I don't think I have any pirated software on my Windows PC, be it games or applications.
Which is a huge change from, say, 10 years ago.
The largest factors for that were: 1. I have several legit copies of Windows now. 2. Sales, sales, sales. 3. Steam. You can't mention Sales for PC games without mentioning Steam, as they have both small weekly sales and massive multi-week sales. I'm not lying when I say that most of the games I own and currently play are through Steam.
Of course, now I have a game backlog, so unless there's some AAA title that I really want, I don't need to pirate it. Even for those, if they're on Steam, I just have to wait until December, and they'll probably have a 40%+ off sale.
Three hundred years ago, composers were happy when their music was used by others
Three hundred years ago, we still had the Patronage system in effect. A system that has mostly died out either due to, or was the cause of, the mass market system.
FYI: The Patronage system was one where music, art, etc... were custom made by a patron, who paid the composer, artist, etc...
Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits, and soon, people got used to it and started seeing it as a god-given right. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to copyright individual sentences, and speaking them without the permission of the originator will be seen as "stealing". Perhaps there will be moral outrage, like the one over piracy, when people insist on speaking any sentence they like without paying the appropriate fee.
Copyright was a legal construct created to control the mass market system to prevent anyone being able to create their own copies of books, which became somewhat easy with the introduction of the printing press. Different countries had different ideas of how long copyright should last. Both Britain and the United States only issued 14 year copyrights, with an extension available for 14 more.
Obviously, neither use these copyright terms any more. Personally, I think 14-28 year copyrights were OK. Once you starting getting longer than, particularly if you get to the terms we have now, copyright has outlived its purpose of limited time monopolies. And don't even get me started on the DMCA/ACTA.
*I'm not British, I just remember reading this somewhere.
I have a "friend" who is exactly the same as well. However there are some games out there that will allow you to play the "full version" of the game for a limited period of time. Several months ago, my "friend" "borrowed" Sacred 2 from the internet and was able to install without activation which ran the game as a full trial. 2 weeks later my "friend" went out and bought the game full price and played happily, being able to load the save games from the "trial" version.
As far as I'm aware, most Xbox Live Arcade games work this way... and possibly demos for Xbox 360 games, I'm not sure.
Counter Strike. Started of as a free mod. People loved it. Spread everywhere. Indie-devs were exposed to the mainstream through word of mouth. They didn't need massive advertising campaigns. And look at the games longevity. You don't see ads on television for Counter-Strike, and yet people still play on the dedicated servers.
A free mod that was bought out by the corporation that owned the game it was a mod of, in order to monetize it.
That's great. Some of my game consoles support 1080p which, not surprisingly, look sharper than the 480i I get through analog video.
Heck, even for analog, my Nintendo Wii is connected via component cables (which have 5 RCA connectors: 3 video, 2 audio) which bumps the resolution from 480i standard screen to 480p widescreen.
No, but using your computer with a FOSS OS to watch video and a decent p2p setup will render them irrelevant. It's called "opting out of being ripped off". Until Big Media shows a little respect, that's what they deserve because they set it up so that either they steal from you, you steal from them, or you do without. Fuck them.
You mean the computer I have that has a $5 HDMI cable running between my computer and monitor?
The way I read it, you only got two copies if you didn't already have the game. If you did, you only get one to gift to someone else. So, the number is likely less than 24,000... but we don't know by how much.
And again, Sony's problem was their own doing. PS3 would have been a hard sell at the price regardless of what Microsoft did. Microsoft did nothing clever here. They replaced Xbox early because Xbox was a poor console.
XBox 360 is second out of three in the market because Wii is both novel and cheap, and because PS3 is/was too expensive. Not because MS happened to release first in this generation.
Except that MS is continuing to trounce the PS3, despite PS3 price drops. Since both are approximately half the price they were when they came out, why is that? Oh right... one console is still "cheaper" (or at the moment has a better bang for your buck) than the other.
Nintendo continues to trounce the 360 because it targets a different market. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii's marketshare is in decline as the casual market becomes satiated. That would also explain why Nintendo is trying to target a different market... by releasing new games in all its old franchises over the next year, starting with the already released Super Mario Galaxy 2, and proceeding with Metroid: Other M in September, and Zelda: Skyward Sword next year.
