I just saw the announcement that they arent planning on releasing this game on the pc. Their excuse seems to be that low end PCs would give a less than stellar performance.

I will bet though what they really mean is we don't want our product to be a bit torrent on day 1.

I see this trend continuing and more and more large cross platform titles not releasing on the PC.

My prediction. COD 6 only released on consoles. You heard it here first

{Discuss}

Do you realize the console version will be on bit torrent day 1 just like every other game?

i'd be willing to bet that console piracy is in the single digits percentage wise compared to pc piracy.

Just because you'd be willing to bet doesn't make it true.

And if you release your game on Steam the piracy percentage drops significantly.

Just because you'd be willing to bet doesn't make it true.

And if you release your game on Steam the piracy percentage drops significantly.
But doesn’t the percentage of whining increase exponentially? ;)

"Just because you'd be willing to bet doesn't make it true."

So you are trying to say that more than 1 in 10 console users have modded machines to pirate with? That idea gets a big old "lulz". :) Formula is right. Console piracy is far less than 10% of the user base.

consoles are definatley more secure, the writing to hard drive makes pc's easy to crack. i think op is correct they skiped a call of duty on pc already. msft needs to do something to protect the platform, cause i fear no one will release on in future. i feel all the groundbreaking games come there first then trickle to consoles.

"msft needs to do something to protect the platform,"

Microsoft doesn't need to do anything. As jokell said, Steam has already fixed piracy on the PC. Yes, Steam games still get pirated, but at a far lower rate than a traditional game. Really, Zero Day piracy is non-existent with Steam products, and that is the most damaging type of piracy.

I just saw the announcement that they arent planning on releasing this game on the pc. Their excuse seems to be that low end PCs would give a less than stellar performance.{Discuss}

Yeah but they're releasing it on PS2. :rolleyes:

I just went to a well known pirate site and typed in "Orange Box".

There were about 200 seeders and 700 leachers for the PC game.

And about 10 seeders and 15 leachers for the 360 game.

I then went to another big pirate site and did the same and numbers were about the same.

I don't think Steam has fixed anything.

Orange Box wasn't a steam-only release.

I was hoping for a spiritual successor to Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast that I could play on my PC with m/kb. Now it will be a tough decision because each console has its own exclusive content. Tempting to buy for more than one console.

While you guys argue the effects of piracy, I see a different reason: This game is expected to be an action arcade game, not a first person shooter. Action Arcade games have historically sold much higher on consoles, not alot of PC folks have joypads on their PC's anymore.

Add to that, its not as easy to distribute a PC game these days....CompUSA is out of business, does gamestop even carry PC titles? If so is it a huge wall or just a tiny section...? They'd have to distribute online.

IMHO once the console versions drop, they'll release on PC at a later date and claim "due to tremendous demand from our loyal PC gamers....".

Umm ... why is this in the Xbox area ...

Shouldn't this be in the PC forum ?

-- Jason

Do you realize the console version will be on bit torrent day 1 just like every other game?

Your not suggesting that console piracy is just as rampant as PC piracy are you. True some games do show up day one but its far less likely.

and MSFT seems to be pretty liberal coming down with the BAN stick if your using pirated software on live.

Pirating games used to be a common thing in the days of the original Xbox, but not nearly as common for the 360, too much work involved to make it work for the average person to be able to do it, not to mention the constant XBL updates to fight it.

It's not complicated at all. Bring it to a guy, pay him like $30 bucks and your console gets modded. Then you download and burn the games. Easy. As far as XBL fighting back, it took them almost two years I think to implement the first wave of banning consoles for TOS violations related to modding. Yeah, these people lose consoles every year or two, with the price of them you can just get a new one and you'd still have saved for not paying for the games (as wrong as that is and I don't endorse that). Yeah, I really think it's inevitable that piracy on consoles will become prevalent. It's really not that hard, and it costs MS time and money to counter it.

Along the same lines, it's been revealed that there is no multiplayer mode on X360 or PS3.

Piracy may have something to do with it, but the PC as a gaming platform has a market that gets smaller and smaller.

I blame that on Intel myself. They can't make a decent embedded graphics chip to save their lives, yet keep saying that any day now they will put Nvidia out of business.

anyone not care?

funny, I was watching x play on thursday, and they said that the PC Version was to have mutiplayer while the PS3/360 weren't.

