Why PC games sales have decreased in recent years

According to several sites this week
"We pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing [Call of Duty 4] Multiplayer (which was fantastic)," writes Robert Bowling, on the game's community blog. "What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game."

I think we as a community needs to step up and let people be aware that if we dont start buying the games, more and more will be console only in the near future. It's already started to happen.

Proud owner of CoD4, bought at Platekompaniet for $55

 

Dude.if advertising games for 55 pounds, and finish it in 1 day means stepping up,don`t be surprised if people won`t buy it ever.

In the US for example prices are pretty good, especially for new games (~50 $) and sometimes you can get them for half that price. But if other places sell them for 55pounds, roughly 100 dollars , or 130$ in my country for example, then one would wonder how the average gamers can acquire those. I bought my games from the US and some were brought by a cousin after I left, but most of my games are borrowed from others. I can`t pay 130$ for every new game that I finish in a day or so. Where`s the logic? so I just borrow it,play it,uninstall it,next.

I personally think the gaming market would increase a lot if prices would be more reasonable. I mean come on, for a new game the hype is enough to ensure a huuuge proffit. So lowering the price to get double or 3 times the # of custommers sounds more future proof and better from an economical point of view.

Imagine that not every average gamer can pull out 500 $ when crysis, cod4,ut3,hellgate london and the witcher are released...

 

No offense, but the way PC game companies are going these days, I don't care if sales are down. I wouldn't shed a tear if any go out of business. Not talking about pirating, that's wrong, but I mean getting more people to buy them.
For many years, game companies only care about one thing: $ales. Often, they release buggy, incomplete games, and do nothing to support the community to try to get their games atleast half-way decent. Maybe one patch, two if you're lucky.
More over, they often release a game, then forget about it like it never happened. The more popular games are supported longer, but only cause they're ca$h cows. Game companies don't care about the community anymore, and as such, I've refused to buy their games.
The newest game I have: Battlefield 2. I don't feel like I'm really missing out on any of the new ones. Nothing new that really interests me anyway.

 

It's supposed to be $55 not £55.
And yes I agree that the price should be half of what they r today, maybe that would get rid of some of the piracy. But there has been attempt to sell games around $20, and still people rather download cracked games from inet.
Not to forget that most of the games the publishers are pushing today, is utterly crap and not worth $50.

I personally think CoD4 was worth every penny. OK so it doesnt last as long as some other games, but damn, it was a sweet ride. Then u have the multiplayer section, which is one of the best there is at the moment.

Anyway I hope Infinity Ward do publish the findings, so that we can see for ourself what numbers they r talking about.

Swank

 

Have PC game sales really gone down? I haven't seen any statistics saying anything like that... actually I have seen the reverse...

Can anyone post a source with actual data on this "decrease" in sales? Does it account for online sales through services like GameTap and Steam?

I bought my copy of CoD4 through Steam, I think it cost me something like $45 during a 5% of deal they were running.

$45 is a very reasonable price for me, especially for a game like COD4 which has essentially limitless replayability. eleron911, you really ought to check out the multi-player.

I get why you don't care to purchase games for $130, that is certainly extreme overkill. What is it that jacks up the price so much? Taxes? Customs?

Anyway, do any of the online download services like Direct2Drive, Steam, or GameTap function in your country? If they do, do the preserve the price or are they altered per country? If all you are looking for are reasonable prices for games, that seems like it could be a solution to me.

I really wish people wouldn't pirate good games. It decreases the chances of support/sequels/interest.

 

I strongly disagree. I think it's because the game companies don't care about the community any more. They'll cry foul that it's the piracy, but it's their lack of support that's really killing them (the games). Just IMHO.

