FM boss: 'Fixing' piracy would reduce game prices

Sangria - 317 days 5 hours ago

And as there is no way to stop hackers and pirates, prices will never drop. Thanks for the memo, my good lord.

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FreestyleBarnacle - 317 days 5 hours ago

I think he's looking at it backwards. Reduced game prices are a cure for piracy. So long as it is realized that not all people who pirate a game are possible customers. Those people could possibly be persuaded to rent through a subscription based system included in their internet price.

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Snoozer282 - 317 days 3 hours ago

Games have been the same price for close to 25 years. Looking at my mega drive games with their stickers, they were 40 quid. Nothing has changed and this is just an excuse / pity searching.

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tehk1w1 - 317 days 3 hours ago

Tragically that is a load of rubbish.

Case in point -from 2001-2007, Thailand attempted to combat rampant piracy by slashing the prices of their PC games dramatically. Where Half-Life 2 could be bought in the US for $50, you could pick up the same exact version (only with Thai lettering on the box) for around $10. Pirated copies still cost around $1.

Fast forward two years -2009. Real PC games are next to non-existent on store shelves. The piracy industry, however, is still as healthy as ever.

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DrzLeX - 317 days 3 hours ago

now day making games is becoming more expensive than before and that it is that why game are so expensive. just look at the ps3 no piracy and game are the same price.

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Lumbo - 317 days 3 hours ago

Hmm, so far there is not a single pirated copy on the PS3 scene, STILL PS3 games are the most expensive ones on store shelves wherever i look ...

Seems the piracy is at fault for expensive games 'argument' has a huge freaking hole in the middle of it.

Point is, games are expensive cause distributors are greedy and people PAY the price. Piracy has nothing to do with the prices, it is just a cheap excuse by the developers and distributors as of WHY they overcharge so much for the games ...

In reality the oposite of the argument is true: PC games are CHEAPER than console games cause distributors fear that putting an outrageous pricetag on them could scare off potential customers to the pirate bay. If there was a way to disable all and any piracy the prices for games would RISE as this fear of the distributor would disappear and they could charge whatever they like.

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Leio - 317 days 3 hours ago

The price as it is for me is not the biggest concern.

Pirated games have alot better support they release crack and fixes in matter of days, always come out weeks before the actual release, easier to use and install no f´cking DRM bullshit. Just match all those things listed above then i´m in.

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PumPum - 317 days 3 hours ago

This must be about PC titles only, which are already cheaper than console games.
Look at the PlayStation 3. There is NO piracy because of bluray and the firmware updates and look at the prices of games.

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Baka-akaB - 317 days 2 hours ago

What a load of BS ! I've been paying the same abused prices and charges ever since video games appeared , under the pretext and excuses that i live a remote carribean island .

It was , and still is , outrageous to the point that importing from japan and the rest of asia was cheaper than buying EU games (the "official" games for my area) , and importing from US cuts 3 times the prices .

Anyway from what i've seen over 20 years , us and eu prices didnt change much , if anything did - and the reason why these liars are complaining - it's the developpers and publisher's margins .
Wich would happen naturally regardless of piracy . Obviously you wont have the same margin from a blockbuster game on snes , than on a full blown cgi fest like most big games on 360 or ps3 .

And BTW every ps3 game so far is pirated and available to download . it just happens that the console cannot be downgraded , got to be an early ps3 never updated , needs to be opened and modified to some extend , a blu ray writer , and mostly boils down to the sheer idiocy of not upgrading the console and getting online access , just for the sake of playing pirated games .

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thehitman - 317 days ago

its called... PS3 & Blue Ray. I still dont know how 360 game prices are same as ps3 I think MS are scamming u guys lol... dvds are cheap as hell.