Certainly sounds like it's heading to the pc to me.

any links to this rumor?

Orange Box wasn't a steam-only release.

So what? When you buy a Valve game from the stores, all it does is install the software to the disc. You then have to type in a CD key while in Steam to unlock it. Then the disc becomes a coaster.

"When you buy a Valve game from the stores, all it does is install the software to the disc."

Better than that, all the disc contains is the resources for the game. The executable is distributed digitally through Steam on the release date. You said earlier that Steam didn't fix anything. Yes it did. Zero Day piracy of Steam games is nil. Without the executable, copying a factory disc (the main source of Zero Day pirated games) is useless. It then takes a day for that exe to filter down through the Torrent networks and whatnot.

This is huge.

Perfect example: The biggest fans of the game will want it as soon as possible. When the earliest source is to pirate is off torrents, then that is where the big fan gets the game. Even few of the well intentioned fans will bother to purchase the game later if they already finished it before release. Without Zero Day piracy, the big fan buys it on Steam or in a store on release day.

The 900 pirates you talked about earlier? There was never a risk of them buying the game anyway. Sure, that is 900 people stealing Steam games, but it is nowhere close to 900 sales lost.

The 900 pirates you talked about earlier? There was never a risk of them buying the game anyway. Sure, that is 900 people stealing Steam games, but it is nowhere close to 900 sales lost.

Impossible to know. I understand that viewpoint, its a fact that many the games I have pirated over my life I would not have bought, but delaying for a single day is not entirely helpful especially since people *know* a crack is coming soon because Steam has been hacked.

Allow me to explain. It took like two weeks for a good working crack of Bioshock to hit the internets. During that time there was confusion about what worked and didn't work. That is the optimal copy protection system. People buy the game because of uncertainty and with Steam there is no such uncertainty. A system where pirates just have to way until release+1 day isn't as effective.

Steam is an okay system in a lot of ways. It's antipiracy measures are probably as good as they are gonna get without terrible headaches for legit users (Bioshock's definitely was a failure on that count). But there's still tons of people pirating the game, very soon after release.

It's not complicated at all. Bring it to a guy, pay him like $30 bucks and your console gets modded. Then you download and burn the games. Easy. As far as XBL fighting back, it took them almost two years I think to implement the first wave of banning consoles for TOS violations related to modding. Yeah, these people lose consoles every year or two, with the price of them you can just get a new one and you'd still have saved for not paying for the games (as wrong as that is and I don't endorse that). Yeah, I really think it's inevitable that piracy on consoles will become prevalent. It's really not that hard, and it costs MS time and money to counter it.

Having to pay some asshat to mod your system by opening it up and installing a bunch of chips (voiding the warranty obviously, which with the 360 is kind of a bigger deal) is a big step away from piracy on the PC, where you just download the software and a CD crack, or even the Xbox which all you needed was a copy of Agent Under Fire. The systems with the most piracy - PSP, DS, Xbox 1, Dreamcast - all required no hardware hacks. The piracy on those systems is truly disappointing, and IMO its a big reason why so few PSP games are coming out. If companies can at least design a system that can't be softmodded then they can cut piracy down a huge amount to where its not all that significant.

Yeah, I hear you. I still think quite a few people are doing it though, just based on the number of 360 game torrents you can find out there.

About defeating mods, how about if they eventually move away from media all together? As far as I know no one has hacked the XBL download service and no one has cracked the DRM on XBL downloads. So, if a few years from now, the only way to play games is to download them directly to the 360's hard drive through Live, I bet that would pretty much kill the piracy. I guess that's what you guys referring to the Steam model are getting at, huh?

"Impossible to know"

Impossible to know? Heh. Well, we know that they didn't buy the game and are now pirating it 7 months later. :) That pretty much proves that there was no chance that these people weren't going to buy the game. These are people that instead of walking into a store and purchasing five incredibly high quality titles for $40, instead chose to torrent them. These are people that don't buy games. Ever. These aren't lost sales.

"I bet that would pretty much kill the piracy"

No. It would just shift the cracking effort toward DLC instead of disc-based media. It would still be cracked and pirated.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think hacking XBL would be very difficult. It is a closed, secure network. I'm pretty sure there's people who've been trying to hack it since Live was first introduced like 7 years ago. I'm sure there's people who've been trying to circumvent the protection to share XBLA games for example. So far, the hackers have made no real progress beating the security on the Live network as far as I've heard or read.

this thread is a little funny. Wii/360 games are probably more pirated these days then PC games. The ps3 is the only safe platform right now and even that is on the verge of being cracked.

