DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Reserved for classic gaming discussions.
MappyMousePD

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby MappyMousePD » August 8th, 2008, 11:53 am

[QUOTE=dteerforth]Yes -

1. Used game stores

2. Private sellers

3. Also, it cuts down on the demand for compilation software and potential VC/Livearcade/etc (talking in general here, not saying these or other DCast games are out on these - yet!)

So if you can get copies for free that should never have legaly existed, it is a bad deal for the origional product, people who deal with the origional product, and future releases and relereleases of the origional product.

Bottom line is, it is a group of peoples work, and woning a copy gives their work no satisfaction, you are in fact giving a theif satisfaction for paying HIM for his THEFT of someone else WORK!


[/QUOTE]

I don't think piracy hurts private sellers that much, because most of our customers are collectors, not just people who want to play the game.  Game downloading services like Nintendo's Virtual Console, however, may be affected once they expand to include more classic games. 

bluemonkey1
Posts: 2444
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby bluemonkey1 » August 8th, 2008, 12:47 pm

Piracy did not kill the DC take it from someone who was the biggest DC fan in the world at the time.  Things that killed the DC:

-No DVD drive.  The moment the PS2 shipped with this DC was dead in the water in Japan.

-Sony's aggressive marketing and business practices.  Some shops were forced to stop stocking Sega product.

-5 years of disappointing, alienating and ripping off your consumers.  32X, Sega CD and Sega Saturn caused great swathes of Sega fans to switch to other companies.

-Too long without a home presence between the Saturn and DC allowed other companies to capitalise on this chance.

-Advertising it was an online game console when online games weren't available for well over a year after launch.

-Poor advertising.  Sega squandered their resources.  In the UK we didn't even see any in game footage, just some people cutting people's hair.

-Poor network support in Europe.

-They were hemaorhaging too much money before DC launched.  The DC could never have succeeded, they simply didn't have the finances to sustain them through the initial loss making years of any console.


NixonTech2071

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby NixonTech2071 » August 8th, 2008, 1:17 pm

Man if SEGA never released the 32X (which is what really steamed fans) Than they would still have had money to continue the dreamcast.


David

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby David » August 8th, 2008, 9:57 pm

[QUOTE=andrew]This whole piracy thing is blown out of proportion. There's three groups. People who steal everything, those who try for free then buy and those who don't copy whatsoever. In a way, piracy has attracted more buyers which balances out those who don't pay so in reality the software sales level has remained pretty constant. The demand for legit software has not diminished whatsoever.
[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't say that.  Take the PSP for example, where torrent sites have shown high numbers of downloads for many of the more popular games. 

I think it's a little more complex than "three groups" of people, and that piracy has somehow made an even balance between pirators and buyers. 

Where is this information coming from?

feilong801
Posts: 2173
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby feilong801 » August 9th, 2008, 1:32 am

Piracy seems to be an issue from what I can see- every developer I've talked to in the last year has complained pretty extensively. Even indies, whose work is often available for almost nothing, see their games getting ripped off.

People are inclined to try to get stuff for free if they can. I like what Gametap does, for instance- a small monthly fee allows you to play lots of games as long as you like in a sort of all you can eat format. That way you aren't paying $5-15 for an old game you may not actually like.

-Rob

Sudz1
Posts: 816
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby Sudz1 » August 9th, 2008, 12:51 pm

[QUOTE=feilong80]Piracy seems to be an issue from what I can see- every developer I've talked to in the last year has complained pretty extensively. Even indies, whose work is often available for almost nothing, see their games getting ripped off.

People are inclined to try to get stuff for free if they can. I like what Gametap does, for instance- a small monthly fee allows you to play lots of games as long as you like in a sort of all you can eat format. That way you aren't paying $5-15 for an old game you may not actually like.

-Rob
[/QUOTE]

I can't argue that development houses are screaming loud and often about piracy lately, but the truth of the matter is they have NO WAY of quantifying the sort of figures they throw out.  It's all guesswork and, personally, I think a cover for the fact that they either put put a crappy product or, in the case of the PC, made it too resource-demanding or difficult for the average PC user.  Take Bioshock for instance; 2K games will tell you without any doubt in their minds that piracy must have cost them million$ in sales because look how much better it sold for the 360 than it did for the PC market!  They completely fail to acknowledge that the PC version of their game is a shining of example of punishing your legitimate users to the point that they give up on you by making the game:
1) Hardly run on any existing PC but forcing users to upgrade just to play the game.
2) Automatically installed an unwanted DRM SecurRom rootkit onto your PC whether you liked it or not.
3) Only allowed 2 installs before it would refuse to install again on any machine, anywhere.
4) Required you to connect to internet to install the game in the first place, which many PC users see as an idea rife with the possibility of abuse - not to mention setting yourself up for a useless product in a few years when the company either goes out of business or decides they no longer wish to support it.
So basically they make a crappy product that is almost unplayable on the PC, has tons of other 'baggage' the console version doesn't have, and then turn around blame piracy for low sales.  I was given a FREE copy of the game for the PC the week it was released and I STILL ended up buying it for the 360 because I could never get the stinking thing to install and run properly on my son's PC.

Now, take a look at a small indie developer with low budgets and almost no ability to generate buzz; they make Galactic Civilizations II and Sins of a Solar Empire, have massive sales numbers, and had absolutely ZERO copy or piracy protection for their games at all.  Rather than risk punishing their legitimate users, they produced games designed to be user-friendly and low-maintenance.  Did they lose a few sales to piracy?  Probably, but they more than made it up by users willing to purchase the game because they knew it would actually WORK.  They also garnered future sales because now people know they produce a user-friendly product.  2K Games on the other hand has a reputation now such that practically all PC gamers will never buy another one of their products again.  Why pay good money to be dealt nothing but headaches?
Sudz

steerforth

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby steerforth » August 11th, 2008, 7:37 am

Yeah, what I think is a stretch is pretending piracy is not a 'big deal'...

