Is $ony even trying anymore?

I rather thought Introversion's tactic was the best I'd seen so far. It does exactly what punk was talking about and making it more inconvenient to pirate than it does to purchase.

For those who haven't read the article, they flooded the P2P services with demo versions of Darwinia and DEFCON labelled as full cracked versions. The full games are available for purchase at Games stores or for download at their website.

Again, though, I think that 'reasonable price' tends to be the biggest driver. I will gladly pay $20 for Impossible Mission, but $50? Come on... I played this game 20 years ago on my C64. Hell, I could set the damn thing up and play it right now for less trouble.

I think one thing that would be nifty is if SONY would support UMD Backup in one form or another with official firmware. It wouldn't be that far of a cry from downloading PSX games from the PSNetwork, and would address all the valid reasons that folks generally tend to make legal backups: UMD disc/drive wear and tear, Battery conservation, Convenience.... as well as pave the way for full-game distribution via the PSNetwork.

This combined with an open platform for Homebrew would see a quick cool-down in the 'Firmware War' that folks are so keen on. People who want to pirate are going to find a way to do so. There will be very few ways around this.... But by 'legalising' the main reasons for most of us to be running the custom firmware, SONY could actually regain a lot of control over something they currently are just playing catch-up with.

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Originally Posted by punkonjunk

Did I ever say it wasn't theft? Did I argue with that?
Please climb down from your high horse and read what I'm saying. I'm explaining how I Justify it, and how that justification could be defeated by inconvenience.

For the love of god, stop arguing protection and the fact that piracy is wrong. I agree, and I don't care. That wasn't even my point.

I know they would still be pirated by some if they were cheap, but not by me, and not by alot of pirates I know. If it was only 20 bucks to get a game, and it took a week to download, I would buy the bastard.

I can say that doing this would probobly remove at least 50% of piracy in the USA, maybe more.

But you know, argue that stopping it doesn't matter because piracy is wrong, and we should all just stop on morals.
Pfffft.

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TBH, I can't see the point you are trying to put across originally apart from:

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They need to truly be big. So include more extras, and pay attention to graphics. I know this is totally impractical for a handheld, which brings me back to the price point.

Big cheap games - I would buy those. A 20 dollar PSP game? When it takes a month to download? in a heartbeat.

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Where I made the replies to:

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So you are saying that piracy is convenient due to sizes? Games are 'expensive' because it costs money for hiring developers for the game as well as distribution, marketing and advertising. By adding more content, you need more developers and/or more time to create it therefore driving the price up even more.

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Look at research on how much a games costs and where the money goes. By self distribution or online distribution, you can cut a lot of money from the price of the game to something more reasonable. However, self distribution is costly in itself and the market/audience isn't yet right for online distribution to get the sales.

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Related the inconvenience issue, did you read the link I posted about Introversion's prevention method because it sounded like you missed it completely.

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Take a look at how Introversion deals with piracy:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=19283

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The other lone point was made because it sounded like you were justifying piracy because you practise it/support it. Every thing else (as shown above) is related to your justification from convenience and price.

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Edit: Theft is theft. It is illegal, end of story. If you can't afford it, then you shouldn't have it. Stealing out of desire is not forgivable, stealing out of necessity is.

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The reason why I am on my 'high horse' is because as a games developer, that is (in an abstract way) money out of my salary at the end of the day.

There is no real way to stop it or a proven method to reduce it. Lowering the price cannot be done due to the points I made above. The only 'real' method there is at the moment is to enforce the law.

Edit: As a side note, there is one case I can remember (but can't find again) where a developer did a test on piracy. He made a game that was free but needed (free) registration to unlock the game. The game was still cracked and pirated.

Sorry by advance for my bad non-native English but I also have some things to point out, especially about ethics.

When condemning piracy it is usually implied that victims are honest and innocent.

Who wants to:

- Sell a high price the same thing several times at the same person (ports of oldies) ?

- Sell updates as if they were something completely new (NFSxx for example) ?

- Force people to pay again in order to keep the right to use software they already own (locked PS1 emu) ?

- Offer products with generally a shorter lifetime and a degraded quality of content,except the eye-candy but for the same price (look at the whole videogames history) ?

- Want to make bigger and bigger profits against the customers and the employees interest ?

I'm not defending piracy but I wanted to point out that this matter is not all black or white and that in the customer side there is some reasons to feel abused.

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Originally Posted by Oops

Sorry by advance for my bad non-native English but I also have some things to point out, especially about ethics.

When condemning piracy it is usually implied that victims are honest and innocent.

Who wants to:

- Sell a high price the same thing several times at the same person (ports of oldies) ?

- Sell updates as if they were something completely new (NFSxx for example) ?

- Force people to pay again in order to keep the right to use software they already own (locked PS1 emu) ?

- Offer products with generally a shorter lifetime and a degraded quality of content,except the eye-candy but for the same price (look at the whole videogames history) ?

- Want to make bigger and bigger profits against the customers and the employees interest ?

I'm not defending piracy but I wanted to point out that this matter is not all black or white and that in the customer side there is some reasons to feel abused.

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If you don't like it, don't play it and don't buy it. Why bother pirating a game that you see in this way?

Even if you're dodging the point, you're perfectly right about the conclusion. I regret it a lot because I used to buy many games, because I was and still am a videogames fan and also to support the guys who rocked my game consoles and PCs.

Nowadays except a few ones, they're told what to code by ignorant-greedy-pragmatic goldenboys, which I believe make a lot more harm to the videogames (thus to gamers and to developpers) than "pirates".

Anyway, about Sony's strategy I remember they admitted that they left the PS1 quite open to piracy in order to conquer the console market. This corporation is so big that its matter is not making some benefits now out of the PSP but just fighting Nintendo to make huge benefits when they'll dominate the market. I admit this seems a bit weird as a strategy but every big corp wants to be another Microsoft. What I don't understand is how they'll achieve this with such methods and such a poor software (globally) ...

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Originally Posted by Oops

Nowadays except a few ones, they're told what to code by ignorant-greedy-pragmatic goldenboys, which I believe make a lot more harm to the videogames (thus to gamers and to developpers) than "pirates".

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I don't have to point out that games are now a business. Great, unique games such as Ico, Okami, Exit, Alien Hominid, etc don't usually sell that well to mass market.

Licensed, sequel based games do because that is what the mass market wants hence why they do a lot of them. Publishers don't take risks on new IP that cannot be proven to sell.

What you should see now is a shift to online distribution of smaller, cheaper ( to purchase and development ) games from PSN, XBLA and Wiiware. This in turn will allow developers and publishers to make more risks to create unique games.

In very general terms, they just care what sells. Whether it plays great or not is a side issue.