Excuse me, but don't they have free speech in the UK?
Traditionally, yes. Recent governments have realised that this is a bad idea and so have started to put a stop to it whilst also embracing the Human Rights Act which nominally guarantees it.
And they probably make up for this drop in sales by locking people into iPods. People will upgrade either because they want a better one or the old one breaks, and they'll want a device that can play all their music.
You don't just build an ambitious game. You build up to it. Start with something simple. Increase complexity. Find the problems a few at a time rather than all at once.
Other people have said as well. Still not convinced. But ultimately it's total transfer times that we're concerned about so whichever it is... It's just a question of how much of a problem a couple of days (plus potential lost DVDs) will cause.
No. I mean bandwidth. Latency is meaningless here because you're just sending a disc out. The data transfer rate is 4GB over a couple of days which is somewhere in the order of 10-100Kbits/s.
The argument is fine. The story could have the whole story aspect removed, and just leave the argument against copyright extension, and it would be a much better piece of work.
Measuring the number of pirated copies is pointless. The only relationship it has to sales is that the number of people who pirated the game is greater than or equal to the number who would have bought it rather than pirating if piracy was impossible. So if you have 10,000 pirate copies kicking about, you know that you lost somewhere between 0 and 10,000 sales.
Find a better measure. Hell, release two versions. PoP Red and PoP Blue one with DRM and one without, and compare the sales. Not the piracy rate. Actual sales! That's what makes money.
Normally the floor has to absorb the energy of a foot falling anyway. This could be just taking advantage of that - A bit like regenerative braking uses the energy using energy that would normally be spent as heat.
Or it may not. I have no idea about the maths behind it. Just pointing out that sometimes there is free-ish energy.
The high price of game creates the 2nd hand market.
I blame it on the low margins. I've heard that the retailer's profit from a game is about the same as from a DVD, but DVD sales are higher (because they're cheaper)
The high price 2nd hand market helps people afford new games, by selling their old games.
Perhaps, but the retailer gets most of the money. The price difference between what they'll pay for a trade-in and what they'll sell for is quite large.
But here's another fact (or not) - Games often have reverse price elasticity. If you charge less for a game, demand will go down. People assume it's not as good. Reducing prices isn't possible. It may be possible to switch to a model where prices drop quickly
Enough to bet £10 or $15 on it? Sure. I'd bet that much.
How about if the stakes are in the hundreds of thousands or millions, or how about if the stakes are your entire career, against, say, a pat on the back and a reasonable bonus?
Changing a pricing model is a high risk strategy. Even if it succeeds your benefit may be small, and if it fails the cost could be catastrophic. Lobbying for changes to used game sales is a low risk strategy. It may not succeed but if it fails you can try again and again and again, and hardly spend anything. Lobbying is cheap.
I've worked on 5 published games. 3 of them were rubbish, one was okay, one was quite good. The okay one sold better than the quite good one, and two of the rubbish ones sold better than that.
There's not really a very strong correlation between quality and sales.
The publishers don't make money making games. They make money selling games. If other people are selling an identical product for less, they're competing with the publisher. If I buy a second hand game instead of a new one, the publisher loses a potential sale and the previous owner of the game gains a sale. Seems like they're competing to me.
As for prices - marketing doesn't work like that. Just because they could reduce prices, why would they? They would have the option of reducing prices and keeping their profit constant, or keeping prices the same and making more profit. Given that the purpose of the publisher is to make money, why would they choose the first of these options?
"That's in addition to the fact that we don't see anything from the used-game sales, which is one reason why the price of new games throughout the industry remains artificially high," he says. "I mean, the industry has to make all its money from the first sale since we don't get a penny from the subsequent dozen or so sales of that same game."
Competition drives prices up!? Don't treat us like morons. If used sales went down why would they reduce the price? To make less money? I can see that being a great business strategy.
Why are resales so popular in the first place? Because games are really expensive and have a short life.
I'd also like to point out that while the observation that 80% of money from trade ins is spent on games is interesting, the car resale analogy is a little misleading. Cars are assets. They're purchased with the expectation of a certain level of depreciation. Games are to an extent but it's not nearly as big a factor in the purchase.
Once again it would come to whether or not it's reasonable to assume that she's of legal age. Naturally some adults look very young, and it would be up to the prosecution to prove that it's very unlikely that the person is an adult.
"Beyond reasonable doubt" should be the test. If an 18 year old looks 16 then there's reasonable doubt, but at least the innocent are protected. It's up to the prosecution to actually prove their case. If a child looks to be 12 it's possible that she has a rare genetic condition but not that likely. Reasonable doubt would be a bit of a stretch.
By a suitably vague piece of terminology "a depiction of a person who is or appears to be under 18".
Based on a "reasonable man" test. So even if you have a pornographic image of an 18 year old who simply looks a little younger than she is, and she's in court to testify as to her age, and the fact that it was consensual, you could still be convicted because she still appears to be under 18.
And with a strict enough interpretation of the law, she too could be convicted.
Pirates haven't been seen as "bad" for years. The movies define our perception of them. They're heroic characters like the Dread Pirate Roberts, or devilish rogues like Jack Sparrow. Even the bad guys come across pretty positively.
"Copyright infringers" immediately says "law breaker" to most people. I don't want to be one of them, but I do wanna be a pirate!
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, but don't they have free speech in the UK?
Traditionally, yes. Recent governments have realised that this is a bad idea and so have started to put a stop to it whilst also embracing the Human Rights Act which nominally guarantees it.
And then rip them again? It's not all that convenient even if the sound degradation is okay.
And they probably make up for this drop in sales by locking people into iPods. People will upgrade either because they want a better one or the old one breaks, and they'll want a device that can play all their music.
