Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Canadamus Prime]

Is it my imagination or has piracy become the go to thing whenever we need something to blame?
Lack of PC Exclusives?
Piracy
Huge traffic accident on Highway 5?
Piracy
Today's forecast calling for cloudy with a 70% chance of showers?
Piracy

 

[ph0b0s123]

The dumb thing is the PC does not have 'exclusives'. Just games other platforms of the time could not handle. So now consoles are in the same ball park as PC's as far a processing, exclusives were always going to decrease. Piracy or not PC games sales are always generally going to be less than consoles sales, so people go to the bigger market. You can see this when you notice that most games now are designed for consoles and then ported to the PC after the fact.

A good pc is actually many times more powerful than a console. That power wont get you much since we haven't had a game that chews up rigs and spits them out like Crysis since then though. Since most games are made for consoles, all that extra power goes mostly unused.

But the gap is not as big as it was in the PS2 days, when completely different versions of the same game were made for the console market verses the PC market. That's when games unique to the PC were more prevalent.

I have to interject here, the gap is BIGGER THAN EVER. John Carmack has gone on the record that PC gaming is capable of 10x processing load of any of the consoles (even PS3).

PS3 has 256MB of system memory. A typical PC today has 4 GIGAbytes of System memory that is much faster, that is 16x the capacity. And it's pretty common to find PCs with 8GB of system memory. 360's PowerPC based CPU is small potatoes compared to Intels beasts and AMD's crazy octo-core processors.

Completely different games ARE made, Battlefield 3 is a whole different beast on PC than on console. PC gets extra physics, DX11 graphics and physics plus extra model detail. I remember back in the day, Turok 2 and Quake 3 were the same games on Console and PC but just with differing levels of detail.

GTA Vice City and San Andreas had the exact same content between PS2 and PC.

Unless you have something that says what the power difference was back in the PS2 days, quoting Carmack does not help much. You can read specs out to your hearts content. Syaing it is x10 now, is great but it may well have been x100 back then.

Your example of BF is rubbish as all that difference has no effect on the gameplay. It is the same game, same campaign, just with the PC having better graphics. The only mechanic difference between the two versions is the number of players in multiplayer between the two platforms.

The fact is back when the PS2 etc were around, you had a PC version and a console versions of the game things like Far Cry vs Far Cry Instincts, Battlefield 2 vs Battlefield 2 Modern Combat. The way the game played, the campaign, the mechanics, etc were different, rather than the game being the same but with the PC just having better graphics. Actually the Medal of Honour Series release history [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor_%28series%29#Games_in_the_series] demonstrates this perfectly, until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release. Different versions were made of the two markets.

There were muti-format games back then, like GTA, etc, but they were the exception rather than the rule. The main thing this console generation has brought for better or worse, is convergence between console and PC gaming experiences, fact. Hence the decrease in unique to PC games.

 

[Shjade]

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

If it is, I won't be buying that either. And no, that doesn't mean "I'll pirate it." It means I played the KoA demo and thought it felt pretty sloppy in every category other than the art. Combat was loose and inconsistent, NPC interaction was misleading (key example I'm thinking of: an NPC gives me a quest to steal a book; I steal the book; NPC now no longer will talk to me because I'm a thief, despite having TOLD ME TO STEAL THE BOOK FOR HER; cannot complete quest. Awesome.), factioning (can't think of a better term to describe interactions that change how entire groups of NPCs view your character) can be sunk permanently from what I can tell (broke out of prison one time, guards would no longer even give me a chance to talk and pay for crimes, was just kill on sight for the rest of the demo)... yeah, I'll pass, thanks.

I do appreciate the demo, though! It's always better to have some way to confirm whether or not I want a game by getting some actual gameplay to judge rather than cinematic trailer that doesn't tell me anything about the game itself. That doesn't mean I'm guaranteed to buy it.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Absolute crock of puffin shit.

This man is completely ignorant of the fact Valve have made a heaping wad of money from Steam because it's a better service than piracy, and the fact that a leak is the fault of the company, and that if you had better security, you'd be in business.

Also, successful games aren't pirated as much as shit games, unless your Crysis 2, which isn't downloaded to play at all, it's used as a trial by fire in FPS benchmarking.

