Game Piracy Results in Lower Prices?

meejahor writes "The BBC reports that Sony will soon launch the PlayStation 2 in China, following Nintendo's lead with the GameCube. Most interesting about the story is the news that, because of widespread piracy in China, PS2 games 'will cost far less than they do in the US or the UK, but still be slightly more than pirated discs.' We've always been told that pirate games push prices up, but doesn't this news suggest that piracy in China has in fact pushed prices down? The story also notes that 'only two or three games will be available at launch' which seems crazy considering the likelihood that people will pirate imported games instead of waiting for them to be released officially." While the Chinese launch of PS2 has been known for a while, the pricing of Chinese games is pretty interesting, given their long history of piracy. I imagine this sort of thing would be considered in the U.S. and other countries were pirated games as widespread as they are in China.

Comments

Naming conventions for piracy

[EmCeeHawking]

A pirate has come to mean something too cuddly and innocuous. In fact, the loose use of the term to describe otherwise ordinary people engaging in distribution of material copyrighted by others has done much to diminish the proud tradition of "pirate".

From now on, all official BSA pronouncements will obide by a new naming scheme. Opponents of BSA will be referred to as "digital terrorists", "hackers", and "pedophiles", preferably in the same sentence

Sounds like a breakthrough in economy

[ceeam]

You can sell goods only at so much as market is ready to pay. Who would've thought?