For your rationale that they are suffering from 'hypocrisy' it'd help if you were talking about the sort of piracy where money is actually lost instead of using Jack Valenti's definition which states that copying a file means money disappears from their bank account.
And, if you're interested in really seeing if your comment holds any wayter, you should look up the difference between emulation and patent trolls.
It has been consistently unfunny for the last 10 AFDs. What is funny is that EVERY YEAR, even though we all know it's coming, people still come on here and bitch about it and people STILL waste mod points on it as if Slashdot's going to change.
Though you're basically right, I think you're over-estimating how many people were actually downloading games and not buying any. PC gaming would be flat out dead if the DC's demise actually happened the way it has been theorized.
That's a fascinating, if agenda-fueled, interpretation of my post. I guess you were not aware that Sega over-extended itself and blew through its cash reserves. They did't have the over two-hundred million they would need to produce those consoles. That is why they are a software developer now.
I dont remember his name, but the CEO at the time voluntarily forfeited his stock options. That was somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy million, just to keep the company alive. Man I wish we were that honorable.
The rampant chipless/modless piracy didnt help either.
The Dreamcast died because Sega needed to get 10 million more units sold and they didn't have the capital to build the machines.
There are a few people that like to claim 'piracy' had anything to do with the Dreamcast's death because geeks like you and me went on an IRC channel and downloaded a game or two and burned it, and found it played just fine. Then we asked a friend with similar interests and PC capabilities and they said "yeah, I did that too!", and mentally we turned that into a baseless statistic that must mean so many people did it that Gamestop was full of unsold games!
Nobody seems to remember that back when the DC was popular broadband was not available in most places and there was some skill and knowledge invovled in acquiring the.ISOs before getting them burnt to a disc.
Does anyone have any kind of number for the ratio of bought/pirated games on pc and consoles? It would be interesting to see if consoles really do have a much lower piracy rate.
Who cares about the piracy rate? Let's see statistics on games not actually sold because of piracy. Notice Spore didn't spectacularly fail even though the pirated version was better and it was released before the game was.
PC sales are ridiculous low for most single-player, non-casual, PC games.
That's not because of piracy. It's a lot easier to get a PC game on store shelves than it is for a console. As a result, PC game shelf-life is MUCH shorter than a console game because new games are constantly coming in and pushing the old ones off the shelves. Console games stay on shelves longer, plus the market for those games is much much bigger. On top of that console games are much simpler to get running, making them less of an investment and more of an impulse buy.
The PC Gaming market is fickle, piracy has nothing to do with that. That has always been the case. It's not something that just magically popped up when the internet became ubiquitous.
Console = 5 years old PC hardware with locked options.
That would be more insightful if PC games didn't typically hold back to support the older cards out there. Depending on where you are in the cycle, PC games are more like 2 years, if that, ahead of a console.
Whoa, dude. It's definitely a decent sum depending on a lot of factors (what you do, where you live, etc). I make a pretty good amount for my area at $35k/year... but $700 would be pushing two weeks' net pay for me (net pay is $970 atm, with taxes withheld and insurance premiums and such).
That depends on how you look at it. If you work in a field where Photoshop will save you two man-weeks of work over the course of say, a year, then it'd easily be worthwhile. In that case, the company you work for would happily pay for it. At least that's what happened with me. I was making roughly the same amount you are and my company kept asking me for illustrations etc. The faster I turned those around, the more I could do. Before long they not only got me Photoshop, but were getting the upgrade every year or so.
There's another factor here: The more you master Photoshop, the more your employable value goes up. If you can, for example, paint realistic clothing on a character, you can earn yourself freelance gigs that easily pay for your copy of Photoshop and then some. There's a whole market for image creation. That price becomes easily justifiable when it becomes an investment and not a luxury. That make sense?
Everyone loves throwing that line around, but I've yet to meet a professional designer (freelancer or otherwise) who's paid for Photoshop, let alone "happily."
Greetings. I'm a 3d artist that does texture and post work, and I have happily paid for Photoshop and upgrades. My colleagues that do freelance have also paid for it 'happily'. You may now tick off that "haven't met any professionals' checkbox.:D
I suspect the $700 pricetag is Adobe's way of offsetting some of the losses incurred by piracy.
No. We pay that amount because it is an effective tool that we make money from. My copy of Photoshop paid for itself easily within the first gig I did. You could partially blame its successs on vendor lock-in. Most of my clients give me Photoshop files and expect modified ones back. But it's not like it's aching for features. It's easy enough to get the results of other 2d apps into Photoshop with little to no hassle, but it's not often I find a need for that.
Try to keep in mind that photo editing isn't the only thing it does. The big money comes from image creation, and that's why there are gobs of people happily paying for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking with wisdom and reserve gets you +5 Insightful, not simple anti-Apple claptrap.
Bullshit. You talk as if the people with the mod points don't moderate based on what's fashionable.
For your rationale that they are suffering from 'hypocrisy' it'd help if you were talking about the sort of piracy where money is actually lost instead of using Jack Valenti's definition which states that copying a file means money disappears from their bank account.
And, if you're interested in really seeing if your comment holds any wayter, you should look up the difference between emulation and patent trolls.
This isn't about software patents. Try the next thread.
One man's flamebait is another man's satire.
Do you even look at whats posted in comments?
Yes. They see their ad-counter spinning like mad $$$$ at twits like you bitching about it.
When it happens every single year it's time for the whiners to take note.
