Piracy and Console rant.

[Baker]

I disagree.

I think which is more expensive differs from person to person. I'll explain why...

You're right when you say consoles have an initial cost which is cheaper, and the reason for this is largely because the console business model is based around selling cheap hardware (often at a loss) and then getting the profit back through game royalties. This means developers have to charge more for their games to the public. There is an obvious price difference between games in the UK, PC games are just a lot cheaper on average, even for the same titles.

I recently orderd several games from www.play.com, so you can confirm these numbers yourself, these are about the best prices you can get on UK games, for both the consoles and PC.

Fallout 3 £24.99
Far Cry 2 £24.99
Dead Space £26.99
Quantum of Solace £24.99
Total £101.96

Had I bought these for the xbox360 that would have been

Fallout 3 £39.99
Far Cry 2 £39.99
Dead Space £39.99
Quantum of Solace £39.99
Total £159.96

I saved approx £60 on 4 games, thats £15 per game on average...to put that in perspective, a top of the line ATI 4870 costs about £180, so at that rate of savings I would only need to buy 12 games to get that essentially for free, and the quality of the games would look a lot better.

The more games you buy the more the gap closes, eventually if you buy a lot of games the console will overtake and cost more overall.

*edit*

And HEY!! you can rent games on the PC as well!

All EA games are now for rent

The channel in which you purchase your games will determine overall price. The advantage to console games is that they retain their value longer. How many of you feel comfortable buying a used PC game. Probably not many. No one wants to risk getting a banned CD-Key, or now with DRM's, buying a used game that has hit its install limits. There’s none of that risk when buying a used console game.

Not all new PC games can be rented, all new console games can be rented.

 

[Frostex]

Sure you can rent and sell on console games, as I said it differs from person to person, I wouldn't bother buying a game I was only going to sell later, that seems pointless to me, me and most of the people I know collect their games. So cost wise this has no effect on us.

 

[Baker]

Sure you can rent and sell on console games, as I said it differs from person to person, I wouldn't bother buying a game I was only going to sell later, that seems pointless to me, me and most of the people I know collect their games. So cost wise this has no effect on us.

Cost wise it can affect you. What is cheaper, used or new? So if you were to buy it used and not plan on selling it, then in the end you just saved more money. Like I said, console games retail their value longer, so if you do ever choose to sell/trade your game, you will get more back from it. If someone else chooses to sell their game, you reap the benefits. I don't see how this wouldn't affect you.

 

[stevedave]

If you remember when the first Hollywood decoder cards came out, people were like "Finally, PCs will be in every living room!" This same argument has been going around for about a decade, and its not really because people are retarded. The flexibility of component selection and ever changing nature of the PC market is simply its Achilles heel when it comes to gaming and living room use. People just want shit that works, and its a significant amount of effort to setup a new PC for gaming and seamless HTPC use. Then once you set it up, the number of things that can go wrong and need troubleshooting is completely bewildering compared to what can go wrong on a console. This just means people do not want to deal with a bunch of shit, they want to hit buttons and see things work. I put the blame more on the PC vendors for refusing to standardize on any common platform or UI compared to blaming normal consumers for being retarded.

I agree with that some what based on the fact I said PC to TV should be a standard from hardware/software perspective and they need a standard controller that can play games and also be used as a mouse. But people are stupid when they can hook up their computer to a monitor but not a tv when they have the same HDMI/DVI connection.

 

[PsychoticX]

Hey there's this often un-talked about fact that you can own a gaming PC and a console at the same time! Not many people believe in such legends but I have seen it with my own eyes!

As for piracy, it's been around forever. "Don't copy that floppy!" In reality it's been the games suck, and the internet spreads that message faster than ever. Look at spore for example, it was so hyped up and everyone wanted it. Then everyone found out it had tons of DRM before they bought it. Even if you didn't care about the DRM, the game failed to live to expectations. EA blamed piracy. Spore got pirated to high hell but most of it was BECAUSE the DRM was there. A lot of people pirated it just to piss EA off. Something to think about.

Personally, if you like a game, you should buy it. Piracy is just giving these noobs an excuse to release crappy games.

That and all of western civilization is in a recession right now.

 

[damonposey]

Hey there's this often un-talked about fact that you can own a gaming PC and a console at the same time! Not many people believe in such legends but I have seen it with my own eyes!

As for piracy, it's been around forever. "Don't copy that floppy!" In reality it's been the games suck, and the internet spreads that message faster than ever. Look at spore for example, it was so hyped up and everyone wanted it. Then everyone found out it had tons of DRM before they bought it. Even if you didn't care about the DRM, the game failed to live to expectations. EA blamed piracy. Spore got pirated to high hell but most of it was BECAUSE the DRM was there. A lot of people pirated it just to piss EA off. Something to think about.

Personally, if you like a game, you should buy it. Piracy is just giving these noobs an excuse to release crappy games.

That and all of western civilization is in a recession right now.

