[janh]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

yes, its pretty bad when you look at it. Those figures are pretty easy to find on the internet:

http://kotaku.com/5435876/report-the...-games-of-2009

http://kotaku.com/5426474/report-mod...00-in-november

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/1...re-2-pc-sales/

170,000 was november sales. Apparently, another 100,000 was sold through Steam. Total sales may be higher, but even if you double sales to say 500,000 and reduce piracy to 2,000,000, it is easy to see why piracy is killing the PC games market.

JC, I agree that there are apparent gaps. Even if only 100.000 (5%) or 200.000 (10%) of those piracy download would have converted into sales if customers where honest, or the pirating didn't happen, than this is a 20-40% sales lost based on the 270.000 to ca 500.000 total sales estimate. That number does sound pretty reasonable. It, however, is based on a number of assumptions that all need testing. I don't expect companies to have a much better estimate, since that would strengthen their claims the public.

My opinion on piracy is that it is a symptom, not a root cause. Companies have to work on customer moral, loyality and binding through service, open ears and support. They need to start selling customers what the want to buy, and not selling what the want to sell. And they need to get away from the "patch me if you can on the release date" strategy, but do more thorough testing before. I would assume people are less and less willing to pay since it lacks quality, novelty, is not predominandly what they look for, or that as a pirate you are simply better off than as a paying customer. As a customer, you don't have any added-value. They are also less willing to pay for additional content that should have been part of the original release as it was intrinsic part of previous releases already. I would say for a customer, this whole strategy does not quite add up. But that's just my two cents, and future will test that argument no matter what.

And the PC market was said to be dead already many times, BTW. And as long as there is demand, it won't die. But maybe we'll see changes, maybe back to smaller developer studios with less running costs and more specialized content. Like Madminute games, or Matrix. Maybe the consolidation strategy of major publishers just was the wrong approach for such a diverse and split up market. But who would anyway have expected that many products such as a submarine simulation would ever be of real attraction to the majority of casual gamers? I'd be surprised...