Gaming Do you think piracy will stop companies from making good games?

[Terenigma]

I think it will effect them yes especially after seing what its done to GTA. everyone everywhere knows its a great game and its not selling anywhere near as much as it would if there was no piracy on DS. that'll be a huge wake up call to other game companies as GTA is such a huge game and especially concidering how good a game it is too.

its a shame really coz you get a few rare gems of DS games but they come in a sea of utter plonk like imagine princess or my horse and me and whatever else gets milked to death which then forces people to turn to flashcards and thats another sale lost on a truely good game.

bottom line i think yes games on the DS will get worse as time goes on (and as more people get flashcards)

 

[Maz7006]

This threads will go on and on. Just like to say that piracy won't stop companies making good games, meh it's their job to do that in the first place, i.e. make games that people will enjoy.

 

[Deleted User]

its a shame really coz you get a few rare gems of DS games but they come in a sea of utter plonk like imagine princess or my horse and me and whatever else gets milked to death which then forces people to turn to flashcards and thats another sale lost on a truely good game.

Sorry, but this is just plain wrong. Even if there are only a few good games released on a system, nobody is forced to buy a flashcart because of the crap ones which are also released. Just buy the games you like and ignore the others, it's as simple as that.

 

[RupeeClock]

I'd hate to say it, but thanks to the combination of hard-core gamers pirating so easily, and casual gamers buying into any crap, some companies are just exploiting that and intentionally making lower quality titles.

Look at Ubisoft, they do make good games, but not for the DS.
Not all companies do this obviously, Square Enix is still making good games, although mostly just remakes and ports these days.

If you ask me, this incursion of piracy, even if not as big or small as we might imagine, has lead to the necessity of gaming companies having to make more profitable games, in order to make what they are passionate about.
Again, like Ubisoft releasing a ton of Imagine games on the DS, to fund games like Splinter Cell, Raving Rabbids or Prince of Persia.

 

[twisteddeeds]

IMO Ubisoft make good LOOKING games but usually the gameplay is LACKING

 

[RupeeClock]

IMO Ubisoft make good LOOKING games but usually the gameplay is LACKING

I blame the HDTV crowd.

 

[twisteddeeds]

I blame the hype machine, just because a game looks like the best thing ever, lighting this, 60fps that, with 10,000 ways to scratch your avatars butt cheeks... i couldn't care less lol gameplay is what really counts...

give me resi 1 on ps1 than resi 5 on ps3... well ps3 running resi 1 tidys it up a bit lol

anyhow back on topic, piracy has been around for years. My opinion is if the game is good enough i would buy it. Just over the past few years there have been so many mediocre pieces of filth released that it actually encourages people to pirate so they dont lose money

I can count maybe a few classics this generation already but its looking like that number dwindles over the years because of pap being put out to meet release schedules, financial deadlines etc... rather than working on a game for a few years a lot of developers get forced into yearly updates and half assed attempts at cash ins by publishers

 

[ryukyus]

why do people keep saying piracy is the cause of Gta 89k sales, are you kidding me, you mean to tell me this economy has nothing to do with it, last time I checked when people are losing jobs from left and right buy games are not their main priority, the way the economy is, 89k sold in less than 3 moths if that's not decent I don't know what is, the reason why their so disappointed it's because their expectations were so freaking high, people are always looking for something or someone to blame, in this case I guess it's piracy, man I hate that term, I call it freedom to share.

 

[tmujir955]

Nah, for every pirate there are another five guys who have never heard the term "flashcart".

 

[tmujir955]

Remember Ninjabread Man! It got a 1.2(or something like that) from IGN. People still bought it.

 

[mcjones92]

I don't know anyone that pirates personally (besides cracked app store apps). Yes I know most of you guys on here do but I mean like my friends. I guarantee that NO ONE at my school knows what a CycloDS is or a WiiKey.

 

[agentgamma]

I don't know anyone that pirates personally (besides cracked app store apps). Yes I know most of you guys on here do but I mean like my friends. I guarantee that NO ONE at my school knows what a CycloDS is or a WiiKey.

ALL of my friends except for ONE person has a flashcart...

 

[Yugge]

That really depends what you mean by good games. If companies can't earn enough money from AAA budget titles. The have to go down to a lower level of budget. So I think that if piracy continues to expand we can't have such high budget games as we have had for a while now. However, when there are zero-budget games like World of Goo. I pretty much have faith that good games will continue to exist as long as there are gamers. However, we'll probably not see games like gears of war if this continue.

 

[Rayder]

Will piracy prevent good games from being made? No. Poor sales of good games are what is stopping good games from being made. Why spend a huge budget making a good game on the DS and hope they will sell well (to an audience who is not really the core audience on the DS) when they can slap together some flowers-and-bunnies shovelware kiddie game and have practically guaranteed sales?

