Crytek says they will not longer be pc exclusive

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: EvilComputer92

Originally posted by: JBT
I can under stand why so many people would pirate Crysis. Its reqs are so high that you have to test it out to see if your PC is up to snuff. I'd wager most pirate it and found out their PC just doesn't cut it to run that game and end up not buying it. Frankly on my PC it doesn't run "great" but it is still acceptable. I like most people here on AT also probably have a video card better than the average Joe...

They made a demo for a reason. That's a really stupid excuse to pirate.

i played the demo of "Lost Planet" and thought it was good stuff. then i played the full game for 15 minutes and uninstalled it. hellgate: london's demo sucked, but the game (i played beta) was pretty damn fun.

just saying that the demo is not always indicative of the full game. in the case of crysis, it certainly was representative.

i will say that it's sad to see crytek go console, but i understand the move. i can only hope that they continue to push the boundaries of what's possible on the PC, as they had taken that lead with Far Cry/Crysis, IMO. that, and Crysis is supposed to be a trilogy, so i'd like to see what else they have in store

 

[LumbergTech]

if you jailed every pirate as some are suggesting, then the sales would not go up..obviously..in fact they would go down..

 

[brandonb]

Here is an interesting tidbit about the Original Doom game (hopefully nobody mentioned this):

According to Wikipedia.

Released as shareware, people were encouraged to distribute Doom further, and did so: in 1995, Doom was estimated to have been installed on more than 10 million computers. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold, and the popularity helped the sales of later games in the Doom series which were not released as shareware.

Even though the game was shareware, people still bought it. In fact, 10% of those who downloaded the game eventually registered their version and paid for it, even though they were not required to do so (as it was shareware)...

 

[Lithan]

Originally posted by: brandonb
Here is an interesting tidbit about the Original Doom game (hopefully nobody mentioned this):

According to Wikipedia.

Released as shareware, people were encouraged to distribute Doom further, and did so: in 1995, Doom was estimated to have been installed on more than 10 million computers. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold, and the popularity helped the sales of later games in the Doom series which were not released as shareware.

Even though the game was shareware, people still bought it. In fact, 10% of those who downloaded the game eventually registered their version and paid for it, even though they were not required to do so (as it was shareware)...

Haha, suckers! Umm.. I mean, Good point!

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
I think a lot of the people here who have a strong negative reaction to developers blaming poor sales on piracy are really just offended because they feel they're being lumped in with people who pirate games. It's like when the teacher punishes the whole class because a few rowdy kids were making trouble.

The fact is, though, piracy is a problem for PC games.

No, you know why? 1 Pirated Game != 1 less sale. The fact is, for most pirates, just because they can't prate something does not mean they'll buy it.

Ergo, piracy causes almost 0 net loss.

grade A baloney.

mind elaborating?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Even though the game was shareware, people still bought it. In fact, 10% of those who downloaded the game eventually registered their version and paid for it, even though they were not required to do so (as it was shareware)...

Kids these days

The Shareware version of Doom only included the first level. If you wanted to get your hands on the fully copy of the game you registered it on their website. A brilliant move by id back in the day, allowed them to become the power house indy studio they remain today.

 

[Skunkwourk]

Expanding your consumer base is hardly a bad thing, I a bit confused as to why companies are using to "Blame" piracy when choosing not to remain PC exclusive. Did PC exclusivity ever have more benefits for a company as opposed to releasing multi-platform?

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: m0mentary
Expanding your consumer base is hardly a bad thing, I a bit confused as to why companies are using to "Blame" piracy when choosing not to remain PC exclusive. Did PC exclusivity ever have more benefits for a company as opposed to releasing multi-platform?

because they're viewed as a sellout to profits/consoles.

that, and console--> PC ports are generally horrendous. just take a look at shadowrun, halo2, lost planet, etc.

shit, in lost planet they didn't even bother to change the control tips, so it says "tap A" to do certain tasks, yet i'm using a fucking keyboard!

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
I think a lot of the people here who have a strong negative reaction to developers blaming poor sales on piracy are really just offended because they feel they're being lumped in with people who pirate games. It's like when the teacher punishes the whole class because a few rowdy kids were making trouble.

The fact is, though, piracy is a problem for PC games.

No, you know why? 1 Pirated Game != 1 less sale. The fact is, for most pirates, just because they can't prate something does not mean they'll buy it.

Ergo, piracy causes almost 0 net loss.

grade A baloney.

mind elaborating?

