Here are a couple links. If you will check the second link, MS has seen profitability since fiscal year 2008, through to 2012, though you are correct about the original Xbox unit’s sales. The PS3 overall hasn’t been profitable for Sony, which is only worsened by the overall state of SCE. Basically I already stated that the consoles themselves usually always lose money, the real value is through the software and service attachment rate, which traditionally has been higher for the Xbox brand. Overall I feel the approach for Xbox has been long term or forward thinking, short term losses for long term profitability.
Nintendo as I mentioned, sales their console at or slightly above manufacturing costs, which limits the amount of software attachment necessary for them to break even on the production of the unit. They are also heavily supported by their handheld sales and software attachment. SCE. which the PS itself is apart of, is overall a liability for Sony. I am not sure how the PS2 skews SCE’s overall loss to profit ratio, I can’t really find much previous to around 07. It could just be a difference in how each companies classify the product, MS has an Xbox division while Sony places the PS under the gaming and electronics division and not separately (I could be wrong on that but I will check).
this is by far the most stupid statement in the history of the world. If you stole it that means you didn’t pay for it, thus no sale happened. Saying Piracy promotes sales is equal to saying rape promotes marriage.
It does promote sales in a way though since nowadays nearly no demos are released to try a game and decide if it’s worth your money or not. One of the easiest way now to try it out before buying it (unless a friend got the game) is to pirate it. Of course there’s gonna be those that pirate it without buying it anyway even if they like it.
How am I missing out on visual information when I pirate a movie? I don’t really get the statement. I get the whole movie. Maybe not the “DVD Bonuses” but I still get the whole movie, in wide screen, in HD. What am I missing out on?
if its in HD thats identical to a bluray disc then you don’t. I can’t even watch a netflix film without seeing flaws. but then we are watching them on a 120 inch screen
It’s 720p cuz my computer can’t do 1080 nor can my monitor (it’s a 720p HD Sony TV) but yea…looks just as good as any of my Blu Rays when i watch them.
There is 0 proof that piracy encourages sales beyond anything but hardware, and profit margins of hardware is almost nothing.
I don’t think piracy has as much of an impact on sales nowadays, but 2000’s, production companies would ignore certain high piracy systems (dc, psp, pc) just because those markets were essentially making games to be pirated. With itunes and steam market place shifts and better console security, things are better now, and piracy has less impact.
But really. Don’t sit around just justifying piracy as a good thing. Every time i see it, it’s almost like that person is trying to stay convinced that what they are doing isn’t bad. It’s bad, taking someone’s work and making sure they don’t get paid for it. If your too poor or “thrifty” or just like getting “free” shit, then just say it. Don’t try and justify yourself for being unable or unwilling to pay for entertainment.
Same thing happened with Minecraft and FEZ I believe.
Some pirates will pirate games to “demo” them, and if they like the product, they’ll buy it. Some indie game developers put up their games on torrent sites themselves to help promote their product(not even joking.)
The guys who made Hotline Miami released their patch for people who pirated the game. They wanted them to have the best experience possible. I thought that was pretty bizarre but hey, it’s their game.
There is a certain amount of piracy that is needed for advertisement and to generate a buzz. When studies were done tracking film piracy it was found that when they managed to completely cut off piracy those films did very poorly compared to the ones that were ironically enough pirated the most. The films that had the most piracy by far made the most profits.
People that pirate games were likely never going to buy the game without piracy. But there is a good chance when someone does pirate they can get hooked and they also refer that product to a lot of other people. Savvy businesses know this and even take advantage of it, especially when they are first trying to establish themselves and need that buzz. The UFC is a great example of this, they used to fairly obviously encourage people to pirate and spread their stuff around to get a buzz. Then when they got big enough they actively went after everything, and did shut down a lot of it. Now it’s a lot harder to share a great fight or anything like that, and although I don’t think it’s a direct connection, it’s also a fact that their PPV buyrates have been bombing.
Ubisoft and EA are also known for ridiculous DRM measures designed to completely stamp out all piracy, and their success results in cratering sales. Those are the two companies that you’re thinking of that said they refuse to make PC games because of piracy. They and other companies came crawling back begging PC gamers to buy their crappy games, while watching games like Minecraft, Elder Scrolls and others make a killing on PC.
Of course you do not want rampant piracy that’s so easy that it wipes out all your profits. The Dreamcast failed because everyone pirated it and nobody bought games for it. Probably among other reasons.
Usually however if you make a garbage product it doesn’t matter how good your anti-piracy measures are, nobody wants it. If you make a great product the most minimal anti-piracy is good enough to make you a lot more money. Most PC games are released on Steam now, which is very easily cracked.
But really piracy has little to do with Sony and the original topic. Right now dinky apps and phone games are popular, most things are F2P and with microtransactions. You could maybe pirate those but nobody even bothers because they’re so cheap and they’re impulse purchases.
I can’t be a pirate if I’m not making a profit of stolen merchandise.
SNES, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, PS3, Xbox 360, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, PSP where all easy to pirate and I knew quite a bit of folk that pirated
there’s more pirating going on in consoles than PC, fuck you
