Hehe, yeah, I guess metacritic and professional game reviewers are whiners too. Giving out all those low scores saying these games are "mediocre" at best, or simply telling you to downright avoid them. Hell, I will even let you have 33% of games released in a year score 7's or higher. That still leaves 67% that are mediocre or garbage. All it takes to have a score of 7 is pretty much technical merit (no bugs) and intuitive controls/GUI. And plenty of games that get 8's and 9's fail in those two regards but are considered to make up for it in others. Hell, even Alpha Protocol scored an average that was around 7, and gamers call that game unplayable. New Vegas was a freakin' 9.
Well, at any rate, "opinions" aside, let's address these links. I was going to go through all of them one at a time explaining why you should be looking at each one as bias opinions/agendas and where their arguments had holes, but then I realized, something of greater need to be addressed was present. Every link you posted was on piracy. Not used games, piracy. That isn't the discussion here and these are NOT the same thing. The
ONLY thing these two have in common is that the developers see no money from the transaction so it is no surprise that THEY see them as the same thing. But from every single other aspect of the industry and market these are clear cut, bold faced, black and white not the same thing. They are worlds apart. They only share 1 commonality and even that one is sketchy at best. Because for every case where someone buys a game used, means somebody HAS TO buy one new. So even where they are similar, they are different.
However, I will still gloss over this list that you weren't exaggerating about the random part.
Baldr said:
Random Articles on Piracy
http://www.tradearabia.com/news/MEDIA_199246.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20006954-17.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/09/09/video.game.piracy/#fbid=0UUOvAM0_lo&wom=false
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201004190412.html
http://archive.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/piracy.shtm
First Link
Alright, first, considering the source of this, (an Anti-Piracy watchdog group) this needs to be gone into with a nod towards propaganda of one side to a two sided debate. One where both sides have valid studies and criticisms. I can post you just as many links about why piracy is good as you can ones claiming it is the devil. Reputable ones too like judge rulings and statistical studies. This is a slanted article by a watchdog group. But furthermore, the article actually destroys its own point. I will walk you through this one because this is total garbage of an article.
The article says "from a report", which it doesn't point to or link to or say anything else. I know where they are getting that number but guess what? That number is bogus and I will show you why later on in another link.
First link said:
At least 73 per cent of actual global revenue from video gaming is lost every year due to piracy, said a report.
Dubai-based Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance has highlighted the recent report published by top market research firm AM Mindpower Solutions to urge Internet gamers in the region to fully understand the adverse consequences of illegally downloading video games.
Ok, first off, that doesn't mean 70% of games out there are being pirated or nothing like that. That is a
hypothetical number and figure talking about a % of money. It is saying the industry is only making 27% of what the industry is (once again)
hypothetically worth.
Move on, blah, blah, blah...
[...]piracy severely threatens the growth of this industry. In a bid to save some money, gaming enthusiasts often illegally download pirated versions of popular video games, without realizing the damage it is causing, both to their PCs and gaming consoles, but at a broader level, to the gaming industry and the economy as well.[...]
Look at it just blowing this up to make it look like some dying industry that is about to go belly up. Oh no! The industry is about to go belly up, right? Oh wait, skip ahead and look at this:
According to a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global gaming market is expected to grow from $52.5 billion in 2009 to $86.8 billion in 2014.
Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. So you mean to tell me that with a 73% global revenue LOSS that the game industry is still continuing to become 70% more lucrative over a 5 year span in billions of dollars? How does that confirm that companies in the games industry are at risk?
And suddenly that whole article's point is garbage.
Second link:
Here is where I told you where that hypothetical figure is a crock of crap.
The group, which puts on the annual Tokyo Game Show, calculated the figure by seeing how often Japanese versions of the 20 best-selling games between 2004 and 2009 were pirated. It then multiplied that figure by the manufacturer's suggested retail price of each title.
Fallacy. First, games that don't sell well, don't get pirated much either. (World of Goo is the exception that proves the rule.) So tracking the pirated copies of the top 20 best selling video games is actually a slanted take on trying to represent the entire impact of piracy on the entire gaming industry. Best selling games get pirated more than any other games. Find me a game other than World of Goo (I have a theory as to why that one got such high piracy rates) that had a high piracy rate and didn't make millions of dollars of profit. You can't argue "the WHOLE industry" off the back of 1 circumstance.