I was first commenting on the fact that your logic is severely flawed... "just because they can't prate something does not mean they'll buy it" does not support the claim that piracy causes almost zero net loss.

If the pool of free, easily accessible cracked games dried up... pirate gamers would have either stop playing video games or spend some money to buy a few games.

Piracy is not a 1:1 loss, true... but every 2-4 pirated copies of good game is probably a loss of a sale. i.e. Sales on many quality titles would be doubled or trippled in the absence of pirated copies.

And there several immensely popular and successful games which, more or less, cannot be pirated: TF2, WoW, LOTRO, EVE, etc.

People will pay for quality games... when they have to.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: EvilComputer92

Originally posted by: JBT
I can under stand why so many people would pirate Crysis. Its reqs are so high that you have to test it out to see if your PC is up to snuff. I'd wager most pirate it and found out their PC just doesn't cut it to run that game and end up not buying it. Frankly on my PC it doesn't run "great" but it is still acceptable. I like most people here on AT also probably have a video card better than the average Joe...

They made a demo for a reason. That's a really stupid excuse to pirate.

Sure I agree with you but it's the most common excuse I have heard from the people I know who are pirates. I have purchased all my games since I got out of high school and could have a full time job.
I'll admit I have I have been burned once by just buying my games which happened to be Doom III... that was the worst $50 I have ever spent

 

[mindcycle]

IMO, the quality of the games being released on the PC is the reason sales are down. All we're getting anymore is console ports, and most of them aren't even ported well.

Piracy is piracy, it will always be there. Developers need to focus on making quality games and not just on how well console sales have been recently. There is still a lot of money to be made in the PC games market. Good thing great game developers like Stardock (Sins of a Solar Empire) and their publisher "get it". Release a great game (without DRM) and people will gladly pay for it.

 

[SantiClaws]

EVERYBODY talking about how much $$ software piracy is actually costing on either side of the argument is talking out their ass. 5%, 10%, 50% of overall sales? The fact is that no one has any idea whatsoever. If a million copies of a game are downloaded illegally, it is impossible to say what percentage of the people who pirated the game would have actually bought it if the illegal copy was not available and that is the one and only number that actually means anything to anyone - lost sales. There aren't any reliable, or for that matter, any statistics which indicate what percentage of pirates would have bought the game had they not pirated it. Nor are we likely to ever have any such numbers.

A company will obviously want to minimize all losses, but Crytek's claim that their sales were poor because of piracy is dubious, at best. They do not have any idea of how much piracy actually cost them. It is certainly reasonable to assume that at least some of those who pirated the game would have bought it, but whether that percentage would have made any significant difference to the sales numbers is unknown.

My pulled-out-of-my-ass opinion is that the losses are not as significant as they are made out to be. You have to keep in mind that the people crying that their games didn't sell because of piracy are the same people whose jobs depend on their games selling well and need to come up with a good explanation if the do not. Most of them aren't going to come out and say "the game didn't sell because I did a piss-poor job and the game ended up being a bloody mess. I'm an idiot and should be fired. "

The other thing to keep in mind that people are a lot more careful about which games they buy for $50 vs. the games they download for free. Ever download crap free/shareware that you'd never consider paying for? How many cars would you have if you didn't have to pay for any of them?

I would suspect that most people who pirate games pirate not just one but many, and most of the ones they download they would have never actually purchased. That pirate may only be able to afford to buy one or two games if they had to actually buy them, but may download a hundred. If you consider a relatively small number of such "100-games-a-year pirates," say 100,000, exist worldwide, they would be responsible for 10,000,000 illegal game downloads annually, but the actual number of games they would have bought would only be 100,000 - 200,000. So on paper, that's an approximate loss of $500 million to the game industry, when the actual loss would be closer to $5 - $10 million. Add a million people worldwide who pirate say twenty games a year, and you get some really, really big numbers when you're talking illegal downloads, but relatively small numbers when you are talking lost profits. Again, I'm pulling numbers out of my butt, but they are not any less valid than the numbers pulled of the game industry butts.

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
I think a lot of the people here who have a strong negative reaction to developers blaming poor sales on piracy are really just offended because they feel they're being lumped in with people who pirate games. It's like when the teacher punishes the whole class because a few rowdy kids were making trouble.

The fact is, though, piracy is a problem for PC games.

No, you know why? 1 Pirated Game != 1 less sale. The fact is, for most pirates, just because they can't prate something does not mean they'll buy it.

