CantFaketheFunk said:
If I may suggest an alternate hypothesis:
The 360 one is flooding torrent sites because ... the PC one hasn't been leaked yet.
That is unfortunately inevitable, and once it happens, I don't doubt that it'll be as prevalent on piracy sites as the 360 version is. Yes, pirating on PC does require some effort, but pirating on a console requires considerably more. Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that there's a much larger audience for the 360 version (or even the PS3 version) than there was the PC version, even before the reveal of no dedicated servers. This was true with the first Modern Warfare, too.
Let's say that out of fifty Xbox 360 owners playing MW2, ten pirated it. There are only ten people playing MW2 on the PC, though, five of whom pirated it. Even if there are technically MORE pirated 360 copies being played, it says nothing about the system's security (or lack thereof).
COD4 didn't sell as well as it did thanks to the PC owners, I can tell you that. Oh sure, a ton of PC owners bought the game, but it sold significantly better on consoles. Just keep that in mind.
Frankly, I don't think publishers are overreacting at all. That's not to say I think they're reacting correctly in most cases - the Eidos Arkham Asylum case being an example of how to do it right - but I think that piracy is a legitimate problem and it's also one of the reasons (though by no means the only one) that the PC market is much less relevant these days as it used to be.
Where are you getting your figures?
Global PC sales for a specific game, that's legitimate sales, are extremely hard to measure and normally only PS3 and 360 sales are factored into NDP calculations etc due to the nature of consoles and how Micro/Sony make most of their money of licensing copies of games.
And then how do you calculate piracy figures? I mean if the game is pirated in a country where the game is banned or not even sold... is that a "lost sale"? How many are actually played and how many are just casual downloads by idiots who try to play COD4 on a crappy pentium 1 PC with graphics card from the late 90's = fail attempt = they are not Successfully pirating the game.
Are they going by online multiplayer figures? Beyond the fact that is mis-representative (pirates may like online gaming more) I'd like to know the specifics to determine there are not artefact in their results like counting legitimate customers who merely disable securom because they are fed up of being locked out of their own game for dumb reasons.
Though you seem ready to admit that 360 is not on a level playing field with PC for risk of piracy which has been my point all along.
I certainly hope you will agree that DRM like securom utterly fails as an anti-piracy measure and there is zero problem with selling a product DRM-free. I mean look at the MP3's sold by Amazon, totally DRM free, yet they still sell a bucket load.
That
lovely statistic of "PC only 14% of game-sales/market" is incredibly misleading because:
-It compares not unit sales but total earnings in $
-it factors in ALL consoles from PS2, Wii, as well as 360 and PS3, so it's at least 4 vs 1 = 20% all things equal.
-It also factors sale of hardware and peripherals of consoles... yet because graphics cards could be for non-gaming purposes they are not factored which is a VAST amount of money not considered.
-PC games around the world are legitimately sold at retail for a lower price than console (no licence fee) so could sell equal numbers of games, the same amount of money to the developer yet less money earned "on paper". Then there are the non-retail online sales, much more popular with PC gamers where they are practically bought wholesale = even lower price.
-Does it factor in online sales like via Steam, Good-old-games and Direct2Drive? I don't think so.
-Consoles have ALWAYS been more of a "populous" activity, that's the POINT! Since the days of the NES, just plug in and play, that is inevitably a much larger percentage of the crowd
Michael Bay sells more movie tickets than Michael Mann, THAT DOES NOT MAKE HIM "BETTER"!!!
This reminds me of a similar thing which happened to the UK music industry in the early 2000's as a very popular BBC music show called Top of the Pops were legally mandated by their quasi-socialistic charter to play what was on the top 20 based on CD sales alone, regardless of any taste or even logic.
But it's wasn't stuff like Kasabian or Beyoncee, none of the stuff anyone request or expects to hear on the radio, instead the chart was inundated with with soft and weepy ballads that honestly only menopausal women nostalgic of 70's smaltz would possibly like.
That was because the charts only counted CD sales and CD sales had been falling with young people in favour of itunes and the place where CDs were rising where in supermarkets targeting middle age mothers or grandmothers with special deals and advertising were making amazing sales. The market had changed, the chart was no longer reflecting actual tastes of the general music consuming public... but tell that to a thick headed BBC chief.
This irrevocably damaged Top of the Pops and did not change till EVENTUALLY they fessed up and factored in legitimate download sales (kinda hard as it was not obvious if a song bought off iTunes was actually bought in the UK) then it was like a revolution, Top of the Pops was no longer inundated with shit weepy ballads but the ACTUAL music people were listening to.
But the damage was done and for the show blindly following statistics with no insight the show had plummeted in ratings and fell so far from grace, being already moved to the "death slot" of late on Sunday night, so that it could not recover. It was cancelled in 2006 after running continuously for 42 years, ever since The Beatles were topping the charts.
... all because they were mislead by The Charts.
I mean this site wouldn't dedicated 50% of it's articles/reviews to Wii just because it sells more? In fact it should have dedicated 50% to PS2, 30% to Wii and just a footnote to 360/PS3.