(Side note: Skyward Sword is going to be the first Zelda game I refuse to buy. I hated the controls in the Wii version of Twilight Princess, I'm not about to subject myself to ones that are arguably more irritating thanks to the Wii Motion Plus.)
Oh, did I mention that I own all 3 consoles? Granted, I only bought two of them... I inherited the third when my brother passed away in 2009. I could let you guess which ones I bought, but I'll just say it: I bought the Wii and PS3, and inherited the Xbox 360. Which I'm assuming is different than you would have guessed.
4) Release a new model before your competitors, dealing a blow that one of your competitors (Sony) is just now recovering from five years later.
And yet another competitor(Nintendo) released later, and took market leadership. Sony's problems are of their own making. They are not the result of being outplayed by Microsoft.
Nintendo isn't targeting the same market segment that Sony and Microsoft are, and has made huge money doing so. Both of its competitors are trying to horn in on its market, with the 360's Kinect and PS3's Move.
It's extremely rare to see the same game appear on all 3 consoles. However, it is much more common to see titles that appear on both the 360 and PS3. On the hardware side, the 360 has been almost consistently priced lower than the PS3 was. The most significant upturn in the PS3's sales were immediately following the PS3 Slim's release, which is the only time that the two systems had price parity.
That changed following E3 this year, when MS rolled out a new version of the 360. The new version changed the 120GB HDD to a 250GB HDD and moved the 802.11N addon into the system itself... for the same price they had been selling the 120GB model for. Which is the same price that the 120GB PS3 sells for and $50 less than the 250GB PS3.
The PS3 would likely have sold better had there not been a system that has, for most of its life, been consistently priced lower that runs most of the same games.
Kidding aside, their marketshare, revenue, and profits are still huge, but they are less dominant than they once were. Furthermore, their "viable business model" boils down to: 1) Make an inferior copy of existing technology. 2) Flood the market with product and marketing (read: bullshit / FUD tactics). 3) Pour money into it until it either sinks or floats. 4) ??? 5) Profit!
If you're referring to the Xbox division: 4) Release a new model before your competitors, dealing a blow that one of your competitors (Sony) is just now recovering from five years later.
...there's no fixed ending, and it just becomes a grindfest that chews up money from your credit card. I'd sooner buy a solo game like Final Fantasy 12 (fixed ending) or DDR (fixed cost).
Not all multi-player games have recurring costs, other than the one you're already paying for your Internet connection. The game that the OP was referring to, Team Fortress 2, has no recurring cost. This is despite having had 11 major updates.
I'm not familiar with WoW -- do you have to buy everything from free-market sources? Or are there some "state sponsored" stores where perhaps prices are fixed and demand doesn't affect them? I presume some rare items that are unavailable in "state" stores could get prices inflated by influx of cheated cash or goods, but are those important to gameplay? How many items a semi-serious WoW player buys from others?
WoW has several classifications of items: Trash (grey), Common (white), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Epic (blue), Legendary (orange), and Bound to Account (gold-ish). The colors mentioned are the color of the item's name in the game.
Trash items are only dropped from killing monsters, but are just there to sell to NPC vendors for cash. Some Common items and a few Uncommon items may be sold by NPC vendors. Some Common, Uncommon, and Rare items are gotten through Gathering trade skills, but they relate to another trade skill. Everything else is gotten by killing monsters or by buying them from other players via the Trade system or the in-game Auction House. There are also specific types of items that are only sold through Vendors that may be of Rare and Epic quality, such as Mounts. High-level armor set items or Bound to Account items may also be gotten using tokens that drop off of bosses in high level dungeons.
Note: Any Uncommon, Rare, Epic, or Legendary item dropped by a dungeon boss or received for completing a quest is bind on pickup and cannot be sold/traded to other characters. Other specific items are bound to account and can only be traded between characters owned by the same account through the game's mail system.
In other words, the items sold in the auction house are the items you get purely by chance or create through trade skills. At lower levels, I believe Rare items have something like a 0.07% chance of dropping for each enemy killed. Or lower.
