quote:Original post by SuperRoy

quote:Original post by HenryApe

quote:If tons of people start pirating a given piece of software, what do you think will happen? It''s surely not going to drop prices if high price concerns is what you have.

Prove it! A comparison between PC and console game prices clearly show that the platform with the most illegal copying has the cheapest prices.

Wrong. The PC market has more prospective buyers, which means that the demand will most likely be higher. If the demand is higher, they won''t have to have as high prices to meet their quota.

--SuperRoy
[ Author:: Linux GameDev Articles ] [ Programmer:: WhitespaceUnlimited ] [ Webdesigner:: CTH3.com Webdesign ]

Acutally, according to supply and demand, higher demand should translate to higher price. I think the factor involved is the current liscensing system for consoles, where platform makers make money from licenses, not platform sales. PC game makers can sell their games without licensing fees to get the same profit margin. Since they are all in a nearly perfectly competitve market (not really an oligopoly, unless you consider the fact that it costs millions to make a commercial game), PC game makers have to price their games at the market level.

Piracy killed the Dreamcast. You''re aware of how easy it is to build your own games on the DC? After compiling it, it''s simple to upload it to the machine. So it doesn''t take much imagination to say that rather than uploading your own binary, you upload one ripped from a game CD and downloaded via the web.

According to the laws of supply and demand, when demand outstrips supply, prices rise so as to reduce the number of available buyers until it is equal to the number of available goods (and likewise with a low demand causing falling prices). However, this depends on supply remaining constant - and it''s not exactly hard to up your production run from 100,000 copies of the game to 500,000 if it''s more popular than you expected, because manufacturing is so simple: you just burn a few more CDs.

The XBox losing money isn''t the whole story. Sure, they lose money on each XBox itself - production costs are higher than revenues for the boxes - but they always planned to do that (and IIRC the other console makers do exactly the same thing). The money is made in game sales - it''s not so much licensing as it is that a percentage of the price of a game goes to MS (or whoever). I think it might be as high as 40% of each unit.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
Enginuity1 | Enginuity2 | Enginuity3

I had a meeting with Microsoft just prior to the launch and they made it clear they were expecting to spend a lot (as opposed to making a lot) in order to break into the market. Bills book The Road Ahead makes it clear what he thinks the future of the net will be and X-Box is his bid to have a big slice of that down the line.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

Well, on the topic of piracy,I don''t see a reason for it, when there are environments like eclipse + plugins and dev-C++ to program in, and maya actually provides a free version of their program for windows and OS X for learning on.There is also MilkShape, blender, and other modelers that are free. You could still do everything needed for learning what to do with game development, although I wouldn''t think it would be right for any purpose, I know I can''t afford huge software packages either, but I use linux as my operating system and eclipse as my development platform. As for XBox, I think Microsoft is probably fairly pleased with how their platform is doing,seeing as they are the newbies in the console industry. Although I have actually bought 5 games or so for mine,because it is a good product,and worth supporting. So they made money off of me, since if I remember correctly an XBox owner has to buy 3 games in order for Microsoft to profit. I would say only pirate if you hate the company and the product it makes, because if the company is small enough, that lack of license will hurt them badly, and anyone else that uses that product. Larger companies would just be tempted to discontinue the product or something like that if piracy is that bad of a problem. Or just raise the price for those that will still use the product, as said earlier in this thread.

I have absolutely NO pirated software on my computer. Personally, I think abandonware should be legal, but the fact is that its not. I don't use it as a result. I also used to think that I just have to have that software (I fully admit to previously owning pirated software), but I have learned in recent years that there is a legal equivalent for most software, whether its an open-source clone or a demo version. If its not exactly as good as the regular version - it least your getting your money's worth! And "education purposes" is rediculous especially since there are so many "educational versions" for cheaper prices and Linux is the best OS for "educational purposes" in any case. If you want to be educated, get Gentoo, GCC, and e-macs. When you want to program for Windows (where even I admit the real market is) for commercial purposes, then you'll buy MSVC (or settle for a free Windows compiler).

Zorx (a Puzzle Bobble clone)
Discontinuity (an animation system for POV-Ray)

edit: I see that I fell for a necro.

[edited by - clum on June 1, 2004 11:55:08 AM]

quote:Original post by Beer Hunter

quote:Original post by SumDude
Things like Visual C++ and Maya are very expensive and there is no point to pay $1000 to use something like Maya for learning purposes. It's not directly hurting the people that made it...

...I think the question is: when someone pirates Maya, does it hurt the people who made MilkShape?

I am not even going to read any more replies before I respond to this: this is 100% correct. You have to look at the other companies that are not getting your business because you are taking the more expensive software.

The only way the smaller companies get any sales is because they are more affordable. That implies people actually pay for software.

[edited by - thedevdan on June 2, 2004 10:03:48 PM]