 

Disclaimer: pirating games is a criminal offence; the author of this post in no way condones or encourages others to obtain licensed software illegally
====================================

how about games released by people that enjoy making games in their spare time...for free; the last 5 years have seen vast improvements in graphics and virtually no improvement in gameplay; i think that instead of having games be designed with oversight from huge publishing houses they should be designed by people that have total creative control over the game and done with love and released for free on the net, games that arent designed for profit, but for the fun and satisfaction of designing a game everyone loves and plays all the time...crazy idea huh?...then they can be judged only on their merit; if someone LOVES your game, they'll donate you money through paypal, i know i would have no problem in donating someone $5 if i played a totally ingenius game that left me feeling like "wow this game pure genius"; playing today's mainstream games is like dating a young blond, yea their pretty but the gameplay is hollow and repetitive; anyone that can get their hands on the a graphics engine like quake 4 engine can have the eyecandy, but an independent person designing a game for fun will be free to put his full imagination and creativity in it; if he wants to have lots of gore...sure; child killing? fine; politically incorrect themes? hell yea.....see today's games that are published are like today's mainstream movies, they have to be approved by the status quo and the publishers to ever see light of day, they're also on tight deadlines; i think with torrent distribution we can have a revolution in game designing, free of deadlines, free of oversight, free of limitations on creativity; less games released? probably, but the quality of gameplay will be higher i guarrantee it, and those coming up with the best gameplay designs will be encouraged and supported by other modders

last game i bought was cs:source, and the one before that was cs1.6,(purchased solely for the cd keys) lets not forget counter-strike was the result of one man's creative genius (long live Gooseman)

so in conclusion, im against purchasing games, i think the current publisher-designer relationship needs to be scrapped completely, i cant think of a single game i played in the last 5 years (deus ex and system shock 2 are the only ones that came close) and thought "wow im going to buy this game now because its just so awesome i want to support the designer financially", why? because 99.5% of them are pure uninspiring filler

here's an example ill get flamed for until i turn into charcoal: medieval 2, so we have creative releasing total war games for how long now, but i loaded it up, played for 2 hours and uninstalled it; completely generic, uninspiring, unexciting creation, they put in good graphics...and thats it, this is a game that revolves around combat and yet they have done nothing over the last years in terms of gameplay to make warfare any more realistic or fun, nothing, its actually a step back in gameplay from medieval , so why would i want to support such designer effort with money, so they could make an even better looking version of it thats even more boring and uninspired? i think not

rant - off

 

True, very true.

And yes, I bought COD4 for the PC at Gamestop for $50.

 

Not rooting for piracy but I think it still depends on the place you live in.

For example in our country original games(any kind for PC or console), it most likely cost around 3000PHP(This price are just for the old ones, the price for New ones are about 5000PHP). Now the only people who can afford those kind of games are rich people. That amount of money will be very hard to earn, it will take months to earn for ordinary people. Actually even rich people here also think that the price is high.

Now pirated PC and console games only cost about 150PHP per DVD and 70PHP for the console games. As you can see there is a huge difference.

"As long as there are still poor countries piracy will never disappear"

 

I will gladly pay $50US for a game as long as it is fully supported by the publisher/developer for at least a year after release. This means continued development for patches and even free add-on content.

Gamers are their own worse enemies. They buy crap games without much research, and gladly throw $15/month towards a mediocre MMO game. This only tells developers and publishers they can put out crap and people will buy it. So if a developer can spend half the budget and make good money why not?

What really has to change is the return policy of games. Once a game is sold, there is no way to return it. Microsoft, sadly, is the only company I know that truthfully honors their "Satisfaction Guarantee" policy. I've used it in a couple of instances (Flight Simulator X and Shadow Run) and received my refund in a few weeks. Not ideal, but still commendable. And they cover cost of product, sales tax, and $8 shipping (typical UPS trackable cost).

The government is usually super happy to step up and take a game off the shelves but won't step up to protect the customer for returns. It is complete and utter crap that you can't return a game, even if within a week or less time frame. If this means online activation, then so be it. But give the honest buying customer the opportunity to zing the end retail stores, publishers, and developers. Retail stores will be more selective with their product if they have to manage a 50% return rate. Bottom line is game software needs to be separated from appliction and utility software. Yes, they're distributed on the same medium and are coded similarly, but they are not the same product.