So those are going to be some highly pirated games. Then you assume that each torrent is a copy that would have otherwise been sold. Fallacy again. People restore their computer, sometimes they have to restart the download due to bad trackers or even corrupted files. But it doesn't stop there. They then go on to assume those people would have bought the game at full price on its initial release.
That is 3 compounded fallacies to make a purposely extreme high hypothetical figure.
Third link:
Not even sure why you posted this one. It actually claims publishers are being stupid and greedy. See for yourself:
So here's the irony: For game creators, lowering costs and making titles widely available may actually be the solution to stamping out piracy.
People have been saying that all along. I bet if you dropped the price of a new game to 40 bucks, games being bought the week of release would at least double or at most triple. But publishers have been avoiding that no doubt to their marketing team where in sales and marketing dropping your price is the LAST thing you should do. That's why price drops take so long on new titles that sell well and happen quickly on new titles that don't and a second price drop takes even longer.
I would go on but honestly, I just don't care to point out fallacies that appear as common sense. Switching between these tabs has grown annoying enough. In a nutshell, all of those high piracy rates (which is imposible to accurately track anyways) increases the more you get into poorer countries and countries with heavy bans. Surprise, surprise. That doesn't hold weight if you are going to try and apply it to the industry as a whole.
And speaking of cheap DRM-free games, World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate. This statistic is based on the number of sales versus the number of IP addresses that submitted high scores. 2DBoy did do well with the game, but most independents go day to day with sales, it not just big publishers that are effected by piracy.
Well, how about Crytek? Crysis 2 was a highly anticipated game. It got leaked what, a month before release? Crytek simply came out and simply said 'Please, don't pirate our game. There is nothing we can do, just please don't." By release day it had roughly 10,000 downloads nationwide for America. Although, that may have been global. I don't remember, I just remember how cool it was that people didn't. 10K downloads for a highly anticipated game leaked a month early is insane.
As well, you have Stardock who came out and said "We don't use DRM because people are going to pirate our stuff either way. We'll put that money towards the games and hope people respect us for it." They have released many high selling strategy games.
There is 2 cases of DRM being ignored and people respected the company enough to not screw them over. World of Goo has a lot of factors coming in including people suspecting that the 90% piracy rate claim is bogus as too many variables come into play.
Game Stop Numbers:
Total Revenue:
2010: $9.47 billion
2009: $9.07 billion
2008: $8.8 billion
In 2010 pre-owned sales made up 26.1% of GameStop's total sales, which would be approximately $2.47 billion.
Sales (in millions) 2010:
New video game hardware $1,720.0
New video game software $3,968.7
Used video game products $2,469.8
Other $1,315.2
-----------------------------------
Total $9,473.7
45% of GameStop's total profits come from pre-owned sales
48% of customers buy pre-owned
19% of customers trade in games
For most titles, 1% of GS customers will represent 25-50%
of unit sales.
Trust me, I know Gamestop's numbers. I look that shit up in my spare time just to see stuff considering all this crap that is spewing all over the internet it is almost seeping out of my keyboard. Although, I am not following your math.
45% of 9,473.7 = 4,263.165
Used game products + Other = 3785
Plus, let's not forget some of that used game stuff is from previous generation stuff and doesn't effect the market now. Don't forget your potential variables. As well, consoles are included in that. And if you are going to try to add in "Other" you need to make sure you are compensating for strategy guides, keychains, etc.
*Checks link again*
Oh, lol. That article is almost 6 year old. Stay consistent, man! Haha. Yeah, those numbers ain't the same anymore though, they are more around the 30% total gross profit now. Market studies on Gamestop say it is a great business model because when the economy is good, things are great and when the economy is bad, Gamestop's model has a safety net in their used games revenue. But even in your article they are making 60% of their profit from new merchandise. (I can round up too. The real number is 43.X)
I have no problems with GameStop selling used games, except selling used copy of games that have just been released for $2-5 less than full retail.
Would you rather they undercut developers by 10 or 20 bucks and encourage used sales even more? You would then be having people lining up waiting for someone to return it.
and my used purchases are all pre-project 10$ >
