Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[ph0b0s123]

I like how he said the actual cause and then blamed it on piracy.

Making games is expensive. Making sure games will work with every possible hardware configuration is even more expensive. If you feel your game isn't good enough to make the number of sales required to cover the cost of development then you don't make the game. Consoles are easy, you work with specific hardware and can design your code to take full advantage of the limited hardware.

Blaming your lack of sales on piracy is a cop out for admitting your product wasn't good enough for people to actually want to buy it. I also like how everyone has an opinion in spite of every credible study that has ever been published.

"If you feel your game isn't good enough to make the number of sales required to cover the cost of development then you don't make the game."

That is not it any more. The calculation is not will it make a profit or be a loss, it is will it make consoles profits. Ubisoft said it recently when they said they were not interested in a PC version of a game as they would only make half a million off it.

 

[lordmardok]

But according to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Lead Designer Ian Frazier, nailing the lucrative console market isn't necessarily the biggest impediment to major PC exclusives. "No, probably not. A game this big is very expensive, to be blunt about it," he told IncGamers [http://www.incgamers.com/News/30386/reckoning-dev-rampant-piracy-makes-big-budget-pc-exclusives-unlikely] when asked whether a game like Kingdoms of Amalur could make it on the PC alone. "The PC, with piracy being as rampant as it is, is really hard to make money from. My first game was Titan Quest, a hack 'n' slash RPG, which was PC only, but the amount that it was pirated was the difference between us staying in business and going out of business."

It's not impossible to do well by focusing on the PC but the bottom line is that the open nature of the system makes the risk of failure, even with a really good game, much higher. "It's really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC," he said. "Unless you're an MMO."

I bought Titan Quest. I played Titan Quest. Believe me when I say this: pirates were not the issue. The game just kinda sucked in comparison to it's vastly superior predecessor Diablo II. This is just a shameless bandwagon jump to gain publicity from the currently hot topic of pirating games what with SOPA and all it's ratty little offspring. If a game is good then people will buy it, if it's well made and competently designed then it will at least do well. Of course it's not possible to prevent people from pirating it but that won't keep a good game from doing well.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

So is this the "new" way to advertize? Troll the consumers right before release?

Pretty sure this isn't the first time someone has done this.

 

[m72_ar]

As much as I hate it when a developer blames bad sales on piracy, if you don't think piracy is a serious problem on the PC you're blind.

While you can argue that HL2, Witcher 2, and SC2 is highly succesful. you are talking about some of the biggest IP in PC gaming and they will be very profitable no matter what. The case is not true for a mid level IP like this one

While I don't think piracy is too blame for everything, believing that it's not affecting a game profitability on the PC is just not ignorant

 

[BlueMage]

Eh, kinda hard to care what someone from fucking Iron Lore claims. After all they claimed Soul Storm getting pirated to hell was what shut them down. Anyone who played Soul Storm knows that it was Soul Storm being shit that shut them down.

So no. Its just bigger install base of consoles that makes it easier.

I don't get the hate for Soul Storm. Without it, we'd never have known about the tendency for OUH ENAMEES to hide in METUHL BAWKSES the COWHARDS, the FEWLS! Or that WE! We should TAKE AWAY their METUHL BAWKSES.

 

[theultimateend]

Hahaha oh you.


As if console piracy doesn't exist. Go stick your head in the sand some more.

Fantastic for exfoliating.

 

[Sylveria]

Poor Titan Quest...

Thanks PC gaming pirates... thanks for fucking that up.

I also find the last line interesting : "It's really, really hard to be profitable by concentrating only on PC," he said. "Unless you're an MMO."

Wasn't the idea of Kingdoms of Amawhatever supposed to be the intro for their MMO game?

Yeah, darn pirates, they ruin all the PC games, except for all those hugely successful ones.

Oh, hey, crazy thought, but maybe, just maybe, good games sell and bad games don't?

Good games are also pirated like crazy, didn't you hear?

Portal 2, Skyrim, L.A.Noire (okay, you can argue that isn't a great game) Katawa Shoujo (lol, it's free) Saint's Row 3, Angry Birds... ect ect...

Sure, you can argue that it's okay since these games sold like sliced bread, but do you really think the people who made them don't deserve anymore money... er, uhm... yeah, you could be the type of 'person' to say that... but what about the people who made King Arthur II, Anno 2070, The Witcher 2, Dirt 3, Might and Magic Heroes VI, Total War Shogun 2, Need for Speed The run, Dead Island...