Fighting piracy is a waste of time. I will never be convinced that the funds they waste on fighting it, are worth what they actually lose. This goes for movies and mp3's as well. There is NO way to know how many pirates there are, any numbers these companies provide are strictly bloated fictional numbers that someone estimated or theorized to make their case. I don't support piracy, but part of me believes that the companies are either a: wasting too much time or resources which equals money, money that they have to raise game prices to pay for. .. or B: using piracy as an excuse to raise those prices alittle more then they need to.

You can't stop piracy. Give up. The only way they can truly stop it, is to invade a owners privacy rights....which the recording and movie industry are trying very hard to convince the governments of the world ( cough...USA) to do, and that is going to lead to a lot of other issues with personal information and privacy.

this thread is a little funny. Wii/360 games are probably more pirated these days then PC games.


Nope. Not even close.

And, companies are not going to give up because they can go on torrents and see their game being passed around for free. I mean, Crysis torrents had 10,000+ people on when the game came out. No way EA is just gonna say "whatever" to that. In fact, that is probably why EA has implemented that more draconian system for ME and Spore.

The easiest way to "give up", especially on PC piracy... is not to make PC games anymore. And that is what companies are doing. And its why PSP game development is drying up.

In fact, that is probably why EA has implemented that more draconian system for ME and Spore.

Actually they abandoned the DRM they were planning on using.

The easiest way to "give up", especially on PC piracy... is not to make PC games anymore. And that is what companies are doing. And its why PSP game development is drying up.

Actually the easiest way to "give up" is to give people more incentive to buy the game than to pirate it. And for PSP game development to be "drying up" despite the great recent sales numbers is insane, regardless of any piracy levels.

Actually they abandoned the DRM they were planning on using.

They eased up on one feature of it, the checks every 10 days.

Actually the easiest way to "give up" is to give people more incentive to buy the game than to pirate it. And for PSP game development to be "drying up" despite the great recent sales numbers is insane, regardless of any piracy levels.

It is drying up. Look at the release lists. There's nothing.

They eased up on one feature of it, the checks every 10 days.

Which was the only problem with it.

They eased up on one feature of it, the checks every 10 days.

Given its other restrictions it's now less draconian than the previous worst, Bioshock. It's still a pain, and games like Sins of a Solar Empire prove that it's unnecessary, but companies love it.

It is drying up. Look at the release lists. There's nothing.

I'd have hard time being convinced this is due to piracy. The DS is one of the easiest game systems ever to pirate games on and it has a very robust release schedule. It's definitely far easier than pirating games on a PSP. If I had to guess, I'd say that having only a third of the handheld market simply isn't worth very much.

It's still a pain, and games like Sins of a Solar Empire prove that it's unnecessary, but companies love it.

Sins doesn't really tell you as much as you'd think. Stardock sells to a small, niche, older audience. It's not really the type of audience that pirates games (BTW this is what Stardock's rationale is for their decision). Games with tons of hype and large audiences which consist of teens/college kids are much more susceptible to piracy.

If I had to guess, I'd say that having only a third of the handheld market simply isn't worth very much.

The system has sold like 30+ million units and is outselling even the DS in Japan. You can't convince me that an installed base of 30+ million units is worth nothing. Yet for some reason games aren't selling and don't sell. Maybe it has to do with the fact that piracy and hacking has been rampant on the PSP since day one. Or maybe it's another reason. I doubt it's because the installed base is too small.

He great discussion guys.

I think actually Sins proves the point the other way around. Its one of the best games to come out in a long time. Great game. In my mind it should easily be a million plus seller. I havent seen any recent sales data on it but will it break 500k sales?

Now compare that to a great game on the consoles. Great games on consoles seem to always break a million sales.

Sales on the pc are so bad now that we have to lower the bar for that platform to find something succesful and if that is the case doesnt that seem to show that the pc as a platform is dying.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/873/873303p1.html

http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=156948

The system has sold like 30+ million units and is outselling even the DS in Japan. You can't convince me that an installed base of 30+ million units is worth nothing. Yet for some reason games aren't selling and don't sell. Maybe it has to do with the fact that piracy and hacking has been rampant on the PSP since day one. Or maybe it's another reason. I doubt it's because the installed base is too small.

