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X-dANGEr
Unknown Destiny
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2383
Location: The X place |
| The Relations between prices and piracy. |
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I was wondering, if games' prices is cut to the fifth, wouldn't that increase the number of people buying the 'original-non-pirated' game at least five times? Wouldn't that be more profittable to the companies?
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Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:51 pm |
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Provok
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 04 Feb 2006
Posts: 105
Location: North of The River |
IMO, if the prices would be reduced to a fifth for just a day or two, in a campaign to promote video games and to reduce piracy, the sales would be 1000 times bigger than the normal sales for the same period for big, renouned games and about 200 times or less for games of smaller names.
It would make an IMMENSE profit for ALL companies that have produced games, but in life few have the wisdom to realise a thing like making money AND receiving thanks from millions of players. Most of these people who posess this wisdom lead the gaming industry. |
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Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:17 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
At 1/5 price, it's safe to say the game would be priced at less than cost. They'll lose money on each unit, but they'll make it up in volume, eh? 
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=Proud Member of the Non-Flamers Guild=
=Benevolent Dictator, X2/X3 and Morrowind/Oblivion Forums=
Sorry. No pearls of wisdom in this oyster.
RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:34 pm |
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Hindukönig
Guards Lieutenant
Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 170
Location: Halle (Saale) / Nuremberg [Germany] |
| Re: The Relations between prices and piracy. |
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quote:
Originally posted by X-dANGEr
I was wondering, if games' prices is cut to the fifth, wouldn't that increase the number of people buying the 'original-non-pirated' game at least five times? Wouldn't that be more profittable to the companies?
If a solution seems extremely simple, it's probably extremely wrong. |
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Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:31 pm |
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KasperFauerby
Village Dweller
Joined: 01 Feb 2006
Posts: 18
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quote:
If a solution seems extremely simple, it's probably extremely wrong.
Bravo! Well said!
No, if the prices were cut to 1/5 then the companies would earn maybe 1/3 of what they are now - in other words - there might be some additional sales, but the amount of loosers who downloads illegal software would be roughly unaffected (why pay money at all when you can just download for free??)
What this industry needs is for people to to grow up and develop some sort of moral..
- Kasper |
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Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:50 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
No, piracy isn't about the price - no matter what anyone tells you - this is just a justification. No price can compete with free and they do it because they can.
From a purely economic point of view, it doesn't work either.
If you sold exactly 5x times the units and 1/5 the price, the total revenue generated is exactly the same - ie, let's say a game sold 1,000,000 copies @ $50 = $50 Million revenue at retail. Selling 5 million copies at $10 generates the same $50 Million...only we have done 5x as much work. We've had to manufacture 5x more disks and manuals, pay for 5x as much shipping to the distributors and stores etc, so our fixed costs are significantly higher.
Now, imagine if you are wrong and we only sell 2x as many copies. That means we've generated only $20 million revenue while shipping (and paying the increased costs of) twice as many copies as at the $50 price point.
So, we have to have huge confidence that we are going to sell significantly more than 5x as much to make it worth while - at the same time icreasing the backend costs the more we sell.
Finally, most games aren't price-limited. Take the BG series, which has sold 5M copies - a huge amount. Expecting a 5-fold increase would mean sales of 25M copie -- equivalent to some of the biggest franchises in gaming history, such as the GTA series. Western RPGs just aren't that popular. 
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Sun Mar 12, 2006 10:43 pm |
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TheCleric
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 230
Location: Upstate NY, USA |
Piracy vs Price makes for an interesting argument, but doesn't really bear out.
For the average run of the mill person, I'm sure some piracy is due to cost. People who want to play a certain game but just can't afford it. They see a cracked download on the internet and think, "who's it going to hurt?". But you wouldn't think that these people would have much to do with retail game sales, becuase their "Bargin Bin" buyers at best and wouldn't have much of an impact on retail sales.