All the games are pirated like crazy every fucking day. Doesn't that piss you off just a little? Is your idea of acceptable some imaginary number of profits that once crossed, equals free piracy rights for all the cheap fucks of the world?

(all games mentioned are in the top 50 pirated PC games)

A lot of the games in the top 50 pirated games are on STEAM also, so you can stop the whole restrictive DRM makes it okay bullshit.

It's scapegoating. If you game fails, blame it on pirates. Ignore any other issues, just blame the pirates. It's the perfect rationalization. Heck, Titan Quest failed because of Piracy, but not because of the pirates, but because of their DRM which made their game look buggy and broken. If that failed attempt at anti-piracy wasn't in the game, it may not met the fate it did.

Simple fact of the matter is there's many games that are successful despite being heavily pirated. You can't ignore them just because it doesn't mesh with your view. Why did Portal 2 still sell millions? Why did Skyrim still sell millions? Why did The Witcher 2 still sell millions? Cause they weren't pirated? Of course not, they were games that people wanted to buy.

Piracy is the result of the increasingly anti-consumer direction that the game industry went in. High prices, poor quality, no returns, and fewer and fewer methods to try before you buy.
For example, I'm thinking of getting Skyrim, ya know, one of those little indie games no one has heard of, but I've never liked WRPGs really. So what am I to do? Demo it? Nope, not over Steam anyway. Rent it? Can't rent PC games and I'm not interested in the console version. Borrow a friend's copy? That's a TOS violation. Just read reviews and hope for the best right?

So I go ahead and get it, I hate it, then what? Return it? Nope. Trade it in? Nope. I've flushed $60 down the toilet. I can't even give the game to someone else after that.

So what are my options? Gambling or piracy. I can spend my $60 and hope for the best, or I can pirate it, try it out, and then determine if I want to spend my money on it. Are they losing a sale? Nope, cause my purchasing was contingent on it being a product I wanted. If I had the option to rent (give them a small amount of money in exchange for a small time-frame of ownership which would expire.) or legally demo (A demonstration of a product which gives an individual hands on time with said product to determine if they wish to purchase it's completed form) I totally would have, but they did not offer me those options. My options were "Buy it, sight unseen, at full price" or "Don't"

Did I pirate it and try it? No I didn't, but I certainly don't decry people who do. Same as I don't condemn people who buy a game that's drowning in DRM, then "pirate" a cracked copy of a game THEY OWN, because Ubisoft or whoever wants to keep a leash on them. And I'd bet really good money that the vast majority of pirated games are people who do it for those reasons, not as someway to get stuff for free.

I still haven't bought Skyrim, The Witcher 2, Serious Sam BFE, and number of other titles that I am genuinely interested in, but am unsure if they're "my thing" and I have no legal way to discover that without buying them at full price with absolutely no way to recover my loses if I do not enjoy my product.

So my solution to piracy? Don't make garbage, include more demos, and engineer some sort of "rental" option for PC games. With Steam around, the latter 2 should be a breeze. The first one is up to the developers, but don't come crying to me when your shitty game fails because of what you put into it.

And let us not forget that many of these companies consider the Used market as bad as piracy. These people, of course, bought new cars, new appliances, new houses, new wives, new everything, because if not, going by EA logic, they've pirated their car, their fridge, their home, their wife, and so on, because they bought it used. No money went back to the retailer/construction company/parents of those things.

Can you imagine if they outlawed the purchase of used homes? What about those poor builders who spent so much time to make that house, don't they deserve a cut of the resale? Why does the retailer/bank get all the money, they sure didn't build it. This is the exact argument that people use to condemn used video games/movies/etc.

 

[Treblaine]

Spoiler

almost every one of those are mmos or rts, and the 80% of them are most definitely NOT triple A. Nice try, but this strengthens my argument, not yours

And Ryse, Haunt, Steel battalion, American nightmare is triple A games?

So if you compare, 20% of the pc only games are triple A (According to you) which means 51/5=10,2 games are triple A for pc, and on xbox you got one triple A game which means that you actually get 9.2 more triple A games for pc. So I do not understand how it strengthen your argument.

And may I ask why mmo & rts doesnt count?

MMO and RTS dont count because Ive already conceded from the very beginning that these are healthy markets on pc, mainly because the genre limits them from being on consoles.

Really? Well if that is the case then we can exclude jRPGs and motion gimmick games.

