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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.
PS2 games are regionally coded.
DUH!
What next, Sony reduces the price of PS2 games in Africa by a factor of 100 compared with US! If a the average household income of a country in Africa and China is say $1000. How the heck do you think they are going to buy a $50 game? Be realistic. People pay rent in those countries for say $10-$15 a month. What in the world will justify them to pay $40-$50 for a game? It is not fair to charge them $50 and deprive them, at the same time, yall will feel it is not fair to charge you $50 and charge them $5.
This is all about what the market can afford. Even if there was no piracy, the prices will be far more cheaper, else they will only be selling 100 games a month. China has population, imagine if they can get to sell to 250,000,000 people at only $2. That's some major money right there!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
It depends. Open source debugging is more efficient because people have a tendancy to be blind to bugs in code they are familiar with. Same as others can find spelling errors in your paper even though you checked and rechecked it.
Is there any way openness could be less efficient than closed?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Some gamers might jizz their pants over the eye candy, but I think a lot of people would much rather good gameplay to life-like graphics. I know most of the people at LAN parties turn down the graphics options to get smoother gameplay, even the ones with high end video cards.
The graphics might be what sells a game, but it's not what keeps people playing it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
As for whether publishers and distributers take a bigger cut in the gaming business than the movie business, that's a toughie - I don't know enough to say for sure. But a successful movie might take in 50-100 million dollars so there is more to go around. However, retail chains get much more favorable terms for PC games than for DVD movies, simply because return rates and compatibility issues are massive. Publishers have to deal with support issues, which are also massive.
Try writing a 3D game, which has to run on EVERYBODY'S PC and compare to doing some animations in Maya, which just have to look good from one angle and get rendered once. Not dissing on the Matrix or other heavy-FX movies, but it's really a hell of a lot of work to support and distribute a modern 3D PC game.
This, of course, is why nobody really wants to develop for the flooded PC market and why the console market exists, if you are well capitalized and can afford to hire the right people, get all the SDKs and negotiate good terms.
Then would you like to explain why piracy was so rampant on the NES and SNES in China? Cartridges make it more difficult, but they don't make it impossible. DRAM-based copiers that connected to the cartridge slots and loaded games from floppies weren't at all uncommon, and pirated games on floppies were sold by stores much like pirated CDs are now.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
They dub the voice acting? Otherwise your comment doesn't make sense, 'cause Mandarin isn't a written language; it's only spoken.
Your radical ideas about legal routes to egalitarianism have already occured to others.
In China they have stores that sell pirated "silver" disks. Look around the web for DVD Silvers and you can see what the problem is.
In countries like the US you need to purchase a console, find someone to mod it, and then rent/borrow/download and burn copies of the games.
In China, you buy a console and have it pre-modified, or modified while you wait (you can do that in the US, but it's not nearly as common), and then you can go purchase pirated disks for $5 a disk or so.
The problem with pirating in China isn't that there are people downloading and burning games, it's that there is a whole production sector for them. Disk duplicating facilities produce the copies, they are then distributed to stores, and stores then sell them. Law enforcement does try to combat the piracy; however, it can be as bad as shutting down a store and conficating the goods, and another store will then open across town selling the same things.
So no pirated in China does not normally equal free.
If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it.
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
a year or so ago (or whenever return to castle wolfenstein came out) activision had a cheap version of rtcw for sale in china. it came to ~10$ or something. anyway they gave you a disc and a number to call to register the disc and to obtain a cdkey that allows you to play online. a friend of mine who has friends over there picked up a few copies over there and send us the keys worked fine (online) for us over here in north america. as far as i know these keys are not pirated as ive never had a key conflict nor has the auth system for rtcw been cracked
US and EU customers why they are paying vastly more for the same games. Just like Americans being ripped off with drug and school text book prices, and EU people with DVD pricing
Actually, this is called price discrimination and it's common business practice throughout the US and the world. Other forms of price discrimination which you may be familiar with are coupons and senior discounts. All business sell at whatever price the consumer will pay, which is why Americans get "ripped off" on text books.