Pirates will always manage a copy of a game. End consumers get the brunt of what is delaying the inevitable if only for a few days.

 

I pay for the games I am serious about - Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 4, etc. If I plan playing a game online, I always buy the retail copy. I do own a lot of games. But about 90-95% of my games are downloaded. As are most people I know using PC's. People whine about it, and say 'It's you that's destroying the games industry'. But that's just the way things are. People who download games aren't just these people that you can always speak of as if they're another race. They're the average day to day users on this forum. You and me. Etc.

 

PC games sales have decreased because new games can only offer better graphics not better game play. I am surprised about the fact that there is still a community working on old as hell games like transport tycoon deluxe (openttd) and tyrian (opentyrian). Even Diablo 2 is still played by a lot of people compared to other games.

 

Well there is a lot of truth in this statement, and I can relate.
The reason I started this post was because I would hate if Infinitive Ward would drop making another fine game for the pc, just because they didnt sell enough copies.
I read somewhere that last year the x360 version of CoD4 sold 3.04 million units, and the pc version only like 60k copies. In that case, no wonder IW got themself a shock when they noticed how many online players actually used cracked copies.

Swank

 

Look at Starcraft lol..

 

...so you downloaded bioshock etc? thats killing the PC game industry if you didn't notice.

Then again you probably buy more games than me but the fact you still pirate the offline ones is the reason we don't have many great single player PC games anymore...

 

Remember when Bioshock was released with the "activation limitation" controversy?

Bioshock's copy protection wasn't perfect, but it worked very well to limit overall piracy, (at least for the 1st month or so) and 2K was roundly criticized for daring to protect their software!!!

The problem isn't the developers, it's the PC gamers that want to have their cake and eat it too (IMO.)

Not really sure what the solution is.......We can't exactly regulate the lack of character or integrity in (certain) PC gamers.

 

Piracy kills a game just as much as crappy support. Crappy support is caused by poor sales which are compounded by piracy. I guess it is because I actually still care about the PC game industry's future while many others here are jaded and have a pragmatic sense, "I steal it because I can and who cares because I get my instant gratification."

That said, I do not believe piracy is based very heavily in U.S. residents downloading illegal copies from bittorrent. I am more apt to point the finger at pseudo-legit pirates who actually repackage the game and resell it to local markets at substantially reduced costs. The situation that comes to mind is similar to what you find in China with the Anime industry. Often times you will find a great deal on an Anime series on Amazon.com, but what you don't realize is that the source is actually a Chinese company specializing in pirating media and reboxing it in containers more impressive than the original. Not even Amazon realizes what is going on much of the time.

Someone already mentioned this, but the only way to get at the roots of piracy is to give everyone the means to purchase at least the fringe of what they want. That means people need to be able to reasonably afford 1 or 2 premium games a month. There are so many countries around the world where this isn't possible due to availability. In other countries this isn't possible due to ridiculous taxation or tariffs on imports.

One way to deal with the cost and partially bypass this issue is to get rid of the publisher. Take a look at Introversion software. They are the 3-man team that developed, marketed, and sold Uplink, Darwinia, and Defcon. Their prices always hover around the 20-30 USD mark. This is EXACTLY where I expect a great game to be priced. Hence, that is the reason I own all three games and have found endless hours playing each.

Introversion has no publisher and thus the developers do not have to answer to a strict and unreasonable bureaucracy. Their games ship well tested, polished, and VERY fun. If any game might fit the bill, Darwinia sure is an AMAZING game with seemingly primitive graphics.

And there we bring up another issue, people continually complain about how graphics are not so important and that gameplay should come first. But so many of you have become so jaded by the quality graphics that when a great game comes along with so/so visuals, you write it off as a budget title not worth your time.

The annoyed/arrogant side of me feels that many gamers are jaded hypocrites without regard for the future of PC gaming.

The reasonable side of me feels that many gamers just don't feel that the industry is in the right place yet, that it needs more time to find where prices/quality level out. This is especially the case in international markets.

