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

Re:Lower prices

[Echnin]

Yes. We all know how deadlines contribute to make games so, so much better than they would ever have been had the developers just been given as much time as they wanted. Get 'em off their lazy bums.

Re:Yeah right. The matrix revolutions, $8

[rokzy]

>Try writing a 3D game, which has to run on EVERYBODY'S PC

how about game makers try this first, and not release POS code that will often only run on just a small fraction of PC's until a patch is made a few weeks later?

also, very often a standard engine is used, e.g. Quake 3 engine, which costs money in licensing but is probably still a good deal.

then there's the Valve business model; take an existing mod, burn it to CD, stick it in a box with an absurd price tag.

Re:Lower prices

[Kenja]

"I mean I might try a game for 5 bucks but 50? No way. The game compaines need to reduce the price to what the market will pay or pay the price"

You know I'm not going to pay 1,000,000+ for a house. So I'll just find one I like and kill the people in it so that I can live there. The home owners need to reduce the price to what the market will pay or pay the price.