Does Piracy Hinder Consoles ?

true crazyjohn, about the "if you had no intention" part.
Piracy is a touchy subject.
If you had no intention of ever buying the game, and playing it is just something to pass the time till a fantastic game comes out. then so be it.

But i wont lie, i've downloaded my unfair share of games, but half of the ones i did like, i went out and bought.
the other half had no replay value, and the ones i didnt like.. it was just an extended demo.
makers of mad games have no right to take my money, they should give the game out for free anyways just to get the name out.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7417/piracy5ci9yz.gif

This picture will set some minds in motion.

Edit: didnt mean to stray semi-off topic.
But the balance between piracy hurting and helping console sales is also touchy. There will always be piracy.

Any company that fully stops piracy will actually hurt themselves. Only people who bought it will play, this is true, but sometimes its more important to have more people playing the game, than more people buying the game. You can make the best game in the world. and give it the most powerful piracy protection.
But if no one can afford it. you cant even say it was truely a good game if no ones played it (or at least not many people)

But if you want my honest ideas. Make a came, Make it easy to pirate and give it a single use serial key.

Then offer downloadable content that makes the game worth buying.

If people like the game enough, they'll want the extra content thats only allowed to people whom purchased the game and are using legit cd-keys.

This game sales will creep up.

PS consoles dont make companies money. games do. some companies even lose money on console sales, but make it back 2x fold in game sales.

Sucky games hinder consoles also. There is nothing out on the PSP that I really want or must own at this time. the Moto GP title looks fun as I am a big motorcycle person (own 4 myself). Really Sony's preventing us from running homebrew (which also prevents running of privated games) has prevented me from buying any new titles for the PSP. I simply wont sacrifice homebrew to play commercial releases. Nothing Sony has offered with their new firmwares and titles compells me to sacrifice homebrew.

I think it helps sony in this case because since all of its games sucked balls in the begining they were able to keep customers around because of homebrew. But as for downloading isos it probably hurts the company alot. So it balances out depending on what is being used.

what??? it doesn't matter if you were going to buy it or not!you are still playing the game that the company made without paying for it.

most company's make heavy financial losses on hardware sale's and therefore rely on software sale's to actually make it profitable. piracy can never be a good thing !

yes if noone buys any games $ony would be crippled. and thier name wouldnt be $ony it would be sony because they wouldnt have a bajillion of dollars anymore

ok, does piracy hurt a console? In a way it does, and in a way it doesnt. Console manufacturers dont make money on console sales at all. In fact as of late, they have been losing alot of money for each console sold.

BUT, look at the XBOX, a lot more xboxes were sold during its life time due to people either messing up modding their xbox or whatnot. A majority of the time when a person has a console they usually will purchase a game or two.

Now do I believe that pirating games is wrong? in a way. I know a majority of people here have MP3s they downloaded on their computers, or have ROMS of older games on their computers as well. Here is my philosophy -- you can download a ISO, download an MP3, download a ROM all you like BUT if you like it....buy it. This avoids buying games that suck, buying a movie that you dont like, or buying a CD that you will never listen to.

Also dealing with the PSP. Having ISOs on the PSP could have legit reasons. With all the FW updates blocking HB. Untill there comes a RunUMD that can play all the newer games I believe as long as you purchase the UMD you should be allowed to have the ISO. Now this does not mean your allowed to download an ISO and say your going to get the UMD "eventually"

ok - im done.

and if sony does some stupid crap like including the iso with the game people will just give it to all thier friends UNLESS, they somehow make it so u cant cut \ copy it and u cant paste it or move it or do anything to it. xD

It hurts the console far more then it helps in any case. End of story. If Sony sells more consoles because of piracy, it doesn't help them in the slightest because Sony usually sells their hardware at a loss. Even Nintendo would lose ultimately since most of their money is made from their first-party games.

All and all, piracy is bad no matter how you try to justify it.

you guys are silly.

Microsoft ruined Sega and the DC. (conspiricy!! it was all for M$-Box) Oh and the fact that it had NO DVD PLAYER and came out years after PSX n 64. Oh and as far as profit goes you really should do some more research on sega's dev teams. They actually had 2 companies doing design and production and a bunch of bad management led to the loss of 1,000,000s of dollars!

Okay, piracy was just a tiny influence their. (Okay okay MAYBE it did finish off a dying console but too bad it was already dying in the 1st place. DC did not get canceled cuz of piracy it was because it was OUTDATED AND OBSOLETE. (although still better than PS2 in some ways look how far a DVD will push in sales. Ps3 may break 360 the same way too.
But MS will upgrade.

The only reason you should feel bad about piracy is the following reasons.

- You cracked an online game and are using the servers to play online.

- You are selling a game for more than YOUR production costs. (Ie: Sell a ps2 game for more than $5-10)

- You are copying the covers and books and selling those too increasing the value

- You are hosting countless new gen games online for everyone to download. (ie: games released very recently and are still being produced to sell)

- You did not support your fav game franchise and pirated a good series. (unless its an old game out of production)

HOW CAN YOU LOOSE MONEY ON A GAME YOUR NOT SELLING - SOME PPL MAKE NO SENSE

Think that's it. Just dont go download the latest games pirated and we shall all be fine. Dont let idiots fool you.

You can't STEAL something non physical. (This doesn't even morally apply to song theft unless you removed the end credits put your name in and tried to produce it FOR SALE pupose.

SO what did we learn from Rock?

Pirate Retro-Style, stay off those fresh ISO sites
and dont sell pirated games for profit.