Topic: Counter the Cubic Ninja

Well the price has skyrocket at gamestop in the US. And I've tried explaining to customers that it doesn't allow for piracy...some folks think it does. I hate to say it but I wish I'd snagged a few copies to offload on ebay for 40 bucks each.

Well how much R&D goes into creating an awesome game. Millions of dollars development costs required to make an awesome game. Production cost is still pretty pricey. A download doesn't cost them anything. So they are ripping us of asking 40 bucks for nothing. They are really stupid people who ask a lot of money for something that cost them nothing to produce, except for millions of development cost.

so do movies, but you don't spend €70 to see them.

The point I am trying to make is that "development costs" are irrelevant to the final price of the game (of anything, actually), which depends ENTIRELY on how much gamers are willing to pay. Grand Theft Auto 5 costed four times Watch_Dogs, yet they both sell for the same retail price. A brand new BlueRay movie costs less than one third of a brand new videogame, despite having similar "development costs".

The industry likes to blame piracy for everything that goes wrong sales-wise, without realizing that most of the console pirates WOULDN'T BUY the games anyway. They just wouldn't bother, considering the current prices. On PC or phones things might be different, but as far as console gamers go, I hardly see people going "I usually buy one game a week, but now I can finally stop and get them illegaly".
Of course there must be some loss, especially for smaller developers, but when it's Nintendo or Capcom or Ubisoft complaining, I don't believe them.

As far as I'm concerned, piracy is not a big deal - at least not as big as the industry makes it. The consoles with the best software sales were also the most hacked ones (NDS, Wii, PSX, PS2). I am ready to eat my word once somebody from the industry comes and explains clearly what "development costs" are, where do the money go exactly and what's their salary like. Until then, I'll keep considering piracy a natural answer to luxury items whose prices are getting out of control.

'Pirates wouldn't buy those games anyway,' another bad excuse. Sure, they'd never buy all the games they download, but they would purchase at least some of them that they consider worth the price.
'Movies have the same development cost as games but are still cheaper'
Physical Media Sales are far from the only source of income for the companies behind those movies. Besides, movies have much less 'hours' in them than games. Most (good) games can have 30+ hours of content, with tons of variety. Movies are around three hours of footage, max. So by nature, games already have more value than films.

You do realize that game developers don't just pull games out of their backsides, right?
There is a lot of hard work and effort that goes into making games. You are never going to get a clear answer to your question because development costs could encompass a wide number of things and varies between developers.

Also, "what's their salary like"? Are you gonna try and tell me you're justified pirating games if developers get paid a decent amount for their hard work!

As much as it hurts me to say (coming from someone who abandoned the way of the pirate once i made my own money):
Every console that became open for pirated games became an instant seller and highly profitable in the end.
The 360 kicked into overdrive once it was flashed while the PS3 took quite some time to rise up to its standpoint now.
Downright saying that piracy will destroy a certzains consoles profit is absolutely wrong and history is proof of that.

Look at the DS, one of the best selling handhelds ever made. And yet, piratng on it was as simple as ordering one of many flashcards available. Instead of hurting the system. it brought it to market domination.

Also, pirating doesnt always mean that people exclusively play retail games so they dont have to pay for them. Thats a wrong assumtion.
Most of these people use these exploits to play emulators from past consoles, to play homebrews and hacks, to play altered games such as a translation poject or, in the case of the original Xbox, turn a mediocre console of yesteryear into a multi media system with (native !!) HD output.

why do you bring length to the table? It serves no porpuse. I'm talking about production costs.
With that money you can make a 30 minutes product or a 1,000 hour long product - I don't care.
The point is the price you are selling it vs the price you're spending to make it.

The industy has dictated a standard price (around €60 euro) and the audience agrees with that. It doesn't matter if a game has costed 250 million dollars or 30 million dollars - the price stays the same.

