[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by Dowly

@Neon

Those figures cant be just because of piracy, Xbox360 games are as much pirated as PC games.

No they are not pirated anywhere near as much due to the fact that you have to physically modify your xbox360 (or any other console) by soldering on a "mod" chip onto its main board to be able to play pirated (copied) games. At best maybe 5% of users have mod chips. This significantly limits how many pirate copies are downloaded (most figures put console piracy at around 5%-10% then the rate of PC piracy)

From that article Neal found (The data is just from one torrent site)
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

Fallout 3 (released Oct. 30 2008):

PC Version:

Fallout 3-RELOADED--cgaurav™-- - 75,152
Fallout 3 Full-Rip Skullptura - 72,987
Fallout 3-RELOADED.[sitenameremoved.org] - 48,926
Fallout 3 [PC] - 45,130
Fallout.3-RELOADED.[sitenameremoved.com] - 12,226
Fallout 3-RELOADED [Full ISO/RPG/2008] - 12,110
FALLOUT 3-TRiViUM - 5,032


I counted almost 90 individual torrents for the full PC version of Fallout 3. The small sample listed above adds up to 271,563 downloads in a one month period.

XBox 360 Version:

Fallout 3 USA XBOX360-RUiNS - 6,649
Fallout 3 READNFO XBOX360-Seed4ME - 5,612
Fallout 3 PAL XBOX360-GLoBAL - 4,220
Fallout 3 GERMAN-0x0007 - 2,336
Fallout 3 USA PROPER RETAIL XBOX360-x360inT - 1,171


I counted around 30 individual torrents for the XBox 360 version of Fallout 3. The sample listed above adds up to 19,988 downloads in a one month period.

PS3 Version:

I couldn't find any Fallout 3 torrents which were labelled as or appeared to be for the PS3.


Call of Duty 4 (released Nov. 6 2007):

PC Version:

Call of duty 4 [PC-DVD] [English] 3876100 TPB - 205,277
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Full-Rip Skullptura - 111,310
Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare [English][PCDVD] - 96,082
Call Of Duty 4 [PCFullGame][Eng-DvD][CrackIncl] KaYZ 2008 - 43,805
Call Of Duty 4-Razor1911 - 40,839
Call Of Duty 4-Razor1911 [sitenameremoved.com] - 21,456
Call Of Duty 4 - 18,295
++sitenameremoved com++-Call of Duty 4 DVD Modern Warfare - 17,212
Call of Duty(R) 4 - Modern Warfare - 12,300


I counted over 100 active torrents for the PC version of this game, a year after its release. The sample listed above adds up to 566,000 downloads in a one year period.

XBox 360 Version:

XBOX 360 Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warface [PAL] - 12,231
Call Of Duty 4 PAL FR XBOX360-PROPER - 11,758
[Xbox360-ITA]Call Of Duty 4- Modern Warfare - 9,702
Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PAL FRENCH XBOX 360 - 9,277
Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warface PAL XBOX360-GAC[sitenameremoved.org] - 7,182
Call of Duty 4 [PAL - Spanish - XBOX360] - 5,194
Call Of Duty 4 ENG XBOX360 - 3,513


There were around 20 XBox 360 torrents for this game, and the sample listed above adds up to 58,857 downloads.

PS3 Version:

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX - 24,185
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PAL PS3-MRN () - 9,484
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PAL PS3-MRN - 6,876
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX[sitenameremoved.net] - 5,382
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX[sitenameremoved.org] - 3,683
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare USA PS3-PARADOX[sitenameremoved.org] - 3,065


There were only 6 PS3-labelled torrents for this game, and I've listed all of them above, adding up to 52,657 downloads over the past year.

Then there is the call of duty: MW2 case. quoted from that article again.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

For 2009, the most pirated PC game as reported in this article was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The PC version had a staggering 4.1 million downloads via torrents alone compared with an estimated 200,000 - 300,000 actual sales via retail and Steam, demonstrating that the most popular game of 2009 was also the most pirated, and more importantly, that the actual number of downloads for the most popular game is now almost three times as high as in 2008, signalling the rampant growth of piracy. It is also interesting to note that while COD:MW2 sold around 300,000 copies on PC and had 4.1 million pirated downloads, the console version sold in excess of 6 million copies during the same period according to this article, and yet had a fraction of the number of pirated downloads at around 970,000.

Then there is the "world of goo" case which is reporting 90% piracy rates (by comparing number of unique IP addresses connecting to the leader board vs number of copies sold). Its a real original and very good game that sells for 20$.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55906

I was going to reference a BSA study but in the end I decided not to as I consider their offered data far to flawed to do so, particularly in the amount of money they consider lost sales; they like to equate every single instance of piracy as being a lost sale at a 1:1 ratio which is beyond absurd, especially in poor countries. They also like to make other claims which also don't make much sense logically, and they are obviously heavily biased given they are the legal arm of the games industry.

Originally Posted by Dowly

Also, does that count all console sales? As in Wii, xbox360 and PS3 games combined? That would skew the figures a lot.

Yes that figure is all console games reguardless of type, it is a comparison of sales figures from pc (which have dropped by half) to console (which have doubled). Not sure why it skews the figures though.

Originally Posted by BarjackU977

I happened to wonder what influence has marketing over people behaviour, and piracy.

Around games, there is marketing. Ads in magazines, on websites, on some TV channels.
Goal: let you know about the game first, and second, also tempt you. Create new "needs".

This questions is quite "out of topic", sorry for that. But It came to my mind as I've read this topic (reading about house robbery, for which there is no marketing).
Marketing is logical from a sales perspective. What I wonder is if piracy raises following the same curve as sales thanks to marketing, or if it follows another curve.
A question that will remain for sure unanswered.

It is certainly possible that heavy duty advertising is driving up piracy rates by instilling a need for the person to posses the game (look at the COD:MW2 example above, that was a heavily marketed game). They may decide to pirate the game because they can't afford to get it but yet they must have it. This may then cause a slippery slope effect which leads to the person switching over entirely to piracy (why buy when I can just steal it and spend my money on other things).

You can certainly see the effect of mass advertising and hyping products just by walking along the street and seeing all the crap people have which they don't really need, yet are going broke over it to have it. But that is another topic.