It has been consistently unfunny for the last 10 AFDs. What is funny is that EVERY YEAR, even though we all know it's coming, people still come on here and bitch about it and people STILL waste mod points on it as if Slashdot's going to change.
Pathetic.
Ah... I guess this your first time reading a review of a product where battery life is important?
If it is 'obligatory', it isn't funny.
Though you're basically right, I think you're over-estimating how many people were actually downloading games and not buying any. PC gaming would be flat out dead if the DC's demise actually happened the way it has been theorized.
That's a fascinating, if agenda-fueled, interpretation of my post. I guess you were not aware that Sega over-extended itself and blew through its cash reserves. They did't have the over two-hundred million they would need to produce those consoles. That is why they are a software developer now.
I dont remember his name, but the CEO at the time voluntarily forfeited his stock options. That was somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy million, just to keep the company alive. Man I wish we were that honorable.
The rampant chipless/modless piracy didnt help either.
The Dreamcast died because Sega needed to get 10 million more units sold and they didn't have the capital to build the machines.
There are a few people that like to claim 'piracy' had anything to do with the Dreamcast's death because geeks like you and me went on an IRC channel and downloaded a game or two and burned it, and found it played just fine. Then we asked a friend with similar interests and PC capabilities and they said "yeah, I did that too!", and mentally we turned that into a baseless statistic that must mean so many people did it that Gamestop was full of unsold games!
Nobody seems to remember that back when the DC was popular broadband was not available in most places and there was some skill and knowledge invovled in acquiring the .ISOs before getting them burnt to a disc.
"Having an effect" is not the same as "piracy is holding back PC gaming."
There's also a difference between 'causing damage' and 'perception of causing damage'.
Does anyone have any kind of number for the ratio of bought/pirated games on pc and consoles? It would be interesting to see if consoles really do have a much lower piracy rate.
Who cares about the piracy rate? Let's see statistics on games not actually sold because of piracy. Notice Spore didn't spectacularly fail even though the pirated version was better and it was released before the game was.
PC sales are ridiculous low for most single-player, non-casual, PC games.
That's not because of piracy. It's a lot easier to get a PC game on store shelves than it is for a console. As a result, PC game shelf-life is MUCH shorter than a console game because new games are constantly coming in and pushing the old ones off the shelves. Console games stay on shelves longer, plus the market for those games is much much bigger. On top of that console games are much simpler to get running, making them less of an investment and more of an impulse buy.
The PC Gaming market is fickle, piracy has nothing to do with that. That has always been the case. It's not something that just magically popped up when the internet became ubiquitous.
I played console FPS games and they suck. ... At some point (prob soon) consoles will go away.
If you played consoles more you'd know there's more out there than just FPS games.
Console = 5 years old PC hardware with locked options.
That would be more insightful if PC games didn't typically hold back to support the older cards out there. Depending on where you are in the cycle, PC games are more like 2 years, if that, ahead of a console.
If most Linux users would use kernel 2.4 and FF would only support 2.6, you think it would be taken lightly?
On Slashdot? Yes. It would be praised. One guy'd even get a +5 post explaining how it shows the benefits of Open Source.
If thats all it takes then the system is broken, not the people abusing it.
Actually it's both.
If any, if we want us to advance, we should make it harder.
.... until you in all your superiority get knocked down, cry foul, and claim that it was unfair.
Gizmodo? Call me when a reputable publication reports on this.
You came to Slashdot because Gizmodo isn't a reputable publication? Hehehe.
So, they made an artificial virus...
Fail.
The last thing I need is for people to walk into my house and see me sitting on my couch wearing some goofy looking glasses.
Maybe if you moved out of your parents' basement you wouldn't have to worry about random people coming in and saying hi.
Whoa, dude. It's definitely a decent sum depending on a lot of factors (what you do, where you live, etc). I make a pretty good amount for my area at $35k/year... but $700 would be pushing two weeks' net pay for me (net pay is $970 atm, with taxes withheld and insurance premiums and such).
That depends on how you look at it. If you work in a field where Photoshop will save you two man-weeks of work over the course of say, a year, then it'd easily be worthwhile. In that case, the company you work for would happily pay for it. At least that's what happened with me. I was making roughly the same amount you are and my company kept asking me for illustrations etc. The faster I turned those around, the more I could do. Before long they not only got me Photoshop, but were getting the upgrade every year or so.
There's another factor here: The more you master Photoshop, the more your employable value goes up. If you can, for example, paint realistic clothing on a character, you can earn yourself freelance gigs that easily pay for your copy of Photoshop and then some. There's a whole market for image creation. That price becomes easily justifiable when it becomes an investment and not a luxury. That make sense?
Everyone loves throwing that line around, but I've yet to meet a professional designer (freelancer or otherwise) who's paid for Photoshop, let alone "happily."
Greetings. I'm a 3d artist that does texture and post work, and I have happily paid for Photoshop and upgrades. My colleagues that do freelance have also paid for it 'happily'. You may now tick off that "haven't met any professionals' checkbox. :D
I suspect the $700 pricetag is Adobe's way of offsetting some of the losses incurred by piracy.
No. We pay that amount because it is an effective tool that we make money from. My copy of Photoshop paid for itself easily within the first gig I did. You could partially blame its successs on vendor lock-in. Most of my clients give me Photoshop files and expect modified ones back. But it's not like it's aching for features. It's easy enough to get the results of other 2d apps into Photoshop with little to no hassle, but it's not often I find a need for that.
Try to keep in mind that photo editing isn't the only thing it does. The big money comes from image creation, and that's why there are gobs of people happily paying for it.