PC Gaming will never die, it may morph into a different form in the coming years, but the fact is that the PC is the only gaming platform that anyone can develop games on. Games like Darwinia and Portal may find themselves on consoles at some point (In the case of Portal, a while ago), but there is no denying their roots in independent development and design on and for the PC.

 

Totally agree StormEffect, when people actually started making that "complaint" about Starcraft 2 I couldn't believe it. Seems like people just want graphics nowadays. That was kind of off topic sry, ON TOPIC: gamers are more to blame for the lack of quality PC game titles lately, developers are maybe partially to blame but its our responsibility to do research and buy only the good games, not steal all we can and only purchase the ones we can't get around (i.e. online titles)

 

So you're predicting the death (or large reduction) of "big budget" multi-million dollar stuff on pc and a return to......"smaller" games? (for lack of a good adjective)

Not sure.....smaller stuff is easier to pirate, while not many people would take the time to download several 50+ GB titles (thinking of Blue-Ray as a PC format) at least with current internet speeds and HD sizes. Perhaps games will go big, not small, to combat this....

Real high-end PC software has several interesting approaches. Like the USB security "dongle" that must be inserted before using the software. Of course, it's too expensive a solution for games (heck, we don't even get real manuals anymore) and probably not nearly as secure as claimed.

...just thinking out loud.

Speaking of manuals: One of my favorite genres is hard core flight sims (sadly, an almost dead genre) Those titles all came with a 300-600 page hard or spiral bound manual that was absolutely necessary to play the sim. If someone gave you a "copy" of the game, it didn't matter as you needed the manual unless you felt like wasting a month or so learning the controls. Flanker 2.X was a good example as all the controls, buttons, etc were in Russian!---good luck with a "copy" and no manual.

With these titles the manual itself worked as a great, passive copy protection device. ---for the price of re-printing a 600 page book, you could just buy the game and get it legally.

Although I doubt this approach would work as all games genres are getting more and more "dumbed down" as time goes on......but that's a whole other problem in PC gaming.

 

I buy some games, download others, but stoped buying pirated copies, and buy a game when my money allows me, my pc whas a gift, but there are few days to receuve gifts .
But sometimes is hard, when you buy a legitmate version of the game and you have to crack it to run on your computer because of some crappy protection scheme(c&c 3 and rayman raving rabids where cracked to run on my old desktop, rayman raving i gave as gift for my sister who still uses that computer).
But as time passes and I can earn more money I buy more games and download less. but some people here in my country think "why would I buy a computer game for R$100 when I can buy it on camelô for $15"

 

Sorry guys i wont pay for a game that last only 5-10hours...

game quality are so low now... they only care about graphic...

 

im still playing very old game like Diablo2... starcraft and WoW (yeah all blizzard title)... but i like old need for speed... the first unreal... and serious sam 1.5 (not the 2nd one)... i paid for those... but the new one... i try them and usualy delete them after... because they suck...

Deus ex 1 > bioshock

 

Yea.. i wonder how is the renting industry doing now?

BTW CS1.6 > all FPS

 

I think the reason PC gaming is declining is because it's too complicated and expensive to play.

First, you need a fast/"gaming" computer, which costs considerably more than one without a decent GPU (i'm not talking about something insane like Voodoo PC, just anything with good enough performance). Even if you do have a fast PC, your games may still sometimes run poorly (2nd point/Crysis).

Also, you need to be able to use a personal computer very well. Most folks' computers are overrun with malware and other slowware. Removing/preventing malware, driver updating, software updating, and installing games varies from easy to [ERROR: dx_470mat_lp_129.dll not found!]. With a console, you just plug in the wires and play, there's much less software headaches.