Btw, the list you spoilerd should be PC exclusive vs console exclusive, not ps3, xbox exclusive, its just being disngenuous. Those arent the only 2 consoles in the world.

Well that is fair, three consoles gang up on PC. OR do you mean to include PSP, DS, 3DS as well? God, you need to stack every odd don't you. It's it enough that you exclude a load of the most popular genres from PC. You wouldn't be charitable enough to include android/apple app marketpalce on PC side?

And besides, its only a list of 2012. The year only just started, there will be many more games announced from now to the summer.

But that's a zero-sum difference, it will affect all platforms equally. No advantage/disadvantage to any.

why should that affect jrpgs or motion games? FF7 played perfectly on my pc, and you guys are getting an upgraded kinect for 250 dollars, motion work will perfectly on pc. I suppose you could make the point about ps3 keyboards and mice or whatever, this is small stuff. ANyway this discussion is getting needlessly acute, its simple, is the market for AAA pc gaming growing or shrinking? lets compare now vs 2000. Was pc gaming stronger back then or is it stronger now? Simple question.

Oh, so technically jRPGs and Kinect is possible on PC. So too are MMO and Strategy games technically possible on console.

So, which way do you want it to be, you can't have it both ways.

"needlessly acute"

What? Needlessly "short terms severe medical symptoms"?!?!?

 

[Treblaine]

Spoiler

almost every one of those are mmos or rts, and the 80% of them are most definitely NOT triple A. Nice try, but this strengthens my argument, not yours

16 of the PC games on that incomplete list are neither MMO nor any sort of strategy.

While you are excluding games, why not exclude J-RPGs from the list as well? And what about crappy Kinect games? Hmm? IS Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time the Triple-A game of 2012? Mario Party 9?

PS: you've got balls to arbitrarily dismiss an argument then say that strengthens your own. Not very big balls, but balls all the same.

Yea im picturing you with your fingers in your ears going "LALALALALA CONSOLETARD LALALALA" because youre not listening to my point. Your arguument is that piracy is somehow not affecting the gaming market at all or the decisions of publishers and developers to migrate away from pc, that is simply uninformed. Look at pc gaming ten years aago vs. today. Is it as robust or exciting? If you say yes then, we have nothing more to discuss. Simple answer yes or no

Yes

(I don't have delusions piracy isn't affecting PC gaming, be Piracy has been ask easy an prevalent today as in the 1980's. I think the number of exclusives and lack of games getting console-only release as evidence that devs are NOT migrating away from PC)

 

[MrTub]

Spoiler

almost every one of those are mmos or rts, and the 80% of them are most definitely NOT triple A. Nice try, but this strengthens my argument, not yours

16 of the PC games on that incomplete list are neither MMO nor any sort of strategy.

While you are excluding games, why not exclude J-RPGs from the list as well? And what about crappy Kinect games? Hmm? IS Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time the Triple-A game of 2012? Mario Party 9?

PS: you've got balls to arbitrarily dismiss an argument then say that strengthens your own. Not very big balls, but balls all the same.

Yea im picturing you with your fingers in your ears going "LALALALALA CONSOLETARD LALALALA" because youre not listening to my point. Your arguument is that piracy is somehow not affecting the gaming market at all or the decisions of publishers and developers to migrate away from pc, that is simply uninformed. Look at pc gaming ten years aago vs. today. Is it as robust or exciting? If you say yes then, we have nothing more to discuss. Simple answer yes or no

Snip

You might want to add some stuff otherwise he will most likely report you and then you will get a warning

 

[Treblaine]

Love your mis-reading of everything I wrote. I said it 'may well have been x100' not it was. And no you cannot just look at CPU clocks and memory. CPU clocks on the PC have been about the same for the past fives years if not longer, around 3GHz. But the power has gone up due to different architectures. Unless you have got something that says the difference was less than the supposed x10 difference there is now then you cannot prove the disparity was not more then.

Well it is YOU who is claiming the difference in power between consoles and PC in the PS2 era. That places the burden of proof on you as you are countering the statement I shared from John Carmack.

"until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release." For Medal of Honour, fairly obvious I was talking about only Medal o Honour. That there were multiformat games at the time was not being disagreed with.

Also made some note about your supposed good examples of these games were on console too games. Cannot be bother to point out why the rest also don;t qualify as 'multi format' as the term is used today.

There are so many reasons for these Medal of Honor game differentiation from console and PC.

My point of listing the MANY examples of games getting co-releases/ports between console and PC as evidence for how the PC-console gulf was not so great.

