Console Players Are Pirates

According to a study by Macrovision one in five console gamers is a pirate, or uses pirated software. Interestingly the study, detailed on GamesIndustry.biz, also found that "three quarters of them would have paid for the games if they hadn't been available for free." Coverage also available on IGN.

Comments

Re:Well..

[evil-osm]

But you are supporting consoles, you bought the unit didn't you? That is all that MS needs to know that they sold X units, which gives them bragging rights, plus it gives them sway with games developers as to what platform games should be ported to first. Remember the good old days when GTA was on the PC only? when Halo was originally developed for the PC?

You are playing the games, albeit they are pirated (so you say). However have you played these games in absolute silence? or did you tell friends about how cool game X is?

So unfortunatly your still supporting them...

Same with crippled shareware vs the "honor system"

[mc6809e]

In the article here, shareware author Colin Messit discovered that less than 20% of the people using his software would pay for it voluntarily.

He wrote his software in such a way that a user installing it would have a 50/50 chance of getting a crippled version or a non-crippled version at time of installation. When people registered, they sent their serial numbers which encoded whether or not they had the crippled version or the "honor system" version.

He discovered that the crippled version was registered (people sent money) 5 times as often as the "honor system" version.

Conclusion? Most people only pay if they have to.

It depends on the region

[SebaSOFT]

I can concieve that people actually doesn't have pirated games, but take this as example:
Here in Argentina, I would say only hi-class people with no knowledge of games get to a game store and buy original games and consoles. Simply becouse they don't care about money. The rest use "pirateable" consoles like PS1/2 and Xbox, just becouse thay sell modchipped aquipment in the stores, and copied games too.

Enclosing things, make that survey here and you will get:

30% Sega Mega
30% PSOne
20% PS2
15% Xbox
5% Other

and a huge 90+% pirated stuff and a 10-% elite buying original games/consoles.

(I get it about actually buying the console and promoting it's games, but the 1 of 5 relation doesn't make sense to me)
Get real, look at the DC/eMuLe/BT networks and tell me you would rather download the game even before it hits the shelves and download it to your IDE 80 HD on your XBox.

P.S.: FBI Agents, I don't own a console so don't poke me :P

Re:Same with crippled shareware vs the "honor syst

[RedWizzard]

The amount of money he made should have little to do with how much work he did. Instead, it should correlate with how much service he did for others.

Firstly: why? A man who spends a few days building a road will receive several hundred dollars in compensation, and that's fair. This guy does the same amount of work and expects $50000+. Why is the difference so high? In both cases thousands of people will benefit from the work, so it's not the number of people who find the work useful. It's not the skilled nature of application development, most workers earn far less, regardless of the level of skill required. It's because the software vendor has the capability to perfectly replicate his product, and while automatic replication of work is the key to wealth, it's hardly a fair situation.

Secondly, my point is that the time he spent on that app is a more accurate estimate of its worth than the entirely arbitrary price he decided to charge for it. I haven't tried the app myself, but from description (it prints out windows helpfiles) and the time he spent on it indicate to my mind that it is overpriced. If people are given the choice between being honest and paying too much or being dishonest and paying nothing it is not a suprise that many of them choose to pay nothing. People are known for dishonesty when they feel they're being ripped off. However, if the choice had been between being honest and paying a fair price and being dishonest and paying nothing the percentage of people who decide to pay will be higher. Without further research at other price points this research is not conclusive.

Are you really defending those that would use this man's services and not even give him a "thank you"?

Not at all. What I'm saying is that I think if his pricing were more reasonable he would have found a smaller gap between the "honest" and "dishonest" users. As I said, people who feel the price is unreasonable are more inclined to be dishonest. Take a look at his "five fundamenetals for sucess": a product users need, quality, advertising, distribution of samples, and a reason to pay. Notice that he's completely forgotten pricing. Yet most business owners will tell you that price is probably the number one thing you have to get right to suceed.