Ergo, piracy causes almost 0 net loss.

grade A baloney.

mind elaborating?

I was first commenting on the fact that your logic is severely flawed... "just because they can't prate something does not mean they'll buy it" does not support the claim that piracy causes almost zero net loss.

If the pool of free, easily accessible cracked games dried up... pirate gamers would have either stop playing video games or spend some money to buy a few games.

Piracy is not a 1:1 loss, true... but every 2-4 pirated copies of good game is probably a loss of a sale. i.e. Sales on many quality titles would be doubled or trippled in the absence of pirated copies.

And there several immensely popular and successful games which, more or less, cannot be pirated: TF2, WoW, LOTRO, EVE, etc.

People will pay for quality games... when they have to.

lol, I know people who pirate games, 95% don't have the cash to even get a computer that ca run half those games, much less buy them. You overestimate how many games a pirate would actually buy.

 

[BFG10K]

lol, I know people who pirate games, 95% don't have the cash to even get a computer that ca run half those games, much less buy them.

Why do they pirate games they can't run?

 

[Fardor]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: Edge1
Note - in no way do I condone piracy.

I hear that. I remember when I was young, the NES days, games for it were $40+. And yet, here we are in 2008 and games for the PC are a whopping, $40+.



If you divide the number of playable hours for good games by the cost, you usually get less than $4 per hour. Sometimes, especially when the game includes a good MP, it's pennies per hour.

I would have paid $100 for some of my games.

Yeh. Would have payed $500 for Halo2. Priceless experience.

 

[BenSkywalker]

EVERYBODY talking about how much $$ software piracy is actually costing on either side of the argument is talking out their ass.

It isn't possible to put an exact dollar amount, but it is certainly easy for us to use a little bit of statistical analysis and see the console market exploding in sales year after year while the PC gaming market is slowly dieing. This includes FPSs which are now, by far, more popular on consoles then they are on the PC for revenue generated.

but the actual number of games they would have bought would only be 100,000 - 200,000. So on paper, that's an approximate loss of $500 million to the game industry, when the actual loss would be closer to $5 - $10 million. Add a million people worldwide who pirate say twenty games a year, and you get some really, really big numbers when you're talking illegal downloads, but relatively small numbers when you are talking lost profits.

The difference in 40K units on the PC can be the difference in a studio getting shut down and getting a green light on a sequel sometimes. Now obviously we don't have firm numbers, but why did you drop your hypothetical numbers from half a billion to a low estimate of $5Million? If you are saying that is due to the amount of money they are actually going to profit, then you have to look at them moving from a profitable position to one of losing almost half a billion dollars. That is a rather staggering difference to say the least.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Wah Wah wah... why do they feel the need to blame piracy, couldn't they just say they wanted to expand to consoles? I never played Crysis, and now I don't plan on it. Screw em.

Err... what? What exactly are you angry about?

I'm angry about all these developers blaming their problems on Piracy.

i'd say fine but last i read the numbers do back them up. even good games on the pc tend not to sell well unless you count wow or sims...and well as a fps gamer i kinda sneer at both those game types. but anyways, if you are selling way more on the consoles than the pc's where one would assume there would be atleast an equivalent installed base and equivalent sales figures, if not then either pc gamers are cheap or pirating whores. or people are buying 8800gt's to run vista aero.

theres nothing sure about surviving on pc game sales. companies die all the time.

 

[SantiClaws]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker


It isn't possible to put an exact dollar amount, but it is certainly easy for us to use a little bit of statistical analysis and see the console market exploding in sales year after year while the PC gaming market is slowly dieing. This includes FPSs which are now, by far, more popular on consoles then they are on the PC for revenue generated.

What does the shift to console gaming have to do with piracy?

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Now obviously we don't have firm numbers, but why did you drop your hypothetical numbers from half a billion to a low estimate of $5Million? If you are saying that is due to the amount of money they are actually going to profit, then you have to look at them moving from a profitable position to one of losing almost half a billion dollars. That is a rather staggering difference to say the least.

I said that the only number that matters is the actual sales lost due to piracy, not the number of games illegally downloaded. My argument assumes that of all the games pirated, only a relatively small percentage would have resulted in actual sales if the illegal download was not available. That's why you end up with an inflated estimate of half a billion in lost sales (industry-wide) - you count every one of a 1,000,000 illegally downloaded games as a $50 lost sale. If in reality only 5,000 of those 1,000,000 (5%) downloaded games would have actually been purchased (for $50 a pop) if piracy did not exist , you'd be looking at an industry-wide loss of $250,000. Not peanuts, but a hell of a lot less than half a billion.