No, most games are multi-format now with their being no difference between the PC and consoles versions apart from the graphics fidelity and the option to use mouse and keyboard. If you believe they are getting further apart how come most PC games are still using DirectX 9 to render graphics, I wonder why? I am a huge PC fan and have hardly gamed on anything else since I got my first PC in 1989, but even I am not deluded enough in my fandom to that most of our games now, are pretty much what you get on other platforms now. Your belive that they are growing further apart is crazy. The only thing growing further aprt is the processing divide which will be cut again when the next gen of consoles launch.

Well one treason I think most are still on DX9 is because DX10 has been a massive failure, with hardly any of its features being worth while, it can't really do anything you couldn't to almost as well but more efficiently in DX9. DX11 has just become available and MANY games are taking GREAT advantage of it.

 

[Warforger]

I'd make a list of upcoming PC Exclusives, but someone already did [http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216513p1.html]. Enjoy the impossibilities!

I'd make a list of upcoming PC Exclusives, but someone already did [http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216513p1.html]. Enjoy the impossibilities!

Erm he said BIG BUDGET exclusives, while some of those there are big budget I'd imagine like Diablo 3 most seem to just be more indie games like Armored Gettysburg (balance things out? What? The Union had the advantage in everything except in morale and military expertise along with the CSA's possible foreign support).

 

[dulbirakan]

I want to be able to be more positive but to me Titan Quest was a soulless diablo clone. There are games that succeed in PC so maybe it is not the piracy but sth about TQ that caused its failure.

 

[ph0b0s123]

-snipped for space-

Well it is YOU who is claiming the difference in power between consoles and PC in the PS2 era. That places the burden of proof on you as you are countering the statement I shared from John Carmack.

Well back in 2005 when the PS2 was getting as long in the tooth as when Carmack made those coments about the current consoles, I had a PC with an AMD Athlon 64 CPU and a Nvidia GTX 7800 GPU.

According to the specs the emotion engine that powered the PS2 was capable of 6 GFLOPS of processing power.

The specs for my CPU were 10 GFLOPS and Nvidia GPU 165 - 200 GFLOPS. So more than x10. The ATI x850 PE I had before that was rated 66 GFLOPS, so it was x10 4 years into the PS2 life whereas John's claim about current consoles came 6 years into their lifetime.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_Engine
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx-hits-store-shelves,1106.html

-snipped for space-

There are so many reasons for these Medal of Honor game differentiation from console and PC.

So many reasons, the main one being processing power though. With the consoles of the time not being able to run even ported versions of the PC game.

My point of listing the MANY examples of games getting co-releases/ports between console and PC as evidence for how the PC-console gulf was not so great.

Half the games you mentioned had to wait years for ports to enable newer generations of consoles to arrive, but whatever.

-snipped for space-

Well one treason I think most are still on DX9 is because DX10 has been a massive failure, with hardly any of its features being worth while, it can't really do anything you couldn't to almost as well but more efficiently in DX9. DX11 has just become available and MANY games are taking GREAT advantage of it.

DX 11 has been around for years and it only has a minority of PC games that use it, but again whatever. What is true is that due to the long life of the current consoles, when they bow out the console vs PC processing difference will never have been as large.

 

[Tommahawk]

Actually, as a PC gamer, I don't give a fuck about "lack of big budged PC exlusive titles". And while I understand the concept between exlusive titles, I fact I don't really like the idea

 

[DTWolfwood]

Judging by how many pages this article already has, i can safely say that this article is one giant flame bait XD

rootofallevil already said pretty much what i think about it on page one.

 

[Treblaine]

-snipped for space-

Well it is YOU who is claiming the difference in power between consoles and PC in the PS2 era. That places the burden of proof on you as you are countering the statement I shared from John Carmack.

Well back in 2005 when the PS2 was getting as long in the tooth as when Carmack made those coments about the current consoles, I had a PC with an AMD Athlon 64 CPU and a Nvidia GTX 7800 GPU.

According to the specs the emotion engine that powered the PS2 was capable of 6 GFLOPS of processing power.

The specs for my CPU were 10 GFLOPS and Nvidia GPU 200 GFLOPS. So x100 was a bit low....

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_Engine
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx-hits-store-shelves,1106.html

-snipped for space-

There are so many reasons for these Medal of Honor game differentiation from console and PC.

So many reasons, the main one being processing power though. With the consoles of the time not being able to run even ported versions of the PC game.