 

[Blueblood]

I love hearing about pre release piracy specifically killing sales, because its the most blatant admission that the actual game was bad enough to kill its own hype.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

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

I have never ever bought this argument. The fact that you want a game bad enough to pirate/steal it makes you a potential customer. It's just a matter of finding out what incentive it would take to make you want to buy it. The only people that aren't considered "lost sales" are those that never wanted to get it under any circumstances, even if they gave it away for free.

I mean think about it. People only steal something because they either want it for themselves or they want to give it to someone else who wants it in exchange for something that other person has that they want. Would you really bother stealing something that neither you nor anybody else wanted?

It is not stealing. No matter how you want to compare it to anything it is not and never will be stealing. It is copyright infringement. No, that does not make it right but stop calling it stealing it is not stealing. There are many reason people choose to pirate that are not thought of when looking at numbers eg circumventing shitty DRM, possible demo, from a poorer part of the world, no localisation, etc.

This is not a straight forward black and white issue people make it out to be.

Console gamers have just been better to the developers tbh. I mean I loved pc gaming back in the day, but save for rts and mmos, its basically dead, and piracy is the chief cause, I dont really care who you are what you say. I agree that piracy is not a 1:1 loss of sales, but you cannot argue that piracy has no effect on sales. To do so would be pants shittingly retarded

Are you really suggesting that just because a large number of people who happen to play on console buy solely on marketing and brand recognition makes them good to developers? That is only good for publishers. Piracy is not the cause of the shift towards consoles if it was they wouldn't go to consoles, as if you don't remember on this site there was an article about banned X box 360s.

I remember that it was in the order of 1 million which when it is taken in to consideration the general opinion is that most console piracy happens offline that is a staggering number. Another thing many people fail to consider is that console pirates do no pirate games themselves let alone chip their consoles. They pay someone to do it for them and then buy games from that person.

 

[Thaliur]

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?

It wasn't just Titan Quest. I remember Sacred having quite an ingenious anti-piracy measure which triggered a deliberate "bug" on cracked installs that causes the player to get teleported to an island which is impossible to leave on area transistions. Pretty awesome idea, actually, especially since it didn't ALWAYS happen so it was possible to play the game anyway, while being annoyed into buying it.

I have no idea how the game managed to realise it was cracked, though. I tried several No-CD patches to avoid having to look for the disc every time, and none seemed to be able to get around this.

 

[NortherWolf]

I'm gonna go with this fellow.

We're on the internet for fuck's sake. There is absolutely no justification for using piracy to "demo" a game anymore. You can find plenty of reviews, screenshots, system specs, gameplay video/trailers, etc. all over the place. If you made an ignorant purchasing decision, it's no one's fault but your own.

"Hey guys, we know we've like, bought off every reviewer in town, and we've got those spambots giving positive praise to our games...And we know you might want to play the game before paying for it but look at the pretty pictures! They're even moving!!!!!!"
Yeah, can't see why anyone would want old-time demo's.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

YES

YES YES YES

FOR THE LOVE OF YES, YES!!

This is an excellent mindset! Please, do abandon the PC! Do it slowly, let the console ports be so terrible the sales are crippled, giving you even more reason to abandon the platform! Luckily, the console version DVDs are protected by a magical barrier sent by the gods, so there is no way in hell the crafty and now angrily united PC community will radically improve emulator technology to still enjoy the latest games. There is also no way that this will give people more moral justification to pirate (and strengthen the "It's a service problem" argument").
(It is also completely impossible that new console generations that will without a doubt follow the trend of current gen consoles that add more and more hard- and software variables and are generally becoming more like a PC, will make developing for console equally tiring as developing for PC)

Everything he does, he does to strengthen the piracy scene obviously. How very selfless of him. I thought he was against piracy at first, but man was I wrong.

 

[MrTub]

You have to actually ask about Valve's PC exclusive? Dota 2, last month. Also Alien Swarm. Team Fortress 2, not just to move to free-to-play but ALL the extra content being PC exclusive.

Do you have ANY clue what you are talking about? How do you form such breathless opinions about what you clearly know so little about.

PC was last pushed to its limits with Crysis 2 (2011) running the most advanced DX11 rendering and then Battlefield 3 also pushing the limits to the point where console gamers have complained about how much inferior their version is by comparison. Do you have ANY clue about PC gaming??!?!?