As I said before, my numbers are only guesses. But there's no question that if you count every download as a lost sale, the projected number of sales lost due to piracy is dramatically inflated.

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

but anyways, if you are selling way more on the consoles than the pc's where one would assume there would be atleast an equivalent installed base and equivalent sales figures.

Why on earth would you assume that? I don't know the exact numbers, but I know LOTS of people who game on PS3/XBOX 360 and I think I am aware of one friend who games on the PC - occasionally. He generally prefers his XBOX360. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that there's at least 10-15 PS3's and XBOX360's sold for every high-end graphics card, and I think I'm lowballing it.

 

[BD2003]

http://kotaku.com/387846/mass-...he-adjective-draconian

Its this kind of sh*t that's making me never want to buy another PC game again. Having the disc in the drive isnt enough, now it has to phone home every 10 days? On a single-player rpg? WTF is wrong with these people? Do they not understand that it will be cracked almost instantaneously, and with DRM so strong, the pirated product will actually be vastly superior? Its a self-fulfilling prophecy at its worst. This isnt piracy's fault, this is idiocy's fault. This kind of DRM will almost assuredly do more harm than good. Are they seriously thinking that *this time* theyll stop piracy, no matter the cost, after decades and decades of failure in that respect?

Pathetic.

If this is the kind of protection thats being attached to spore, it's going to break my heart, as I really wanted to play the game, but there's no way I'll allow that kind of garbage anywhere near my system.

 

[BenSkywalker]

What does the shift to console gaming have to do with piracy?

You think there is an actual gaming time shift? Sales trends for PC and console games were very close until broadband started getting a firm foothold, then they diverged a staggering amount.

That's why you end up with an inflated estimate of half a billion in lost sales (industry-wide) - you count every one of a 1,000,000 illegally downloaded games as a $50 lost sale. If in reality only 5,000 of those 1,000,000 (5%) downloaded games would have actually been purchased (for $50 a pop) if piracy did not exist , you'd be looking at an industry-wide loss of $250,000. Not peanuts, but a hell of a lot less than half a billion.

Checking network traffic then I assume you are talking more like per month then per year. Of course the inverse could be argued there also, how many sales are lost due to the impact that pirates have on the industry, and if those potential lost sales because the people pirated them how many more are lost due to the people who don't want to deal with the counter measures currently utilized to combat piracy. Maybe it's ten times what the lost sales directly do to theft is- and then there is the issue with how many lost sales are we dealing with due to the closure of studios due to underperforming titles because of piracy.

Why on earth would you assume that? I don't know the exact numbers, but I know LOTS of people who game on PS3/XBOX 360 and I think I am aware of one friend who games on the PC - occasionally. He generally prefers his XBOX360. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that there's at least 10-15 PS3's and XBOX360's sold for every high-end graphics card, and I think I'm lowballing it.

That's nice anecdotal evidence, almost everyone I know games on the PC. Out of them, pretty much none of them has a high end video card, they just turn down the settings on their games(blasphemy for our type but whacha gonna do ). I own every platform, always do, because I won't miss a game I really want to play due to the platform limitation. Now, if your estimates are correct that consoles outsell high end graphics cards by at least 10 to 1, that means that between ATi and nVidia they have sold only a few million high end graphics cards in the last few years- we have sales data so we know this is wrong(unless you are saying you have to spend $600 on a graphics card for it to be considered high end, with the market we are currently looking at even a 8800GS for $100 can run Crysis relatively close to the same settings as the 9800GX2).

 

[golem]

Originally posted by: BD2003
http://kotaku.com/387846/mass-...he-adjective-draconian

Its this kind of sh*t that's making me never want to buy another PC game again. Having the disc in the drive isnt enough, now it has to phone home every 10 days? On a single-player rpg? WTF is wrong with these people? Do they not understand that it will be cracked almost instantaneously, and with DRM so strong, the pirated product will actually be vastly superior? Its a self-fulfilling prophecy at its worst. This isnt piracy's fault, this is idiocy's fault. This kind of DRM will almost assuredly do more harm than good. Are they seriously thinking that *this time* theyll stop piracy, no matter the cost, after decades and decades of failure in that respect?

Pathetic.