30 million units or not, it's still only about a third of the handheld market. Like I said, maybe that market simply doesn't work that way. It's never supported more than one platform in the past, so I don't really see why there's an expectation for it to now. If you had a 50/50 split, maybe you'd see equal development, but I question even that if the two hypothetical platforms weren't nearly identical.

I'm also not surprised the PSP is outselling the DS in Japan, either. I think the DS has saturated the market over there. I'd be surprised if there were any more people they could realistically sell to. There are about 50 million households in Japan, and nearly 8 million of those are inhabited solely by people 65 and older. That means there is a DS in about 1 in every 2 households over there. I'm not sure you could really expect to do much better than that. I guess I'm actually a little impressed the hardware is pushing any units at all anymore.

I think actually Sins proves the point the other way around. Its one of the best games to come out in a long time. Great game. In my mind it should easily be a million plus seller. I havent seen any recent sales data on it but will it break 500k sales?

One thing to consider is that Sins of Solar Empire is an extremely niche game. By all accounts its sold extremely well for its market. As number1laing pointed out, that may be part of why it hasn't had a piracy issue.

The system has sold like 30+ million units and is outselling even the DS in Japan. You can't convince me that an installed base of 30+ million units is worth nothing. Yet for some reason games aren't selling and don't sell. Maybe it has to do with the fact that piracy and hacking has been rampant on the PSP since day one. Or maybe it's another reason. I doubt it's because the installed base is too small.

I had a PSP and finally sold it off when I came to the realization that the system was straight-up garbage, with no useful purpose in life.

Its a ginormous MP3 player, its games were *terrible*..and even the ones that were semi-decent turned out to be impossible to play because the analog pad was borderline useless, so we were immediately back to the days of a single d-pad and a few face buttons. Its really only saving grace was that it was a decent portable movie player, but now with MP3 players doing that left and right...meh...who needs that gigantic PSP sticking out of your pocket.

No wonder the most popular app for the system is playing SNES games with hacked firmwares :P

30 million units or not, it's still only about a third of the handheld market. Like I said, maybe that market simply doesn't work that way. It's never supported more than one platform in the past, so I don't really see why there's an expectation for it to now. If you had a 50/50 split, maybe you'd see equal development, but I question even that if the two hypothetical platforms weren't nearly identical.

The percentage of the market is irrelevant on this - 30 million people are 30 million people. Since when do people purchase videogame systems to look at them and not buy videogames for them?

Now, I do think piracy is a major problem for the platform and scared away lots of publishers in the beginning. Practically every game has been a bomb and companies like EA and Ubisoft have moved away from it. But now I think people are buying it more for the movie and music capability. Since Sony is turning a profit on the hardware I doubt they care. But piracy did shape the life of the PSP system quite drastically and it is why imo Sony built such strong security measures into PS3.

Its a ginormous MP3 player, its games were *terrible*..and even the ones that were semi-decent turned out to be impossible to play because the analog pad was borderline useless, so we were immediately back to the days of a single d-pad and a few face buttons.

The PSP was bad at being a "portable PS2" because of the control. But there are lots, and I mean lots, of great games for the system. Just because you didn't care to find them doesn't mean they weren't there. I think I have 15 games for the system, all lots of fun and well suited to the platform.

The percentage of the market is irrelevant on this - 30 million people are 30 million people. Since when do people purchase videogame systems to look at them and not buy videogames for them?

I think the answer to that question is twofold:

My speculation is a lot of those were sold as second systems to people who already owned a DS. They played around with it, decided they liked the DS better, and didn't look back. That goes back to my point of there simply not being a great ability of the handheld market to really support two platforms.

You can also see on AVS forum people buying it as a media player and either using it as that and buying very few games, or finding it isn't that great at that for them and not using it for very long.

Now, I do think piracy is a major problem for the platform and scared away lots of publishers in the beginning. Practically every game has been a bomb and companies like EA and Ubisoft have moved away from it. But now I think people are buying it more for the movie and music capability. Since Sony is turning a profit on the hardware I doubt they care. But piracy did shape the life of the PSP system quite drastically and it is why imo Sony built such strong security measures into PS3.