There are also a number of those who fall into the "Pirate" category because they want to play from a back-up copy of their game in order to save the original from wear-n-tear and end up getting a cracked or pirated copy of the play disk to allow them to do this. Technically, these people have already bought the game and wouldn't be likely to buy another copy anyway.
Price wouldn't have much of an effect on those who pirate games to prove that they can, or because they have a chip on their shoulder against the games publisher or developer or because they don't feel they should have to buy their games, because these people generally wouldn't buy the game at any cost.
IMO, these groups probably represent 90% of the people who Pirate games and overall, have very little effect to retail game sales. These are also the people who are most affected by copyright protections.
The remaining 10% are the people who mass produce and sell cracked copies for drastically reduced costs. These are the only ones that have a significant impact on a game's retail sales and should (IMO) be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The retail price set for a game will have no direct impact on these people, as they earn their income from selling illegal game copies and will continue Pirating games unless the retail price drops so low that they can't make money at it or until they get caught by the police. The price of the legitimate product would have to sell for less than cost to be priced low enough to put these Pirates out of business.
So, in all I don't see that there's much of a Price/Piracy correlation at all. |
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:18 am |
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corwin
On the Razorblade of Life
Joined: 10 Jun 2002
Posts: 8376
Location: Australia |
I totally agree. Most Pirates I've talked to do it either to avoid the copy protection on the CD or just because they can. For them the FUN is getting the game and messing with it for a day or two before downloading their next prize!! I think the only other reason that might be considered, is the problem of unavailability of the game in your country. I do know of people who get a pirate copy while waiting for the game to be released in their country. Some games never get released in certain countries. Yes, you can often order online, but that is a different issue. How, for example, does a 14 year old with no credit card order online? I'm not condoning the pirating, but I have trouble explaining to a 14 year old why they shouldn't do it!!
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:25 am |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
Dhruin and Corwin,
I suppose you are talking about pirates around you, in your country. Let me point out that the greatest number of pirates comes from countries similar or less developed than my country Czech Republic. Countries like Poland, Russia, Litvia and even China and many more.
And the situation over here is bit different. For us the prices are really important because they are really high. It is constatly improving because our "buying power" is improving.
The prices over here are same or even a bit higher than in the US (and similar countries). Our salaries are many times lower than theirs/yours. Of course it is still matter of moral. For someone it simply means that he/she can buy less games (or even no games at all). However lower prices would undoubtedly attract more poeple to rather buying than pirating games.
The proof is already available. As our "buying power" improves, more and more people are buying (instead of pirating) games.
Let me give you some exact numbers (and I want to point out one more time that situation in our country is improving and therefore it is much better than in many other not so lucky countries):
Czech republic:
Usual salary around here: 550 $ (net)
Usual price of one game: 55 $
Russia (as far as I know):
Usual salary: 150 $
Usual price of one game: 55 $ |
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:06 am |
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X-dANGEr
Unknown Destiny
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2383
Location: The X place |
quote:
Originally posted by Danicek
Dhruin and Corwin,
I suppose you are talking about pirates around you, in your country. Let me point out that the greatest number of pirates comes from countries similar or less developed than my country Czech Republic. Countries like Poland, Russia, Litvia and even China and many more.
And the situation over here is bit different. For us the prices are really important because they are really high. It is constatly improving because our "buying power" is improving.
The prices over here are same or even a bit higher than in the US (and similar countries). Our salaries are many times lower than theirs/yours. Of course it is still matter of moral. For someone it simply means that he/she can buy less games (or even no games at all). However lower prices would undoubtedly attract more poeple to rather buying than pirating games.
The proof is already available. As our "buying power" improves, more and more people are buying (instead of pirating) games.
Let me give you some exact numbers (and I want to point out one more time that situation in our country is improving and therefore it is much better than in many other not so lucky countries):
Czech republic:
Usual salary around here: 550 $ (net)
Usual price of one game: 55 $
Russia (as far as I know):
Usual salary: 150 $
Usual price of one game: 55 $
I have to agree their. Around here, in Jordan, the average gain of a 'family' is around $200. And to buy an original copy of a game (That is if you find it..), you need to pay $50. All that and consider that the average numbers of persons in a family is 6. Most people do buy pirated copies, for the price of $1 or sometimes less..