If this is the kind of protection thats being attached to spore, it's going to break my heart, as I really wanted to play the game, but there's no way I'll allow that kind of garbage anywhere near my system.

You can still buy the game and crack it.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: golem

Originally posted by: BD2003
http://kotaku.com/387846/mass-...he-adjective-draconian

Its this kind of sh*t that's making me never want to buy another PC game again. Having the disc in the drive isnt enough, now it has to phone home every 10 days? On a single-player rpg? WTF is wrong with these people? Do they not understand that it will be cracked almost instantaneously, and with DRM so strong, the pirated product will actually be vastly superior? Its a self-fulfilling prophecy at its worst. This isnt piracy's fault, this is idiocy's fault. This kind of DRM will almost assuredly do more harm than good. Are they seriously thinking that *this time* theyll stop piracy, no matter the cost, after decades and decades of failure in that respect?

Pathetic.

If this is the kind of protection thats being attached to spore, it's going to break my heart, as I really wanted to play the game, but there's no way I'll allow that kind of garbage anywhere near my system.

You can still buy the game and crack it.

I suppose I could, but then that could theoretically make it difficult to patch. Not to mention thats so ass-backwards I cant even begin to understand why I'd even have to do such a thing.

1. Customers that would never think of pirating are needlessly inconvenienced because they dont know about cracks. DRM only makes the product worse = bad idea.

2. Paying customers that do already know about cracks will crack it. Getting around the DRM is an inconvenience that they shouldnt have to deal with = bad idea again.

3. Pirates will use the same crack the paying customers used, and play it for free. In this case, the DRM might as well not even exist = useless, stupid idea.

It might make sense to force 1 and 2 deal with it if it actually stopped 3. But it won't, I'd bet my life savings on it, take out a loan, bet that too, then take everything I've won and double down it on a bet that the next DRM won't stop anyone either.

Part of me can understand the CD check. It prevents one douchebag from taking the game, using nero to create a copy, and handing it to his friend. Its annoying, but its at least somewhat reasonable. The scorched earth approach isnt meant to be used against your own army. Its just so beyond stupid that it really just blows my mind that someone, anyone, anywhere actually thinks this might even be a slightly good idea.

Please, sweet jesus, someone at EA fire the moron that comes up with this stuff. Assuming he's paid $50k a year, and EA profits maybe $10 a game, its equivalent to about 5,000 sales - and this DRM alone will probably cost at least twice as many lost sales.

 

[bigsnyder]

If you haven't watched it I recommend you check out the latest installment of Second Take at Tom's Games. Ron and Ben discuss many of the points brought up in this thread.

My quick opinion that led to decreased sales:

1. Hardware requirements (for best experience I should add) are beyond most gamers - When the top of the line still struggles, most folks think twice before buying.
2. The "best" graphical experience requires a DX10 card which in turn requires Vista. Your possible market is already small due to the first reason, now it shrinks even more.
3. While playing the demo, it felt like I have already played this game. The game experience is not refreshing enough to attract new customers.
4. There are better games on the market people are choosing to spend their money on after the reviews came in.
5. Doesn't build upon an established Franchise (should have been the FarCry 2). Doom 3 sales probably would have been a total disaster had it not been for its namesake.
6. Consoles are gaining momentum. You can't ignore that console development has taken advantage of the mediocre releases on PC and bypasses the technical difficulties that plaque PC gaming in general.
7. I will stop at this one: Piracy has played a part. I don't believe that anyone can honestly say that piracy hasn't hurt sales. Is it to blame? No, it is only one piece in the larger puzzle. The other reasons already do a great job at hurting number of units sold.

Thinking about my most favorable gaming moments were often not because of fancy graphics or enhanced physics. They were due to the entire experience of the game that generated the addiction and produced that "wow" factor. Those moments are getting harder to come by, and unfortunately, Crysis didn't deliver that for me.

 

[Coldkilla]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
Wah Wah wah... why do they feel the need to blame piracy, couldn't they just say they wanted to expand to consoles? I never played Crysis, and now I don't plan on it. Screw em.

When you've got the (arguably) the strongest PC technology innovator saying that piracy is taking over the PC market, it adds to the argument that stronger protections are needed. Nothings wrong with that, unless your for piracy.

 

[Canai]

I think another major factor in the shrinking PC market is the stagnation in technology. The 8800 Ultra was top card for waaaaaaay too long, and too expensive. Crytek's engine was built for the next gen card, but nVidia and AMD seem content in feeding consumers the same shit in different packaging.