My point of listing the MANY examples of games getting co-releases/ports between console and PC as evidence for how the PC-console gulf was not so great.

Half the games you mentioned had to wait years for ports to enable newer generations of consoles to arrive, but whatever.

-snipped for space-

Well one treason I think most are still on DX9 is because DX10 has been a massive failure, with hardly any of its features being worth while, it can't really do anything you couldn't to almost as well but more efficiently in DX9. DX11 has just become available and MANY games are taking GREAT advantage of it.

DX 11 has been around for years and it is only a minority or PC games that use it, but again whatever. What is true is that due to the long life of the current consoles, when they bow out the console vs PC processing difference will never have been as large.

"So x100 was a bit low...."

Even if that was a relevant comparison that's 33x, not over 100x

Weeeell, I hate to nit-pick but 2005 the Xbox 360 was released so if we're going to compare 2005 tech... And PS2 was rather on the low end for that era, Xbox Original was much more powerful, 22 GigaFLOPS capable GPU and you did just happen to have the most powerful GPU of 2005. 120 GFLOPS GeForce 6800 is a bit more representative

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=422171

"So many reasons, the main one being processing power though. With the consoles of the time not being able to run even ported versions of the PC game."

Except games like Max Payne and so many others (as listed) were developed on PC and yet ported to console.

Half the games you mentioned had to wait years for ports to enable newer generations of consoles to arrive

Original Xbox in 2002 is just as powerful as the Original Xbox in 2005, it's not going to be any easier to port one year or the next. All the games I listed got ported from PC within the same console generation time where they were released.

And yeah, it's been years of DX11, but only just over 2 years and there have been a lot of games, as with this non-comprehensive list illustrates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support

 

[AhumbleKnight]

Why are we measuring this with such a silly thing like who has more big buget exclusives?
Big budget != good.
Exclusives have been becoming less common for a long time. Why do we, gamers, wan't exclusives at all? I like the idea of every game becoming available on every platform. So do most developers. More platforms = bigger market and therefore potential greater profits (so long as extra dev costs for porting are outweighed by sales).

Frazier needs to stop blame shifting. Without evidence of piracy affecting sales it is mearly speculation. The reviews give it everything from average game to great. Mixed reviews do not instil confidence in a game.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Angry PC gamer here to say that a pirated game is not the equivalent of a lost sale.

Yeah, it's a product being used that wasn't paid for.

True but there is a good chance it wouldn't have been purchased in the first place.

I agree.

I fucking hate it when people say "oh, but it still could be purchased!". It's like a religious person saying to an atheist "Yeah, well YOU don't know what happens when we die, THEREFORE THERE IS A GOD". You can't prove or disprove what happens when you die, and you can't prove or disprove that someone would have bought the game in the first place.

That's such a scapegoat/defense mechanism. The fact is that a pirated incident is an incident in which the game is experienced with no exchange of money or compensation. That is what is unethical and unfair.

What happens AFTER that fact is irrelevant in a PC publisher's mind. The only thing that can be known for sure is that the experiencing of a game without paying for it is a potential sale lost....at that moment in time. I'm betting anything they're weighing in the idea that cheap bastards will outweigh honest and loyal gamers. I would too.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Lol, as if I needed another reason to not buy their game. Yeah I agree Starcraft 2 TOTALLY flopped because of all the piracy...Same with Half-Life 2 TOTALLY BOMBED /sarcasm

Does anything else really need to be said, Blizzard and Valve are two of the biggest most successful companies out there, and they are mostly PC developers. These guys are just trying to mask lazy design and try and stop piracy.

But guess what I'm not buying or pirating this game, in fact, shit if your game isn't worth my money, it sure as hell isn't worth my time.

Blizzard and Valve; the golden temple for PC gamers to go and hide in while commenting on industry news articles.

Guess what? Bliazzard has such a MASSIVE following that piracy doesn't affect it. It has Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and let's not forget, WoW.

Valve is the laziest game dev on the planet. Do you know what the Valve formula is?

1. Take Half-Life 1,2.
2. Change textures.
3. Add witty dialogue
4. Bake in multiplayer
5. Ask people for more money for basically some modification of one of the Half-Life games.
6. Charge $15-$20 so that people don't notice.
7. Revel in your ragingly borderline fascist fanbase's reaction to a "new" game.
8. Add in something retarded and useless like Hat Trading to further prevent people from noticing that they're just playing HL.