 

well, i have to confess: my only legaly owned games are x3 reunion, starcraft+bw(bought them recently because they were dirt cheap), rome: tw and hl2 goty(hl2+hl1s+css+hl2dm). You guys are so lucky to live in civilized countries, but here in this dump called romania, very few people afford original games, music or dvds. I know that my practice isn't doing much good for the game industry, but even if i had nothing to do with money i still wouldn't buy games, unless they were made by a company like epic since they don't use copy protection software. The main reason is that i can't stand having the dvd in the drive all the time. And i do not tolerate being limited by stupid and useless copy protection crap. The problem with these is that, IMHO, they are just discouranging legal buyers. Lets put it this way: you have to pay money for a game that only runs with the disc in the drive and you cant copy. So, when the disc gets damaged(which is likely due to the intense usage) you have to buy it again. And i can use torrents to get the same stuff for free, and whitout any limitations. So, unless we're talking about a mainly online product(like the ut series), I can only reach this conclusion: GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON TO BUY A GAME AND BE LIMITED BY STUPID RULES WHEN I CAN GET THE GAME FOR FREE WHITOUT ANY LIMITATIONS.

 

Devils advocate, but I can remember a time when selling 100,000 copies was considered a runaway success.....

When it comes to the overwhelming priority/money spent on graphics, I don't care if the game fails to profit. It's their own fault for spending too much $$$ on graphics development. Crysis is a good example of this. All that hype for another pretty action game with no thinking required (yes, I own it, legally)

If hollywood makes yet another garbage 100 million dollar, CGI laden, summer action blockbuster that flops (fails to profit), do you care? Why care about Crysis?

Come to think of it, most of my favorite titles (movies and games) were done by small, independent studios......

 

read again

 

Never pirated anything personally, but i can see why people do it. A new game over here costs £35-45 which is too much to spend on a game like COD4 for 2-4 hours SP, there is good MP but multiplayer is effectivley player run and organised (servers+players) and should not be the major selling point of a game since most decent online maps are the result of the modding community.

Personally i never buy anything that i don't think won't be fun to play. Orange box/WH40K DOW/CS:S/WoW are all great games in my opinion (though some may disgree, but hey its subjective). and worth the £20-25 I spent on each game, i won't buy a game above £30 ever unless im sure ill enjoy it which is why i have bought none so far and waited a few weeks until they drop in price and/or appear on internet stores like amazon/play etc.

and even then, the parts i enjoy most of these games are usualy the 3rd party mods like steel legion for DOW, custom maps for CS S

 

Here is one major reason I see why people would want to pirate games:
*Thanks to Ahmed_p800 for the info and an example for this thread.

Look at the freaking minimum system requirement! A console + the game is $550-$650 Tops with Taxes included in the US. A good PC that can handle games like Assassin Creed is at least $1000+. For the extra $500 investment in the gaming desktop I can buy a cheap laptop and do all my emails, surfing on there while using console to game, which is fine since most of the game are on consoles now days, with the exception of few RTS and FPS: Crysis are PC exclusive.

 

CoD4 is in that category and imo it blows most of last years titles away. Everybody is hung up on "how short it was", but was it really? I think the quality and how the story was told, more than weigh up for that. There wasnt a single boring moment in the entire game AND the graphics was/is great.
I didn't think it was to short, but had just the right lenght.

swank

 

I agree, a game that last too long will become boring, a good example is Bioshock, the game is great, has a good storyline, but I for one doesn't have the incentive to finish it.

 

I used to be a PC gamer. The last game I bought was Battlefield 2. I mainly liked to play at LAN parties. To me, the problem was that none of my friends had the hardware to run the hungry-for-power games. Which is why I had originally stopped. I remember back in 2002 when Battlefield 1942 was released. I played it and was blown away. It was a huge step forward for multiplayer gaming (at least to me, I don't do MMO's). I don't think there has been a breakthrough like that since then. Games today just suck. There were a few other games along the way that stuck out (HL2, UT2k4, Bioshock, and ES: Oblivion were some of my faves). It just seems to me that nothing today can compare to these titles.

Now I own an Xbox 360.

This Saturday about 9 of my friends and I are all getting together for a good old fashioned LAN party. Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament GOTY, and Battlefield 1942 will be played. It will be a great time.


ps. FEAR was ok too.