And what the hell is a "triple A" exclusive in actual definitive terms? That is 100% subjective. Hawken is a Triple-A exclusive by any standards. How about Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Star Wars The Old Republic? The smallest speculation about these games have gotten headline stories on this site, is that not Triple-A worthy?

And what Triple-A exclusives have we got to look forward to on Xbox 360 by comparison? Halo 4?

Please, terms like "Triple-A" are credit ratings. Not game categories.

Ummmm time to reel it in buddy. You've got Dota 2 sure, but then you go Alien swarm and team fortress 2 which was released last decade. You're reallly stretching there.

And wow, if Crysis 2 was pushing the limit, then I have to say that Im wholeheartedly unimpressed. Also not pc exclusive.

And triple A means BIG GAME, the Starcrafts, the Diablo's (3 is going to consoles), the old republics, sure, I never said PC has none of them, just that they dont have even close to more exclusives than consoles combined as you so hastily claimed.

I know people who react this way, often they are super defensive of the 5000 dollar rig they bought 6 months ago that isnt being pushed in any really impressive way.

I know people who react like you do and often they are super defensive of the inferior console and trying to say its better/same as pc but in reality they are not even close.

And as previous people have posted please take a look at this list

Spoiler

 

[Marik Bentusi]

Reasons not to pirate a PC game:

1) It rewards developers by paying them.
2) Less chance of malware and other shit being put onto your comnputer.

Reasons TO pirate a PC game:

1) Some PC developers DEFINITELY put malware on your PC.
2) Pirated copies don't need an internet connection to play OFFLINE SINGLE PLAYER games.
3) Pirates don't treat you like a criminal.
4) Pirates don't charge you £40 for a product worth £4.
5) Pirates don't blame their shitty, unpopular products on developers.

I love how law enforcement isn't even up in the first list. Everybody's doing it like taping radio songs apparently.

 

[Dana22]

Big-budget PC exclusives are pretty much unheard of in this day and age.

http://i.imgur.com/iTZtG.jpg

Feel free to compare list of exclusives. I can count at least 20 big budget titles for PC.

 

[Treblaine]

The dumb thing is the PC does not have 'exclusives'. Just games other platforms of the time could not handle. So now consoles are in the same ball park as PC's as far a processing, exclusives were always going to decrease. Piracy or not PC games sales are always generally going to be less than consoles sales, so people go to the bigger market. You can see this when you notice that most games now are designed for consoles and then ported to the PC after the fact.

A good pc is actually many times more powerful than a console. That power wont get you much since we haven't had a game that chews up rigs and spits them out like Crysis since then though. Since most games are made for consoles, all that extra power goes mostly unused.

But the gap is not as big as it was in the PS2 days, when completely different versions of the same game were made for the console market verses the PC market. That's when games unique to the PC were more prevalent.

I have to interject here, the gap is BIGGER THAN EVER. John Carmack has gone on the record that PC gaming is capable of 10x processing load of any of the consoles (even PS3).

PS3 has 256MB of system memory. A typical PC today has 4 GIGAbytes of System memory that is much faster, that is 16x the capacity. And it's pretty common to find PCs with 8GB of system memory. 360's PowerPC based CPU is small potatoes compared to Intels beasts and AMD's crazy octo-core processors.

Completely different games ARE made, Battlefield 3 is a whole different beast on PC than on console. PC gets extra physics, DX11 graphics and physics plus extra model detail. I remember back in the day, Turok 2 and Quake 3 were the same games on Console and PC but just with differing levels of detail.

GTA Vice City and San Andreas had the exact same content between PS2 and PC.

Unless you have something that says what the power difference was back in the PS2 days, quoting Carmack does not help much. You can read specs out to your hearts content. Syaing it is x10 now, is great but it may well have been x100 back then.

Your example of BF is rubbish as all that difference has no effect on the gameplay. It is the same game, same campaign, just with the PC having better graphics. The only mechanic difference between the two versions is the number of players in multiplayer between the two platforms.

The fact is back when the PS2 etc were around, you had a PC version and a console versions of the game things like Far Cry vs Far Cry Instincts, Battlefield 2 vs Battlefield 2 Modern Combat. The way the game played, the campaign, the mechanics, etc were different, rather than the game being the same but with the PC just having better graphics. Actually the Medal of Honour Series release history [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor_%28series%29#Games_in_the_series] demonstrates this perfectly, until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release. Different versions were made of the two markets.