Sorry but no. there's just no way you can prove your statement that I bolded. People pirate games because they want to play the games, first and foremost that is the main reason.

If you think people spent all that time downloading a game just to piss off EA you are out of touch with basic human behaviour and need to come back to planet earth.

 

[Dende]

A lot of people pirated it just to piss EA off. Something to think about.

A lot of people pirated it just to piss EA off. Something to think about.

I think this is the most acurate statment in this WHOLE thread LOL. I know I did (I downloaded it and never even installed the damn game ROFLMAO) but I wanted to "pirate" it just to piss EA off

I think I have it on a thumb drive somewhere but I never did actualy install the stupid game.

 

[Dende]

Sorry but no. there's just no way you can prove your statement that I bolded. People pirate games because they want to play the games, first and foremost that is the main reason.

If you think people spent all that time downloading a game just to piss off EA you are out of touch with basic human behaviour and need to come back to planet earth.

Sorry guy but your WRONG lol I did just that as I stated and I have done it with other games too. AND most of the time I don't play what I downloaded at all.

I also pirate games to see if I will like it before I buy it too but I won't buy anything from EA so I just get there games to piss with them

There are many others just like me out there (I know of several people just in my little group of friends) that do the same thing. They download a game just to see what the fuss is all about and then either file it away some where or delete it. They never even play the game through the first map most of the time. People DO pirate games JUST TO PISS PEOPLE OFF all the time

If company "X" says "we are making a game that NO hacker anywhere will every be able to pirate" Then guess what that company just became a target and people are going to do it just to do it. EA did just that they painted a target on there backs and flaunted it off to the public. NOW they get there games pirated like its going out of style.

 

[lgestle]

My friend, based on what you described, you have become the typical as i call "Old man gamer".
I am married and in my late 30's and have seen this happen with all my former hard-core gaming buddies. They dont want to commit serious time, or just want to play for 10 minutes (although they probably get laid more).

No argument with that. I agree that gaming, when single, was one of my core hobbies. I remember going over to my buddies batchelor pad almost every weekend where we had 8-12 person lan parties every night when we returned from the club or billards. Now with children, full time job, and other responsibilities it's more of a back seat. Personally I would rather go ATVing for a day than to sit behind a monitor and keyboard.
I admit people change, and I'm fully aware of xfire and steam, but I also must admit for some reason it was far easier to convince people to buy xbox 360 games than on the PC. I think mainly because even though most of my friends have money, if they can get a free version via other methods they have a hard time justifying purchasing a copy for mutliplayer purposes. Yes piracy exists on both, but on the console side people are more concerned about being banned or voiding the warranty, so to pay you must play if you want those two intact. Then again most of my friends are now old men (guess that's 30)

Im just going to add my comments in red.



Essentially you're right, consoles are easier to setup, I wouldn't say they're easier to use on a day to day basis because once you have a PC setup there is little to no difference, but yes I understand your point.

And this is where I'm going to come over as an asshole but I'm not going to lie about it - while I dont really like consoles myself for various reasons, I understand why we have them and to be honest I'm glad we have them. Because they keep all the people who can't even configure teamspeak, or work out how to install patches/drivers, off the servers. PC gaming is hardly perfect but thank god we don't have the xbox kiddies running about on our servers.

Agree to some extent. Can't say my CS experience was any different than a typical halo 3 match where you have a bunch of 13 year old kids running around saying "owned". Sure there are adult matches on either side you can find, but the population of age groups are probably similar.
Personally I'm far from a PC noob but I know this was just a general comment. I won several local tournaments in quake 2/3 and keyboard and mouse is my weapon of choice However the convenience factor limits this option.
I also admit if my friends were more savey on the PC it may have been a different experience. However, being the "tech" guy the last thing I want to do is troubleshoot someone else's computer in my free time especially since I do it Monday-Friday. Probably walked someone through the configuration of ventrillo more times than I want to remember.
Don't knock anyone for choosing one and not the other, just comes down to preference.

 

[UltimateNewbie]

If you can aford top of the line hardware there is no flippen reason why you can't aford $50 bucks for a video game as well.....

its very difficult to download hardware....

 

[Frostex]

However, being the "tech" guy the last thing I want to do is troubleshoot someone else's computer in my free time especially since I do it Monday-Friday.

I can sympathize with this quite heavily.

Working in IT hasn't driven me away from my own PC (yet) but its given me a short fuse when it comes to PC problems and makes me impatient with helping friends with their PC problems.

 

[lgestle]

I can sympathize with this quite heavily.

Working in IT hasn't driven me away from my own PC (yet) but its given me a short fuse when it comes to PC problems and makes me impatient with helping friends with their PC problems.

Took me several years to get to that point, but I think the nail in the coffin for me was a change in responsbilities and change in oncall structure. Once your stuck with a pager, laptop, and required to respond to tech related issues 24*7 for weeks, or months, on end the last thing I want to do is prevent work from bleeding into my entertianment any further. Probably doesn't help I telecommute so my work place is the same location as my fun place