I don't discount it as a possibility, but I wonder why this hasn't also affected the DS which is far easier to pirate games on. It was easy from relatively early in its life as well. The PSP may have been relatively easy early on, but that's changed in the past year or so, and there's been no resurgence, so I still question the relation.

I had a PSP and finally sold it off when I came to the realization that the system was straight-up garbage, with no useful purpose in life.



I love my PSP, but only for certain circumstances. Namely:

1) vacations and work travel (on the plain, train, bus, in airports, etc.)
2) commuting (I don't anymore, but I used to have a 30 min commute twice a day on the subway)
3) gaming in "unusual" places: on the rooftop of my building, public parks, etc.

Mine's modded, and it's an awesome all-in-one machine. I can play games, surf the Internet with WiFi, watch TV shows and movies, listen to MP3's, and read eBooks.

Now, it sure ain't my everyday gaming machine (that would be the Xbox 360) but I personally find my PSP indispensible in certain situations that I find myself in fairly regularly.

As far as games, I agree it's pretty hit and miss. Personally, I find puzzle games and RPG/strategy games the best for PSP. I don't even bother with FPS games on the PSP. Crush is an awesome puzzle game IMO. There's a few new PSP puzzle games out this year that rate very highly on IGN that I haven't tried yet also.

Crush is an awesome puzzle game IMO. There's a few new PSP puzzle games out this year that rate very highly on IGN that I haven't tried yet also.

I think the problem is that to spend $200+ on a handheld system to play puzzle games that could be done on an IPOD, thats the disappointment factor of it all.

If Sony had just reworked the controls and given us a couple of analog nubs they could have done so, so much more with the system. Thats why I ultimately sold it off, it was a neet gimmick..but actually fairly lousy at what it intended to be, a portable game system.

My other gripe was that it was just too damned large to be practical......I think the screen size was great and all, but it needed a few hardware revisions to shrink it down.....the first version I had was just too big and clunky.

have you ever tried to play a game on an ipod? its horrible.

that being said, i sold my PSP, even though it was modded, i just didn't use it enough. if i'm not near my 360, i'm near a laptop, or at least a smartphone/ipod.

"My speculation is a lot of those were sold as second systems to people who already owned a DS. They played around with it, decided they liked the DS better, and didn't look back."

Between the two people in my household, we own one PSP. For it we own about 15 of what would be considered the "top" games for the platform. It never gets played, as the thing is a giant flaming pile of crap in every regard (well, except it has Crush). By comparison, my household has purchased five of the DS, along with about 50 games. We rarely leave the house without a DS. The thing is amazing. And yes, that is five DS's for two people. That means three other people got free DS's to start building their own collections with when we upgraded.

So what? When you buy a Valve game from the stores, all it does is install the software to the disc. You then have to type in a CD key while in Steam to unlock it. Then the disc becomes a coaster.
My point was that, the reason you see a ton of PC Orange Box torrents was because it was released on disc as well. Rarely do you see a torrent for a Steam-only release.

"My point was that, the reason you see a ton of PC Orange Box torrents was because it was released on disc as well. Rarely do you see a torrent for a Steam-only release."

That point doesn't work. The disc essentially only contains the non-encrypted common data. See my above reply regarding this issue. Discs of Steam games do not ship with an executable. From a cracker/pirate's viewpoint, it is quicker to get the data from the Steam download than it is from a disc. From the developer/Valve's viewpoint, it holds off piracy until post-launch, unlike disc based games.

Who cares? This is an Xbox 360 thread!:eek:

Who cares? This is an Xbox 360 thread!:eek:

No it's not, it's just in the wrong forum.

It's not complicated at all. Bring it to a guy, pay him like $30 bucks and your console gets modded. .

And forgo your 3 year warranty against RRoD? Its the main reason that most people aren't doing it. If the console was as reliable as the original Xbox then you would see more people doing it.

One thing to consider is that Sins of Solar Empire is an extremely niche game. By all accounts its sold extremely well for its market. As number1laing pointed out, that may be part of why it hasn't had a piracy issue.

What games aren't niche games then. Wouldnt Starcraft, Civilization 2 and X-com all be considered niche games? And I checked, clearly Sins is there to download if you want to get it by torrent. I also checked on xbox360 stuff. A lot of the big stuff was there but what I found interesting was how many things I didnt see there. I guess part of it is just what I have notice from chat forums on the net. Seems like trying to copy 360 games hasnt taken off yet. Whether its because of security and live remains to be seen.