I want to know who has decided that the standard price should be €60 and why €60 rather than €40 or €80.
I think these are perfectly legit questions. Consumers should know WHO gets the money. How much does a designer get?! How much does a publisher get? What if we find out that - like in the music industry - publishers get 90% of the money?! That would mean that games could cost half of their price and still be highly profitable for the people who actually made it.
What about sales? Why do game prices get slashed by a half? Are those games being sold at a loss or that's the minimum to make a profit?! Why do game prices decrease dramatically a mere six months after their release?! Are we paying a vastly inflated price when we buy a game for its full day-1 price?!

"Development Costs" is a mysterious expression: for all we know, we're paying videgames the double of what they should be paid, or half, or the correct price - nobody ever told us.

What we know is that piracy is bad because hacked consoles generate less software sales - they say. If this was true, Gamecube, Saturn and WiiU would have sold more software than all other consoles but we know this isn't true.

Does a ticket for Avenegers cost air more than a rticket for other movies beside of production costs? No, it doesn't. More people buy games and see movies like that to make up for production cost. A game has a smaller audience than the Avengers, so it needs to cost more. Advertising? This generally makes more money than it costs, they wouldn't do it otherwise. Lots of games don't sell enough and cause companies trouble. You also seem to forget the rule of what's something is worth on the market here, it's what people will pay. You also forget other costs. You talk about a developers's cut, and how maybe they could get payed more and make money, while the game cost less. You forget about the computers and equipment they use. The lead developer doesn't use his family's saving, the publisher pays for it. Then the company has general costs to run and whatnot. And agian, you forgot the golden role, a prouduct is worth what a custome will pay. It doesn't matter if they have great margins, or anything in how they make money. If they could still make millions if GTA or COD cost $30, it still wouldn't matter because you'll pay $60. So it's worth $60.

@spizzamarozzi excuses. You can question the price of games and where that money goes all your life, it won't make piracy any less illegal/immoral/dickish. As long as customers will pay 60 for a game, they will cost that much. If they don't, the publisher cuts the price. That explains why games get cheaper the longer they're out, so yes, you are theoretically paying a premium when you buy a game on release day.

Guys, I'm not saying piracy is legal, moral or awesome - I'm just saying it's a natural thing in every branch of the entertainment/cultural industry. All the more true in the videogame industry - which is the one of the four big industries (film, music, books and games) that deals with the most expensive goods.

I think it's terrible practice to automatically believe what some corporate spokesman says about them losing money because of piracy and blablablah when it's pretty clear that videogame sales have skyrocketed during the last 5 years and companies have annualized almost every game they could, plus they have invented every way to get your 5 bucks here and 10 bucks there with microtransactions, DLC, collectors' editions, goty editions, pre-order bonus etc etc.

What drives me crazy is that they try as hard as they can to get you to purchase the videogame on launch day because that's the moment when they can overprice it the most. So they add 75 cents of paper for a fancy cover or 1 dollar worth of plastic for a toy and sell it to you for 20 bucks more than the already overpriced regular price. Then 3 months later you see the game being sold for a fraction of its price on Amazon — if that doesn't tell you they are robbing you, I don't know what will.
To put it simply, if they were losing money, they wouldn't increase the budget every given week to produce games.

Then, if they want to spend 500 million dollars to produce a videogame that could be perfectly made with 20 million dollars or If Capcom wants to spend millions of yen to pay for a Research Department that keeps telling them that the best new game they can make is a remake of a remake of a 20 years old game...it's their problem, it shouldn't be customers' problem.

To put it simply, I find it very hard to sympathize with such an industry and I don't think piracy is hurting as much as they want you to believe. And there's no need to crucify game pirates - if you have an internet connection, chances are you have stolen more music than you could ever buy in a lifetime.

Piracy is a minor problem for the 3DS.

Used games being sold for the reasonable (i.e Amazon's) price is a major problem. Every time that happens Nintendo gets zero.

A potential problem with this claim is the fact that the DS had the 2nd highest attach rate (amount of software bought per hardware owner) out of any handheld in history. Check the figures on VGchartz. DS owners bought more games than 3DS, PSP, PSVita, GBA, GB owners. The only handheld with a higher attach rate was the GBC.
It's not proof of anything, but it's definitely reason to be skeptical. Maybe people only pirated things they wouldn't have bought anyway.