Epic President: "The Money's On Console"

[Jesus Phish]

Hell, everyone knew this already. But gaming should not be about money, at least not totally, gaming should be about passion for your work.

Any time I hear people saying this about anything, music, movies, books, anything at all, all I can think is, it's a nice idea, but this is business. Epic probably wouldn't be in a place to be putting out Gears 3 right now if they had stayed on PC. I'm sure the people at Epic do have a passion for their work.

I'm sure they'd also like to be able to turn a profit. Look at all the really really good devs who didn't move to making games for consoles and aren't around anymore.

 

[laserwulf]

Piracy has been around as long as PC gaming.
"Don't Copy that Floppy," anyone?

I had a friend who showed me Civilization 1 on two 3.5-in floppies (circa 1996?). If it wasn't for that piracy, I never would've bought Civ 3 (and Conquests), Civ 4 (and all expansions), and the remake of Colonization.

Piracy is not killing PC gaming, DRM is. When you start treating all of your customers like criminals, is it any surprise that some of them will not put up with it?

 

[Iron Mal]

Well, they pretty much have summed it up.

PC gaming is on the decline, it's never going to disappear permamently but it will definately become a very niche and specialist thing (much like it once was).

PC gaming has gone full circle from reletive obscurity to it's 'golden age' and now it's going back into reletive obscurity again.

It not like millions of people pirate console games is it... oh wait...

Allow me to think about that for a moment...nope.

I'm pretty certain that piracy is more prominant on the PC than it is on consoles (I'm no expert but I'm guessing it's a simpler process on PC than it would be on a PS3 or Xbox), I've seen places that do pirate DVDs, PC games and CDs (hell, you can just look on the internet or go to markets and find them by the tonne for pennies) but I have never heard of a place that sells pirated 360 games (I didn't even know they existed).

 

[The DSM]

*sigh*

There going to abondon the original market for a few years, then when they stop making money, start porting console games over.

The key term in this I find is the use of where the money is, when PC gaming comes back in, they will start making games for it again.

 

[bladester1]

Alright that's it...I'm going to make piracy work on consoles you ass hat!!!(sarcasm-not the ass hat bit though)

 

[Jory]

Inb4 the onbligatory "PC Gaming, Happily dying since blahblah" image.

Yeah I would pretend to care. But come on, Gears of War? PC has enough of that stuff, THAT is the real reason it doesnt' sell

 

[Lordmarkus]

I can draw this whole ingratitude thing but is just mislead nostalgia.

If PC gaming just suddenly would drop dead before my eyes, would I care? Sure it would sting a bit but then I'd just remind myself that I got a back catalogue of 30 years of games that I would enjoy a thousanful more than the average console game they spit out today.

We are in a rough patch on the PC sure but i think Epic is not thinking globally. Many emerging markets (especially eastern Europe and Europe as a whole) are much more PC centric than he US has ever been. I think it's pretty insulting to say "Yep... all you have to look forward to is Social Networking MMOs" (well Zynga don't actually make games. more interatice extortion tools).

And by "Europe as a whole" I guess you mean everything except western Europe? PC has still a strong foothold in Germany and Scandinavia much thanks to Counter-Strike and WoW.

There were actually an report about gaming in large just recently and what plattform people preferably play on. LINK!! [http://corporate.newzoo.com/press/GamesMarketReport_FREE_030510.pdf]

 

[Delusibeta]

PC gaming has gone full circle from reletive obscurity to it's 'golden age' and now it's going back into reletive obscurity again.

It not like millions of people pirate console games is it... oh wait...

Allow me to think about that for a moment...nope.

I'm pretty certain that piracy is more prominant on the PC than it is on consoles (I'm no expert but I'm guessing it's a simpler process on PC than it would be on a PS3 or Xbox), I've seen places that do pirate DVDs, PC games and CDs (hell, you can just look on the internet or go to markets and find them by the tonne for pennies) but I have never heard of a place that sells pirated 360 games (I didn't even know they existed).

Relevent:

Source [http://kotaku.com/5500495/kotaku-census-2010-the-results-in-full]

On topic: Honestly? Saying Facebook will become "PC gaming" is ignorant. I'm not entirely convinced that Facebook will keep its dominant social network status by... ooh, 2012.

 

[Branches]

Yes, because PCs don't contain the newest graphics, hardware for future consoles, or the intelligence to know what we're talking about.

With Steam on PCs and MAcs now, nothing will stop digtal downloading but Bittorrent. But whatever.

I don't trust Epic for anymore than "RAHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHERES MY WIFEEEE"

 

[paketep]

Epic and their PCGA cronies (starting with Microsoft and SecuROM) are the ones killing PC gaming.

I for one well be glad if Epic GTFO of PC gaming and never returns. They haven't made a good game since 2004. If console gamers will gladly buy your boring cover simulators, all the better for them.

 

[Zhukov]

Ohh, ouch.

Then again, if the best that Epic can come up with is Gears of War then I'm not exactly distressed to see them go.

Oh, hello there Valve.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Honesty omg how refreshing! Thanks EPIC for actually admitting you're all in it for the money!

 

[Booze Zombie]

Guess this guy is only looking at physical sales of games.
If they bothered looking at download sales, they'd see Valve was doing pretty damn well, the Internet is where all the games are at.

 

[Aeshi]

How is this a disappointment?Epic haven't made any games worthy of the title "Epic" since UT2004!