Most people who would like GTA don't own a DS. They have the REAL consoles or a PC to play a games like that on. And I'm sure it still sold more copies than was pirated.

And the kiddies, who make up the majority of gamers on the DS, generally don't have much choice what games they get to play on it. Mom & Dad sure aren't going to buy GTA for their 8-year old.

In the particular case of GTA on DS, piracy probably DID hurt it sales, but even if every single person that wanted GTA DID buy it, its sales still would have been poor, I'd wager. The demographics for such a game just isn't there on the DS. Nintendo made sure the DS (and Wii) got labeled a kiddie or casual system, so that is who the majority of DS owners are. It may not seems that way here at GBAtemp, but that's the way it is.

 

[granville]

Firstly, let me say that I am NOT defending my use of piracy on DS. I know it is illegal and I am not going to try to justify my doings here.

Piracy is but a small tiny blip on the lost sales radar. The far more damaging thing to game sales is used games. It has the same effect on game companies, with two very dangerous technicalities: 1- it's totally legal to buy and sell used games, unlike piracy which is illegal. 2- almost every gamer in the world buys or has bought used games at one point in time. So used game sales are far more widespread as almost everyone does it AND it's not illegal, making it easy to buy used games AND not feel at all guilty about it. Reggie himself said a few weeks ago "used games are not in gamers' best interests" in his vain attempt to dissuade a legal means of Nintendo's loss of money. He DID say that if the company were paid royalties, it would be better. Nintendo and every other company should go after used game sales if they value profit.

Secondly, the DS is a casual system at heart. I am a hardcore gamer and own a DS, but you can't deny the shovelware loads like Imagine and the Petz titles. It's catered towards kids or casual gamers. Parents won't buy GTA for their kids and neither will casual gamers buy it.

 

[kashin]

There's soooo many people who don't even know piracy exists.. It's easy to forget that when ur always hanging out on forums like these, unfortunatly, most people of our generation and the next will and have discovered piracy and by the time it becomes a ''main-stream'' thing it'll definatly cause some problems.
But i don't think it'll be enough of a problem to actually stop good games from being made.
In fact, i think in the near future piracy will become a lot tougher, when things like streaming games straight to your console become mainstream etc.

 

[GeekyGuy]

http://kotaku.com/5215529/report-grand-the...sales-are-awful

As indicated it, sales of GTA: CW suck mostly due to piracy and a sequel is most likely not going to happen. Would stuff like this make companies not make any more good games?

I see the numbers, but I don't see any data to support the notion that pirating is the reason for CW's poor sales. There are plenty of other high-profile DS games that sell well. If I were to put my money on a cause, I would easily place it on the fact that GTA is M-rated, and the DS demographic is mostly teen and pre-teen.

Do I think piracy will cause publishers to lower their standards? Not at all. A company is either determined to make great games (Square Enix) or simply make a quick buck (ZOO). Either company can profit, but they need to know for sure there's a market for what it is they want to create. Rock Star does whatever it wants to do, and no one's going to convince me they didn't expect this. I didn't see great sales happening for this game, and it has nothing to do with piracy. It's like saying that McDonald's can't make money off their hamburgers because a few flies get into the restaurant. No, just don't try to sell me caviar when I'm 13-years old and have a taste for french fries.

 

[jalaneme]

the ds doesn't have that much good games anyway (apart from nintendo exclusives) so it doesn't make any difference.

 

[Balrogs.Pain]

no, because they have to be smart, if theirs going to be piracy on the DS, move to the DSI, DSi specfic games dont run on a lite.

 

[purplesludge]

Firstly, let me say that I am NOT defending my use of piracy on DS. I know it is illegal and I am not going to try to justify my doings here.

Piracy is but a small tiny blip on the lost sales radar. The far more damaging thing to game sales is used games. It has the same effect on game companies, with two very dangerous technicalities: 1- it's totally legal to buy and sell used games, unlike piracy which is illegal. 2- almost every gamer in the world buys or has bought used games at one point in time. So used game sales are far more widespread as almost everyone does it AND it's not illegal, making it easy to buy used games AND not feel at all guilty about it. Reggie himself said a few weeks ago "used games are not in gamers' best interests" in his vain attempt to dissuade a legal means of Nintendo's loss of money. He DID say that if the company were paid royalties, it would be better. Nintendo and every other company should go after used game sales if they value profit.

Secondly, the DS is a casual system at heart. I am a hardcore gamer and own a DS, but you can't deny the shovelware loads like Imagine and the Petz titles. It's catered towards kids or casual gamers. Parents won't buy GTA for their kids and neither will casual gamers buy it.

I hate it when people bring up used games. Games don't ship used they have to be bought first and if it is resold near game launch then it wasn't that great. I feel that one of the problems is the price of the game. Most people can't afford to pay $50-60 for each game especially when several are released at the same time. If games were not as much then people would not need to sell their games or buy them secondhand.