Thankfully, Canada isn't hurting as much as the US when it comes to the recession. Still, finances are tight because the cost of goods keeps going up without salary increases to match them. I find myself having to pick and choose games too, often missing out on games that my friends really enjoyed. It's lead me to be more proactive about getting games, but with more free time than money, I've had to find another way to acquire them.
I'll be honest: I pirate a lot of things. Most of them I try once, dislike, and never use again. Some I really like and will even buy a legit copy of because I appreciated it so much. And many other things just never see a dollar from me for their use. It's not fair, but that's what happens.
If developers and publishers want to sell games to people in this penny-pinching era, they need to lower prices or face pirating. I'm not talking morals or ethics here, just economics. Pirating games has become trivial, and will be no matter how hard companies try to invent new ways to block people from doing it -- even enacting laws aren't enough; just ask the prohibitionists.
But people only pirate because it's so much cheaper than buying the game. Getting the games can be a lengthy process, fraught with the risk of viruses, fakes, and everything else you see in a black market. If it was only $5 or $10, many people would be willing to buy it just to save the hassle. I know even for myself, I'll pay $5 or sometime s$10 for a game if I think it looks worth it, even though I could download it for free in less than an hour. I still have respect for the companies and am still willing to pay for things that are worth buying, but $50 and $60+ is just ridiculous.
As the article noted, there's a different psychology associated with cheaper purchases. $5 or $10 is expendable -- it's worth taking a risk on because it's not much of a loss. But $50 is a significant investment, something you can't afford to do more than once or twice a month. That had better be a good game at that price. But how do you tell? Few high-priced titles have demos available, most reviews are full of hype and payola, and if you don't like it, you can't return it, and you may not even be able to resell it. That's a huge risk for $50. So it gets pirated.
But if people are pirating it because it's too expensive to purchase, then lowering the prices will encourage sales among people who are willing to pay the lower price. How much is enough? It depends on the numbers, but I'm sure it's fair to say that, at $5, almost nobody would pirate something, except a small group who will pirate because they want to. At that point, no amount of lowering prices will get more sales. But until that point is reached -- say $5, $10, maybe $15 -- you'll increase sales by lowering the price. There will be some curve of diminishing returns to this that I imagine would balance out somewhere around the $20 mark.
If they did this, everyone would win. The developers complain about piracy and the used market, but with games cheaper, piracy and used sales would be diminished because more people would buy retail. Gamers would get to keep money and would be able to buy more games, making them happy. The developers would win again, because people would buy more games -- they'd still spend as much on games per month, they would just get more of them. Imagine if they dropped prices from $60 to $20 and 3x as many people purchased games. But they still kept spending $60 a month on games -- that means the industry is getting $60/mo from 3x as many people!
Again, I'm not encouraging piracy, nor am I even excusing it, I'm just echoing human nature: if people can't afford it, but they can (and they can) pirate it, they will. If companies lower prices, fewer people will pirate because it makes pirating less appealing, and it will raise sales. Depending on how the numbers balance out, this could mean increased income for the developers and more games for the gamers. Everybody wins.
