap half a dozen floppies) while the cost of development has gone the opposite way.
in countries like china i think they lower the price partly to decrease piracy but in my opinion even if they lower the price in china, the profit generated from the sheer quantity of sales would be greater than sales in the uk.
i agree with Ferral on getting your money's worth, i feel that nowadays the time it takes to complete a game is very short so sometimes it just doesnt justify the cost.
as for piracy killing the record or games industry. i dont think its accurate to blame piracy only for driving sales down. When i was a kid it was money for music or console games. but that was one or two consoles. nowadays we have so many choices that it is hard to choose. now there is music, movies, tv series, 4 to 6 consoles, pc games, etc.. the list goes on. so i really believe that competition between different platform is the cause for low sales.
i dont see the point in software companies raising their prices since lots of people will end up either pirate or buy a cheap copy when its available (ebay is great sometimes, or sale forums hmmmm...).
I think using illegal copies of games and small cost software is so stupid its beyond belief! If you wait for 2 months the cost of that game will drop to sub £30 most times, a "blag" home OS is also stupid, its not as if you need to buy an new OS ever few months!
What I am worried about is the number of Business that must be using pirated software! The cost of a ground up network build is huge and the software in many cases is more expensive than the hardware it runs on! I think Microsoft need to look at how they price their software. SBS is fantastic for 75 users but after that you are into 2003 RC2 and this is where things start to get expensive. I am moving from a very old 2000 server network and due to the costs I have had to cut the number of PCs in the organisation down. This is creating a lot of angry people but to be honest I think we had over supplied workstations as most of the time they sat unused.
I know Linux is fantastic but the cost in time to admin Linux servers / employ people who know what they are doing with any form of Linux out weighs the benefits. I do use some Linux in the core network but I expect when I move on in a few months I will have to interview a load of people who have very little experience with Linux.
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And it's thinking like that which further locks people/organisations into a Windows only world, it's a perpetual vendor lock-in cycle that will get harder to break the more and more businesses and educational institutions keep buying into it. The more people that invest into a 100% Microsoft infrastructure, the more Microsoft can edge the prices up with each release to squeeze more money out of their customers.
And tbh, the time it takes for daily admin of *nix boxes is much lower post-initial configuration. For me, it's as simple as opening my email client and act on any important information I receive.
Install logwatch - it is included in many distros, or available from your distro's repository.
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sorry if this isn't totally on the topic of the thread...but can anyone tell me if it is illegal if u use a "No CD" patch? If you install your own game from the disc, but then modify it to run without the disc? I always wondered what the stance on that was.
It might be against your EULA, but it wouldn't hold any legal water.
That is illegal in the UK, yes. While you wouldn't be falling foul of breach of copyright, you are instead bypassing/interfering with copyright protection mechanisms.
Last edited by kalniel; 19-05-2008 at 09:28 PM.
Ahh cheers for the info guys, I didn't think it was legal, even though in the past i once heard someone was mentioning it was fine.
Just like you will never get caught/prosecuted for drawing a moustache on a picture of the queen you will never get caught for this... but it is technically illegal, but no one cares...
Most likely. But your chances of picking up something nasty from any no-cd patch are also quite high..
ha, yea true, when you put it that way...
I remember seeing this vid on youtube, i think the guy was pretty lazy he had at least 6+ optical drives in his rig so he wouldn't have to remove his games each time he wanted to play another.
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