 

I don't see Team Fortress: Classic or Team Fortress 2 on that list...

Err...something must be wrong here.

Orange Box!

 

I was in Half Price Books today and I picked up Titans Quest Immortal Thrown for 9.95 and Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl for 14.98. If I would have bought them at Best Buy I would have to have paid full price for them.

 

Finally, someone who agrees with me
It is great to have some games that doesnt take all your time, but is easy to just sit down and have a good time for an our or so. CoD4 multiplayer is a good example, TF2 another or what about Portal??


swank

 

you gotta be kidding bioshock was one of the shortest and easiest games I have ever played. I actually enjoyed playing it because of how short it was.

 

For people used to RPG style gameplay, BioShock is quite short. For people used to FPS/linear gameplay, BioShock starts to feel a little bit aimless at times.

I love the game, I think it is a lot of fun, but I lost sight of any objective about 1/5 through. I will certainly get around to finishing it soon... though it has taken me awhile to get the desire to do it.

 

ok seriously I hate RPG.. I hated Oblivion, I hated LOTRO, I hated Everquest 2, I hated Baldur's gate. Bioshock is one of the most linear games in my opinion. There isn't exactly many corridors you can cross and I never felt like I was lost at all. By the end of the game the only thing I found tedious was killing the Big Daddies.. but by the end I didn't even need to kill them. I found Bioshock more fun than Quake 4, Doom 3, FEAR, and even Half Life 2. Now Half Life 2 is a long game. And its way harder than Bioshock. In Bioshock you can pick up money and First Aid kit easy.. in HL2 I can never seem to find any med kits.

 

Have you guys ever heard of Done Quick games or SpeedRuns ? if you thought or example Half Life was long (first time I`ve played it took me about a week to finish it on hard, a speedrun demo finished it on 30 mins! Half life 2 done in 1.5 hours..I expect newer titled to be speedran pretty soon. If you take your time to enjoy the scenery and all, you waste time . If you speedrun a game, you waste money since you bought a game just to finish it.

I remember that a log time ago, when I bough Diablo 2+Lod and Starcraft + BW was especially because of the cinematics! impressed the hell out of me then. Serious Sam was also one of the first games I ever bought, still have the original packaging somewhere...the good old days.
I regret buying Crysis, but I`ve sold it already so no harm done.
HL OB got it for free
Cod4 bought half price.Ut3 borrowed...etc...
I NEVER finish a game just once. The first time I go through it for the thrill, the 2nd time for the story and the 3rd time to get all the details straight...

 

I find there are few games that actually are any good, or worth doing the second time you run through them.
Usually, when I have completed the game, it get deleted from the hd. There are some exeptions like the Orange box, CoD4 and BF2/2142, but all those games have multiplayer abilities.

swank

 

about the games that are graphics intensive arent as bad as you make them, nothing wrong with some senseless reckless driving and shooting such as counter strike and nfs mw, carbon or pro street, i enjoy flatout 2 and battlefield 2 alot.

games that are pretty deep are bioshock, half life 2, company of heroes had a great story. relic games pwn. as well as blizzard and others.

everyone here makes it sound gaming on the PC is gona die or something lol

what sucks is

price
piracy
support

i buy golden games, with really high ratings. everything else i just ignore

fps and rts games are great on the PC.

 

Most often I'll beat a game on normal difficulty and then on hard(est). But, what keeps me coming back for more is good multiplayer.

 

Agree 100%.

Also, its such a lottery buying a PC game. To be sure you are getting your moneys worth you have to research the game, and even then it could still be disappointing. There is a lot of poor games out there. You can try demos, but you can rule out any spontaneous game purchasing.

 

I think your statement applies not only to PC games, but also to console games. And yes, I agree with your point, nowadays with so many games you really need to do some research to ensure it will be a good game (up to everyones personal standards). That's why having the option of downloading demos is an advantage.

 

To the OP, if game companies move the games from PC to consoles, then the Pirates will move more from Games to Consoles.