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:48 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
In "richer" countries thereīs only a weak correlation between price and piracy.
Topware (the new company by some of the old management is Zuxxez) tried to sell Earth 2140, Realms of Arkania 3 and a few other games for half the price in Germany. With no positive effect.
One could even argue that a low price has other negative effects besides the economics Dhruin explained:
-"If itīs cheap it canīt be good!" -> damages the brand by association with the word "cheap".
-They also lose one price reduction step. This kicks the game out of the retail channel earlier and reduces sales even more.
Zuxxez also tried selling games without CP. Everybody copied them.
Then they went to the other extreme: Earth 2160 only had online activation but no CP. They hired a Swiss company specialized in watching file sharing traffic and sued 15.000 people who downloaded the game or a cracked exe.
Especially in Germany people pirate software because they can. It saves them money to spend on entertainment which canīt be stolen, like cinema, disco, concerts.
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:21 pm |
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cptmaxon
High Emperor
Joined: 19 Jun 2003
Posts: 557
Location: Israel |
Corwin, I don't agree with you classfying ppl who already bought the game, and then download a crack for it as pirates, I think that when a person buys a game he can pretty much do what ever he wants with out, except of course copy it and sell it or even give it away,
for instance if my gothic 2 cd is scarched now , and I can't use it to play the game, why can't I download a crack and play it?, I already paid for it, should I buy another copy? and pay another 50$?
as for the price issue, I've got many pirates friends who look at me in an odd way when I tell them I buy games, and while they say that if things like movie or games were cheaper they'd buy them, I don't think they will, it's just too easy to pirate these days(actully it was easy to pirate since the begining of the gaming industry) with broad band in every house and software like bittorrent and emule...
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"We're still flying"
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:53 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
quote:
Originally posted by Danicek
I suppose you are talking about pirates around you, in your country. Let me point out that the greatest number of pirates comes from countries similar or less developed than my country Czech Republic. Countries like Poland, Russia, Litvia and even China and many more.
And the situation over here is bit different. For us the prices are really important because they are really high. It is constatly improving because our "buying power" is improving.
Yes, I was talking about US and other western markets - I think most publishers realise the current sales potential in th Eastern bloc etc is limited.
Still, I don't think it's as simple as you make it sound...how does someone in those circumstances afford the sort of rig that plays Doom 3, HL2, FEAR...or Oblivion? They still pirate because they can...as Gorath says, that saves money for other things that can't be pirated. If piracy was impossible, it would be interesting to see the priorities.
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Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:38 pm |
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corwin
On the Razorblade of Life
Joined: 10 Jun 2002
Posts: 8376
Location: Australia |
I, personally, wasn't saying people who use NO CD patches are pirates. Doing so is lumped by the big publishers as piracy. Most people I know used them for NWN to save the discs. In fact the latest update took out the need for the disc to be in the PC, so perhaps that was a win for good sense!! 
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If God said it, then that settles it!
I don't use Smileys, I use Emoticons!!
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Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:26 am |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
Still, I don't think it's as simple as you make it sound...how does someone in those circumstances afford the sort of rig that plays Doom 3, HL2, FEAR...or Oblivion? They still pirate because they can...
Yes, I agree with that. It is certainly because they can and because it is quite easy.
I was pointing out that the main reason is not fun or "to avoid annoying copy protection" but money (see Corwin's post above). That is the reason. I haven't been discussing moral of this. I still think some of these people would simply buy the game if it was easier for them considering their income. I'm ofcourse unsure how many of them would do that and how many would still pirate it.
I may overestimate that number in may natural tendency to think that people are moral and good inside and that probably only circumstances make them to not behave accordingly :]. |
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Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:49 am |
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