You don't just build an ambitious game. You build up to it. Start with something simple. Increase complexity. Find the problems a few at a time rather than all at once.
Other people have said as well. Still not convinced. But ultimately it's total transfer times that we're concerned about so whichever it is... It's just a question of how much of a problem a couple of days (plus potential lost DVDs) will cause.
No, bandwidth is meaningless because it can scale trivially (just send more DVDs).
So bandwidth isn't an issue either. That's good.
Oh and I guess you did the math and it didn't work out in your favor. I thought so too.
You guessed wrong.
First: You mean latency, not bandwidth.
No. I mean bandwidth. Latency is meaningless here because you're just sending a disc out. The data transfer rate is 4GB over a couple of days which is somewhere in the order of 10-100Kbits/s.
Since these are disaster recovery files, I'm assuming they only need to be used in case of a disaster.
If so, the data is just as good on a DVD as on a hard disk.
If not my idea's rubbish but suggesting it was inexpensive.
The argument is fine. The story could have the whole story aspect removed, and just leave the argument against copyright extension, and it would be a much better piece of work.
The bandwidth of a DVD in the postal service isn't great but it's reasonable and quite cost effective.
Yes. Perhaps the data recovery firms simply didn't do DVDs.
Measuring the number of pirated copies is pointless. The only relationship it has to sales is that the number of people who pirated the game is greater than or equal to the number who would have bought it rather than pirating if piracy was impossible. So if you have 10,000 pirate copies kicking about, you know that you lost somewhere between 0 and 10,000 sales.
Find a better measure. Hell, release two versions. PoP Red and PoP Blue one with DRM and one without, and compare the sales. Not the piracy rate. Actual sales! That's what makes money.
Most of the world uses the 24 hour clock. 2010 is just before quarter past 8pm.
HTH HAND.
Normally the floor has to absorb the energy of a foot falling anyway. This could be just taking advantage of that - A bit like regenerative braking uses the energy using energy that would normally be spent as heat.
Or it may not. I have no idea about the maths behind it. Just pointing out that sometimes there is free-ish energy.
The high price of game creates the 2nd hand market.
I blame it on the low margins. I've heard that the retailer's profit from a game is about the same as from a DVD, but DVD sales are higher (because they're cheaper)
The high price 2nd hand market helps people afford new games, by selling their old games.
Perhaps, but the retailer gets most of the money. The price difference between what they'll pay for a trade-in and what they'll sell for is quite large.
But here's another fact (or not) - Games often have reverse price elasticity. If you charge less for a game, demand will go down. People assume it's not as good. Reducing prices isn't possible. It may be possible to switch to a model where prices drop quickly
How sure are you that we're right?
Enough to bet £10 or $15 on it? Sure. I'd bet that much.
How about if the stakes are in the hundreds of thousands or millions, or how about if the stakes are your entire career, against, say, a pat on the back and a reasonable bonus?
Changing a pricing model is a high risk strategy. Even if it succeeds your benefit may be small, and if it fails the cost could be catastrophic. Lobbying for changes to used game sales is a low risk strategy. It may not succeed but if it fails you can try again and again and again, and hardly spend anything. Lobbying is cheap.
I've worked on 5 published games. 3 of them were rubbish, one was okay, one was quite good. The okay one sold better than the quite good one, and two of the rubbish ones sold better than that.
There's not really a very strong correlation between quality and sales.
The publishers don't make money making games. They make money selling games. If other people are selling an identical product for less, they're competing with the publisher. If I buy a second hand game instead of a new one, the publisher loses a potential sale and the previous owner of the game gains a sale. Seems like they're competing to me.
As for prices - marketing doesn't work like that. Just because they could reduce prices, why would they? They would have the option of reducing prices and keeping their profit constant, or keeping prices the same and making more profit. Given that the purpose of the publisher is to make money, why would they choose the first of these options?
"That's in addition to the fact that we don't see anything from the used-game sales, which is one reason why the price of new games throughout the industry remains artificially high," he says. "I mean, the industry has to make all its money from the first sale since we don't get a penny from the subsequent dozen or so sales of that same game."
Competition drives prices up!? Don't treat us like morons. If used sales went down why would they reduce the price? To make less money? I can see that being a great business strategy.
Why are resales so popular in the first place? Because games are really expensive and have a short life.
I'd also like to point out that while the observation that 80% of money from trade ins is spent on games is interesting, the car resale analogy is a little misleading. Cars are assets. They're purchased with the expectation of a certain level of depreciation. Games are to an extent but it's not nearly as big a factor in the purchase.
Once again it would come to whether or not it's reasonable to assume that she's of legal age. Naturally some adults look very young, and it would be up to the prosecution to prove that it's very unlikely that the person is an adult.
"Beyond reasonable doubt" should be the test. If an 18 year old looks 16 then there's reasonable doubt, but at least the innocent are protected. It's up to the prosecution to actually prove their case. If a child looks to be 12 it's possible that she has a rare genetic condition but not that likely. Reasonable doubt would be a bit of a stretch.
By a suitably vague piece of terminology "a depiction of a person who is or appears to be under 18".
Based on a "reasonable man" test. So even if you have a pornographic image of an 18 year old who simply looks a little younger than she is, and she's in court to testify as to her age, and the fact that it was consensual, you could still be convicted because she still appears to be under 18.
And with a strict enough interpretation of the law, she too could be convicted.
Can you impeach a president elect? I think we should try!
Pirates haven't been seen as "bad" for years. The movies define our perception of them. They're heroic characters like the Dread Pirate Roberts, or devilish rogues like Jack Sparrow. Even the bad guys come across pretty positively.
"Copyright infringers" immediately says "law breaker" to most people. I don't want to be one of them, but I do wanna be a pirate!
No. But as the creator of the mashup, I give everyone else authority to use my IP in this way.