There were muti-format games back then, like GTA, etc, but they were the exception rather than the rule. The main thing this console generation has brought for better or worse, is convergence between console and PC gaming experiences, fact. Hence the decrease in unique to PC games.

There was not a x100 fold difference in power between PS2 and PC. That's ridiculous. They were closer then than now by comparing CPU clocks and available system memory.

I also don't think you appreciate what a gulf in difference an order of magnitude processing power means, that is conventionally the difference between generations of hardware.

"until the 360 / PS3, the PC and consoles never shared a game version release."

You speak with remarkably certainty about something you are clearly very ignorant about. Some of the MANY examples to the contrary:

-Soldier of Fortune
-Max Payne
-Max Payne 2
-Elder Scrolls Morrowind
-Jedi Knight 2: Jedi outcast
-Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
-No One Lives Forever
-Counterstrike
-Rainbow Six
-Starcraft
-Command & Conquer
-Hidden & Dangerous
-Quake 3
I could go on.

"all that difference has no effect on the gameplay. It is the same game, same campaign, just with the PC having better graphics." what you said about BF3, applies just as well with this list of games fro PS2 era and even PS1 era.

Console got a version with identical game-play, levels, etc, just differing controls and graphics. You are talking ABSOLUTE NONSENSE to say that back then it was the rule for console games to be redesigned to make up for the vast gulf in difference in power.

There are more exceptions to this "rule" of yours than there are actual examples!

Far Cry was just a weird decision that came from how Crytek owned the right to the GAME Far Cry, but Ubisoft owned the rights to the Name and characters and so on. Crytek had no interest in console gaming (that continued through to Crysis + Warhead) so no port but Ubisoft could get third party studies to ride off the brand name making new games. The different versions have NOTHING to do with differences in hardware.

Those Medal of Honor examples aren't different versions. They are completely different games, made from scratch. Medal of Honor Underground has a completely different developer team and different design focus than Allied Assault, and they were made for how at the time console and PC gaming tastes were hugely different. Remember, Medal of Honor Underground came out on consoles the same time as cheesefest Perfect Dark was a huge hit on consoles, while PC gamers were getting their tast of Sim-war shooters and the frenetic pace of Quake. Halo had not introduced many to console controls.

PC and console have converged somewhat, in the broadest sense with things like the idea of multiplayer gaming.

But mostly they are hugely distinct and they are growing further apart.

 

[Treblaine]

Reasons not to pirate a PC game:

1) It rewards developers by paying them.
2) Less chance of malware and other shit being put onto your comnputer.

Reasons TO pirate a PC game:

1) Some PC developers DEFINITELY put malware on your PC.
2) Pirated copies don't need an internet connection to play OFFLINE SINGLE PLAYER games.
3) Pirates don't treat you like a criminal.
4) Pirates don't charge you £40 for a product worth £4.
5) Pirates don't blame their shitty, unpopular products on developers.

But:

1) Some pirates DEFINITELY put malware on your PC
2) Cracks let you break DRM of your bought copy, pirating the whole game is too much
3) Pirates DO treat you like criminals, but honour amongst thieves
4) Pirates don't charge anything from something that is definitely worth some amount of money
5) Pirates play the blame game along with developers, as if two wrong make a right.

There are very few reasons to pirate games, and yours are none of them.

Somewhat excusable reasons include:
-the game is banned from sale in your country: so any sale is impossible anyway
-the game in question is sold at a far far higher price than anywhere else in the world yet with smallest return to creator (Australia)
-in protest against publisher stealing IP from developer without due compensation, such as Tetris or the situation with Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
-the game is not on sale anywhere as it is virtually abandoned (not even on GoG.com)
-you are dirt dirt poor (I doubt anyone who has use of computer can't afford a game)

 

[OManoghue]

Now now, lets not listen to this man, he works for EA.

And honestly, who cares about exclusives, I'd be happy if all my friends could play the Witcher 2 because it's so much better than some of the other schlock that comes out, same with Demon Souls and Uncharted.

 

[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

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?

 

[Raiha]

i question whether it is piracy itself or publishers reaction to piracy that is killing the PC exclusive.
that being said, for fucks sake pay for the games you play and we won't have this problem. you are not special, you are not owed anything, and you do not deserve to play any game you have not paid for.