To my knowledge, there are no Legendary or Bound to Account items that drop randomly.
Cheaters love the Auction House. After a day full of a bot leveling, they trot over to the nearest one and list any green, blue, and purple items they've acquired on it... assuming they have their bot set to only grab green or better items, and also assuming it would drop the lowest value green items to grab blue or purple. Now, some people are stupid and set ludicrous prices no one will pay. Others use, presumably, a WoW addon like Auctioneer which, if you let it run for 15 minutes or so, will scan everything currently on the Auction House, and keep a database of prices, so it can recommend a price to sell things for.
Hell, Glider may even be programmable to do the Auctioneer AH scan and sales for you.
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I don't think I have any pirated software on my Windows PC, be it games or applications.
Which is a huge change from, say, 10 years ago.
The largest factors for that were:
1. I have several legit copies of Windows now.
2. Sales, sales, sales.
3. Steam. You can't mention Sales for PC games without mentioning Steam, as they have both small weekly sales and massive multi-week sales. I'm not lying when I say that most of the games I own and currently play are through Steam.
Of course, now I have a game backlog, so unless there's some AAA title that I really want, I don't need to pirate it. Even for those, if they're on Steam, I just have to wait until December, and they'll probably have a 40%+ off sale.
er... custom made for a patron. Wish I'd caught that before I posted.
Three hundred years ago, we still had the Patronage system in effect. A system that has mostly died out either due to, or was the cause of, the mass market system.
FYI: The Patronage system was one where music, art, etc... were custom made by a patron, who paid the composer, artist, etc...
Copyright was a legal construct created to control the mass market system to prevent anyone being able to create their own copies of books, which became somewhat easy with the introduction of the printing press. Different countries had different ideas of how long copyright should last. Both Britain and the United States only issued 14 year copyrights, with an extension available for 14 more.
Obviously, neither use these copyright terms any more. Personally, I think 14-28 year copyrights were OK. Once you starting getting longer than, particularly if you get to the terms we have now, copyright has outlived its purpose of limited time monopolies. And don't even get me started on the DMCA/ACTA.
*I'm not British, I just remember reading this somewhere.
So, should we assume you're going to update the game to use iAds?
I'd have to go look, but I seem to recall an article from 2009 that said 2008 was Capitol Records most profitable year ever...
As far as I'm aware, most Xbox Live Arcade games work this way... and possibly demos for Xbox 360 games, I'm not sure.
A free mod that was bought out by the corporation that owned the game it was a mod of, in order to monetize it.
Or did you forget that part?
That's great. Some of my game consoles support 1080p which, not surprisingly, look sharper than the 480i I get through analog video.
Heck, even for analog, my Nintendo Wii is connected via component cables (which have 5 RCA connectors: 3 video, 2 audio) which bumps the resolution from 480i standard screen to 480p widescreen.
That's great. I have 3: PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.
That's not counting the monitor and TV these connect to.
3 RCA jacks? Sure, if you want analog video and analog 2.0 audio.
Meanwhile, the rest of us moved to cables that offer us digital video and digital 5.1-7.1 audio.
You mean the computer I have that has a $5 HDMI cable running between my computer and monitor?
Wait, how is HDMI irrelevant again?
Really? I bet if I walk into a retail store, all the new computers in it have Windows 7 Home Premium.
but... but... this year is the year of the Linux desktop! Netcraft confirms it!
The way I read it, you only got two copies if you didn't already have the game. If you did, you only get one to gift to someone else. So, the number is likely less than 24,000... but we don't know by how much.
To Valve's credit, they have ridiculous sales quite often.
Except that MS is continuing to trounce the PS3, despite PS3 price drops. Since both are approximately half the price they were when they came out, why is that? Oh right... one console is still "cheaper" (or at the moment has a better bang for your buck) than the other.
Nintendo continues to trounce the 360 because it targets a different market. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii's marketshare is in decline as the casual market becomes satiated. That would also explain why Nintendo is trying to target a different market... by releasing new games in all its old franchises over the next year, starting with the already released Super Mario Galaxy 2, and proceeding with Metroid: Other M in September, and Zelda: Skyward Sword next year.