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Baka-akaB - 317 days ago

@ Lumbo
No need for a loader for it to be piracy , the existence of those rips and the possibility to play them is enough .
There are ways , or rather a way to play it . it's just mightly flawed and without pratical use .
Again it needs some "lucky" guy who bought one of the first ps3 , never updated it , despite numerous and huge progress with xmb and firmwares , wich happened also to own a blu-ray writer , at a time when it costed quite a lot , and would open and play in the innards of the console without killing it .
Not to mention obvious crash and bugs with various games , some requiring specific firmware versions of the ps3 to launch , hence the need to bypass that .

Again it's possible , but it's a nightmare even if you managed to get everything needed , wich is now unlikely . But it did work with old titles .

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Gun_Senshi - 317 days ago

Cheaper games reducing piracy.

Alot of people who pirate games are because they find games expensive. Most of them are kids/teens where for them 65 EUR is alot of money, so they pirate them.

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PS360WII - 317 days ago

Yeah don't think so. It should say it could reduce as they will see more people buying games rather than pirating them and see their bottom line increase and say why would we want to take money away from us and the price will stay the same...

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titntin - 316 days 23 hours ago

Its just utter rubbish. The only machine out there which does not suffer from piracy is the PS3. everything else gets pirated ruthlessly, but no one has cracked the PS3 security measures.
Yet PS3 games are actually often slightly more expspensive than their 360 counterparts, despite zero piracy.
You can pontificate and theorise all you like, but facts is facts and theres no indication at all that prices would be cheaper if it weren't for pirates - thats simply not bourne out by what actually happens.

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Baka-akaB - 316 days 19 hours ago

@ronando
Why bother repeating what i've alredy stated twice about the insane constraints?
Playing back ups has been done and worked , with the many limitations explained earlier . It has been documented and displayed on various sources already . Modding the console + having the console on 1.50 max (or 1.52 cant remember well) + burned blu disc = launching games , even if probably not all of them . Any flaws has been patched beyond in following firmwares... again just look it up already as it is a damn FACT and a thing of the past...

There arent entire sections of ps3 dumps just for the sake of being "ready just in case it ever really get hacked" .

I can only say i dont know if it would work anymore , if anyone was silly enough to bother with it , we all know , ever since the psp , sony's and dev's tendancies to require a specific firmware to launch a game ... if losing online gaming and the many interfaces and videos improvements you'd miss out werent enough already

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Douche Nozzle - 316 days 15 hours ago

that the MOST PIRATED entertainment industry in(probably)the world doesn't b!tch even HALF as much about piracy as the video game industry or the music/film industry?
What industry am I talking about? THE PORN INDUSTRY! You can download a sh!tload of COPYRIGHTED pornography for FREE! Yet is that killing the porn industry? Nope. I guess MOST people will pay for something if they believe it's a FAIR price. It doesn't matter what the cost was to produce that entertainment but what the people BELIEVE is a justifiable price.

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XerockX - 316 days 15 hours ago

I remember paying 69.99 for sf2 on snes when it came out. The internet didn't even exist yet!!! the game ewas still 70 bux!!

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TheMART at Xboxkings - 317 days 3 hours ago

Nope dude, it works the other way around. Reduce game prices would lower piracy.

People and especially young gamers/kids paying 65 Euro is a lot, a lot of money especially when they find out at home the game isn't what the hypemachine said it would be.

I have an option for you:

We already get XBOX 1 games that are 3 to 5GB through Xbox Live for 1200 points. I don't see why the industry doesn't bring XBOX 360 games for download through XBL, which are 5 to max. 8.5GB for those that have fast internet.

That way they cut costs like:

- Distribution/shipment
- Retail profit
- Marketing
- Making the discs, the case and the printing of books etc.
- Problem of those copies that don't sell are made for nothing

Digital distribution with those cuts in costs would lower the price of a game to 30 to 35 Euro. Combine that with the game online a month before the discs are on sale through retail and you'll see suddenly the game sales will skyrocket.

You know the downloaded content on 360 HDD's aren't hacked yet, the game DVD's are... Wink wink, good tip game industry and Microsoft, get it done fast.

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