This isn't rocket science and nothing new.

The sooner game companies focus on the games they actually sold, and not the games they think they could've sold to people who would never buy anything, the happier they will be.

 

And as a side note: the pirates are on the consoles since a while back (at least since the original playstation if I recall correctly).

 

The people who will pirate will not buy the game anyway.
Even if the copy protection works, you didn't make any extra money on it and you wasted your real customers' time on it and your money and/or development/support time on it. Spending money to gain NOTHING and lose paying customers to have a slim chance to gain "the ones that got away" is a horrible investment.

While I do not support piracy and I am more than willing to buy a game, I highly oppose stupid copy protection routines.

Anyone who knows what they are doing on computers knows that NO software is safe and no program will make it safe. All you can do is keep the script-kiddies out and they aren't going to buy anything.

Make the price of the game about "support" and content.
Buying the game should be about registering on a forum with devs who can support and evolve a good game into an amazing game.

Talk to Bioware about support and service.
Anything with their name on it will tempt me to look at it not just because of their excellent games, but because of what becomes of their games AFTER they release. The original NWN for example... (to be fair, a vast majority of this development is done by the community in the case of NWN)

Their previous games come with a VERY simple copy-protection.
A code which unlocks it.
Sure, any kiddie can copy/paste the key... but only the first one gets the purchase sticker next to their forum account, and computers with the same register key cannot multiplayer together.
BOTH of those features are the real reasons why anyone would buy the game.

Note their method does NOT hurt the standard user at all... even if they have to reinstall. A few minutes of your time typing in a code and you never worry about it again. Yet the pirates miss out on the registered user content on their boards and cannot use the same key for additional multiplayer nodes.
A small investment remedies that even for the pirates after they learn how wonderful the game can be when it is fully supported.

 

Take the caribbean where I live, a PC game is $500 a XBOX 360 game is $500

Now on to the best part a Laptop that costs $1000 USD in the states costs about $10,000 here after shipment and TAX and Duties.

Frankly to honest I know a lot of people and none of them buy games original.
I have lots of friends and none of them buy any original software.
When you go in the streets in my country at every corner there is someone with a cart like thingy with a Car battery and a little LCD screen and they showing off their latest pirated DVD movies and games.

The DVD movies are $10 or $2US dollar

Just last week I was in the mall buying some PIZZA which BTW costs like $80 for a medum sized one and saw a game store open, here the guy was doing Playstation2 modifications and XBOX 360 Mods so you can play burn games.

And you got it you can purchase burned PS2 games 10 for $100 or 10 PS2 games for $17 US for 10.

PC games are cheaper you can buy 11 for $100 thats maby $17 US you get it burned on. They state that they burn it on BENQ blanks to. But they lie they use Princo. That damages your Lens after a while.

 

Laugh like hell? That country is in hell, it's sad. They have inflation rates >1000%. They just made new 10 million dollar bills, worth about $3.40 USD each.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe_dollar

 

Yeah I know, and I have enough experience with it too, but my statement was that those resources will move there en masse to and you will simply see it shift not disappear, and threaten your golden goose.

If anything launch PC versions simply to protect yourself and keep the dedicated pirates away from your toy but profitable consoles.

I use many 'pirate tools' because as many of you may know as notebook users, I'd prefer not to have to carry DVDs around with me everywhere so I use virtual drives and no-cd hacks. I still buy them, I just don't want to have to carry all of them around with me. I even have un-opened titles (painkiller, Serious Sam 2, BF2142) because I wanted them but never got the time to play them after Oblivion, or BF2 or Bioshock/UT3/Crysis/COD4 sucked my time away.

I agree with KernalPanic, the only thing most messed up protection schemes do is harass those that paid for it, because those that pirate it have circumvented the protection schemes long ago, and those that won't buy it, never would (like 90% of the copies floating around in Asia and Eastern Europe). I notice the dev doesn't mention how many of those copies were in North America versus other locations, probably for fear of offending their 'emerging/developing market'.