OK, so how many PSP owners here have Mario 3 pirated? Seriouly, fess up, sign below.

How many DS owners have it on R-4 or whatever?

How many have it on Nesticle?

How many bought it when it was rereleased on VC or the GBA cart?

Obvioulsy it costs Nintendo sales, and obvioulsy it STILL has market value because it is still being bought legally, and the right people are being paid for their work....

Dreamcast is the same thing, many of those games have been relreleased through the years, but you MAY  no longer be in the marketto  MAYBE considering picking SOME of them up now, Paul, thats all I am saying, no need to pay the milk man, when you can but the milk for less from someone who is milking someone elses cow....

I support PRIVATE used game stores, and also I do not gripe about what a rip off Gamestop is....if piracy is 'not a big deal' andrew, why dont I ever see pirated games in a used store?

Put your money where your mouth is, invite the FBI out to look at your pirated game and music collection and dare them to press charges, its no big deal, right?



andrew

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby andrew » August 11th, 2008, 10:50 am

[QUOTE=steerforth]Yeah, what I think is a stretch is pretending piracy is not a 'big deal'...

OK, so how many PSP owners here have Mario 3 pirated? Seriouly, fess up, sign below.

How many DS owners have it on R-4 or whatever?

How many have it on Nesticle?

How many bought it when it was rereleased on VC or the GBA cart?

Obvioulsy it costs Nintendo sales, and obvioulsy it STILL has market value because it is still being bought legally, and the right people are being paid for their work....

Dreamcast is the same thing, many of those games have been relreleased through the years, but you MAY  no longer be in the marketto  MAYBE considering picking SOME of them up now, Paul, thats all I am saying, no need to pay the milk man, when you can but the milk for less from someone who is milking someone elses cow....

I support PRIVATE used game stores, and also I do not gripe about what a rip off Gamestop is....if piracy is 'not a big deal' andrew, why dont I ever see pirated games in a used store?

Put your money where your mouth is, invite the FBI out to look at your pirated game and music collection and dare them to press charges, its no big deal, right?


[/QUOTE]
Mario 3 as example: worst example ever. And what does that mean why don't I see pirated games in a store. Piracy is a problem, but the actual damage is greatly exaggerated. All these games you mention are out of print and any purchased don't give their publishers any more money. So really for old games, their is no real difference between a used item bought on eBay and downloading a game for the company. How about for the VC most people who enjoy the game Mario 3 probably already own a copy and want to play on original hardware. Or they don't own a portable system so won't buy a copy.

When you go to these torrent sites and see a download amount, that doesn't tell the whole story. Of the downloaders you have those whose download is corrupted, their system can't handle the game, they try the game and feel it sucks or they love it and buy it. The rest is those who steal the game because they're cheap. Now how many can you say fit in the last category? I don't know. It could be 70%, 50%, 15% or 5%.

Paul Campbell

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby Paul Campbell » August 11th, 2008, 11:36 am

[QUOTE=steerforth]Yeah, what I think is a stretch is pretending piracy is not a 'big deal'...

OK, so how many PSP owners here have Mario 3 pirated? Seriouly, fess up, sign below.

How many DS owners have it on R-4 or whatever?

How many have it on Nesticle?

How many bought it when it was rereleased on VC or the GBA cart?

Obvioulsy it costs Nintendo sales, and obvioulsy it STILL has market value because it is still being bought legally, and the right people are being paid for their work....

Dreamcast is the same thing, many of those games have been relreleased through the years, but you MAY  no longer be in the marketto  MAYBE considering picking SOME of them up now, Paul, thats all I am saying, no need to pay the milk man, when you can but the milk for less from someone who is milking someone elses cow....

I support PRIVATE used game stores, and also I do not gripe about what a rip off Gamestop is....if piracy is 'not a big deal' andrew, why dont I ever see pirated games in a used store?

Put your money where your mouth is, invite the FBI out to look at your pirated game and music collection and dare them to press charges, its no big deal, right?


[/QUOTE]

These are the only pirated copies of anything that I own.  That was the point of the thread. 

And Nobody is saying that piracy is no big deal.  I just don't think that once a system has died and we would normally feel no obligation to its parent company as far as copying games goes, that we suddenly have to hand that obligation off to companies and people that had nothing to do with the production of the game whatsoever.  They may lose a bit of money in the long run because of piracy, but it is not money they are entitled to for any reason.  Why should we have a responsibility to them?  You can go out of your way to support them, if you want.  But I see no reason why I should feel guilty for not doing the same.

steerforth

DREAMCAST JACKPOT!!!!!!!!!!!...........sort of...

Postby steerforth » August 11th, 2008, 11:43 am

Well,  Paul it is THEIR property!

You have to pay THEM, unless THEY decide to give it away!

Like I said, chances are MANY of those game you say are on a dead system, will be rereleased on a 'living; system, and Piraters will be less inclined to buy them legaly, becuae they have them illeagly....

I am not asking you to feel guilty, that is up to you, I am just saying what the issue is, I do not think it is a gray area at all.

Andrew can say pirating is no big deal, but he admits he does not know how big a problem it is, so how does he know? Go on the gamfaqs DS board, thats all they talk about is pirating games, some of them, who knows how many they are, but a lot of them RARELY buy a game.....

If it was your money, I bet it WOULD be a big deal.


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