(Side note: Skyward Sword is going to be the first Zelda game I refuse to buy. I hated the controls in the Wii version of Twilight Princess, I'm not about to subject myself to ones that are arguably more irritating thanks to the Wii Motion Plus.)
Oh, did I mention that I own all 3 consoles? Granted, I only bought two of them... I inherited the third when my brother passed away in 2009. I could let you guess which ones I bought, but I'll just say it: I bought the Wii and PS3, and inherited the Xbox 360. Which I'm assuming is different than you would have guessed.
How many games out of the NES, SNES, and PS libraries do they play?
There were, what, 10 Playchoice games?
I didn't say "competitors," I said
I'm sorry, my client misspoke. He meant to say Copper-Zinc Alloy Monkey.
Nintendo isn't targeting the same market segment that Sony and Microsoft are, and has made huge money doing so. Both of its competitors are trying to horn in on its market, with the 360's Kinect and PS3's Move.
It's extremely rare to see the same game appear on all 3 consoles. However, it is much more common to see titles that appear on both the 360 and PS3. On the hardware side, the 360 has been almost consistently priced lower than the PS3 was. The most significant upturn in the PS3's sales were immediately following the PS3 Slim's release, which is the only time that the two systems had price parity.
That changed following E3 this year, when MS rolled out a new version of the 360. The new version changed the 120GB HDD to a 250GB HDD and moved the 802.11N addon into the system itself... for the same price they had been selling the 120GB model for. Which is the same price that the 120GB PS3 sells for and $50 less than the 250GB PS3.
The PS3 would likely have sold better had there not been a system that has, for most of its life, been consistently priced lower that runs most of the same games.
Actually, I prefer Logitech. Microsoft's scroll wheel is way too loose feeling for me.
Of course, I'm saying this as a gamer, where you want distinct click-stops if you use a mouse wheel.
If you're referring to the Xbox division:
4) Release a new model before your competitors, dealing a blow that one of your competitors (Sony) is just now recovering from five years later.
Hi Milton,
I think your boss took it.
Not all multi-player games have recurring costs, other than the one you're already paying for your Internet connection. The game that the OP was referring to, Team Fortress 2, has no recurring cost. This is despite having had 11 major updates.
WoW has several classifications of items: Trash (grey), Common (white), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Epic (blue), Legendary (orange), and Bound to Account (gold-ish). The colors mentioned are the color of the item's name in the game.
Trash items are only dropped from killing monsters, but are just there to sell to NPC vendors for cash. Some Common items and a few Uncommon items may be sold by NPC vendors. Some Common, Uncommon, and Rare items are gotten through Gathering trade skills, but they relate to another trade skill. Everything else is gotten by killing monsters or by buying them from other players via the Trade system or the in-game Auction House. There are also specific types of items that are only sold through Vendors that may be of Rare and Epic quality, such as Mounts. High-level armor set items or Bound to Account items may also be gotten using tokens that drop off of bosses in high level dungeons.
Note: Any Uncommon, Rare, Epic, or Legendary item dropped by a dungeon boss or received for completing a quest is bind on pickup and cannot be sold/traded to other characters. Other specific items are bound to account and can only be traded between characters owned by the same account through the game's mail system.
In other words, the items sold in the auction house are the items you get purely by chance or create through trade skills. At lower levels, I believe Rare items have something like a 0.07% chance of dropping for each enemy killed. Or lower.
To my knowledge, there are no Legendary or Bound to Account items that drop randomly.
Cheaters love the Auction House. After a day full of a bot leveling, they trot over to the nearest one and list any green, blue, and purple items they've acquired on it... assuming they have their bot set to only grab green or better items, and also assuming it would drop the lowest value green items to grab blue or purple. Now, some people are stupid and set ludicrous prices no one will pay. Others use, presumably, a WoW addon like Auctioneer which, if you let it run for 15 minutes or so, will scan everything currently on the Auction House, and keep a database of prices, so it can recommend a price to sell things for.
Hell, Glider may even be programmable to do the Auctioneer AH scan and sales for you.