 

[V8 Ninja]

Either way, we still got Valve, one of (if not THE) the best game companies around.

 

[D_987]

You're right, it is more prominent on PC, but it does exist on consoles too, in high numbers. I mean, more than a million people were banned from Xbox live when Microsoft went on a witchunt of cracked consoles.

You have a source for these "high numbers"? All the sources I've seen show a staggering amount of piracy occurs on the PC compared to the consoles - and that's before you take into account the fact consoles have much greater player numbers - an example:

Spoiler

Game-Specific Piracy Data

The data above indicates the general scale piracy, but the issue at hand is an examination of the piracy of PC games. A reasonably robust method of gauging the approximate scale of PC game piracy is to look at the torrents for the pirated releases of recent big-name games. In most cases there are multiple torrents available for the same game, however below I simply post a brief summary of the numbers involved from only a few of the more popular individual torrents and what they add up to as of the start of December 2008, using the popular torrent search engine Mininova:

Crysis Warhead (released Sept. 16 2008):

Crysis Warhead Multi-11 Full-Rip Skullptura - 84,139
Crysis Warhead MULTi10 CLONEDVD-iMMXpC - 54,029
Crysis Warhead-RELOADED - 36,240
Crysis WarHead 2008 - 29,836
CrYsis Warhead [MULTi10][CLONEDVD][FullGame][CrackIncl] KaYz 2008 - 22,784
Crysis Warhead CLONEDVD PC [English] - 16,039

The sample of torrents above adds up to 243,067 downloads for the PC version in just over a two month period. Note that Warhead sells for $29.99 as opposed to the $49.99 for a standard game.


Fallout 3 (released Oct. 30 2008):

PC Version:

Fallout 3-RELOADED--cgaurav?-- - 75,152
Fallout 3 Full-Rip Skullptura - 72,987
Fallout 3-RELOADED.[sitenameremoved.org] - 48,926
Fallout 3 [PC] - 45,130
Fallout.3-RELOADED.[sitenameremoved.com] - 12,226
Fallout 3-RELOADED [Full ISO/RPG/2008] - 12,110
FALLOUT 3-TRiViUM - 5,032

I counted almost 90 individual torrents for the full PC version of Fallout 3. The small sample listed above adds up to 271,563 downloads in a one month period.

XBox 360 Version:

Fallout 3 USA XBOX360-RUiNS - 6,649
Fallout 3 READNFO XBOX360-Seed4ME - 5,612
Fallout 3 PAL XBOX360-GLoBAL - 4,220
Fallout 3 GERMAN-0x0007 - 2,336
Fallout 3 USA PROPER RETAIL XBOX360-x360inT - 1,171

I counted around 30 individual torrents for the XBox 360 version of Fallout 3. The sample listed above adds up to 19,988 downloads in a one month period.

PS3 Version:

I couldn't find any Fallout 3 torrents which were labelled as or appeared to be for the PS3.


Call of Duty 4 (released Nov. 6 2007):

PC Version:

Call of duty 4 [PC-DVD] [English] 3876100 TPB - 205,277
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Full-Rip Skullptura - 111,310
Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare [English][PCDVD] - 96,082
Call Of Duty 4 [PCFullGame][Eng-DvD][CrackIncl] KaYZ 2008 - 43,805
Call Of Duty 4-Razor1911 - 40,839
Call Of Duty 4-Razor1911 [sitenameremoved.com] - 21,456
Call Of Duty 4 - 18,295
++sitenameremoved com++-Call of Duty 4 DVD Modern Warfare - 17,212
Call of Duty(R) 4 - Modern Warfare - 12,300

I counted over 100 active torrents for the PC version of this game, a year after its release. The sample listed above adds up to 566,000 downloads in a one year period.

XBox 360 Version:

XBOX 360 Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warface [PAL] - 12,231
Call Of Duty 4 PAL FR XBOX360-PROPER - 11,758
[Xbox360-ITA]Call Of Duty 4- Modern Warfare - 9,702
Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PAL FRENCH XBOX 360 - 9,277
Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warface PAL XBOX360-GAC[sitenameremoved.org] - 7,182
Call of Duty 4 [PAL - Spanish - XBOX360] - 5,194
Call Of Duty 4 ENG XBOX360 - 3,513

There were around 20 XBox 360 torrents for this game, and the sample listed above adds up to 58,857 downloads.

PS3 Version:

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX - 24,185
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PAL PS3-MRN () - 9,484
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PAL PS3-MRN - 6,876
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX[sitenameremoved.net] - 5,382
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX[sitenameremoved.org] - 3,683
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX[sitenameremoved.org] - 3,065

There were only 6 PS3-labelled torrents for this game, and I've listed all of them above, adding up to 52,657 downloads over the past year.


For those questioning whether these figures are even remotely accurate, one well-known piracy site recently released a Top 10 Pirated PC Games of 2008 listing, and they even went so far as to insist that torrent figures compiled in this manner should be highly accurate.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

I doubt the numbers will have dramatically changed over a few years. Yes Microsoft banned a lot of people - or so they say; but how many of those banned were down to piracy is unknown.

To be honest the fact people are so arrogant they seem to think they know more about the games industry than the president of EPIC games astounds me; he might be wrong, he might not be, but some posters claiming his words are "garbage" is pretty pretentious at best - he obviously understands the industry to a greater extent than anyone posting here.

 

[Darkstar370]

Less brown shooters for the PC?

I can live with that.