Nintendo: piracy not behind poor sales

Zetta_x

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Like I have said numerous times over the course of joining GBAtemp,

Without piracy, there would not be as many gamers. Even though they may lose some sales, they have netted in so many more people to make some of the differences up. Take for an example of the PS3, do you know how many more people bought PS3's since jailbreaking techniques? Sure Sony may lose some money, but they sure got a fuck ton more people to play the PS3 thus raising the popularity of the system and its games.
 

antwill

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Zetta_x said:
Like I have said numerous times over the course of joining GBAtemp,

Without piracy, there would not be as many gamers. Even though they may lose some sales, they have netted in so many more people to make some of the differences up. Take for an example of the PS3, do you know how many more people bought PS3's since jailbreaking techniques? Sure Sony may lose some money, but they sure got a fuck ton more people to play the PS3 thus raising the popularity of the system and its games.
And like any smart person knows, they are a business, so we all know Sony would prefer to make rather lose money as you put it. I doubt they or any other company thinks "Oh great, more people are buying [insert console name]'s to pirate games on, we should really go rub this in the face of our competitors."
 

Zetta_x

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I argue that if Sony can keep in business in two years and continue to maintain great shape, the raise in popularity with PS3's will earn them greater revenue in a few years. When a system increases in popularity, this brings incentive to various other developers to join the bandwagon. Look how many developers are willing to jump on the 3DS bandwagon, the hype for it is amazing part of which is all the popularity the DS has (by pirates or not).

I am not going to even attempt to define every factor piracy has on a console, but it is evident that piracy leads to popularity on a system and the greater the popularity MAY lead to increased profits.

An example is that many of my friends bought a wii system, 4 wii remots, HD's, rented various wii games (which benefits nintendo), bought a nintendo DS + flashkit, participate in many discussion boards with Nintendo products, and many other things. We aren't just talking about 1 or 2 people, I'm talking more like 5-8 people did the above just because of piracy and wouldn't have without it. If piracy was not available on that system, they would not even be anticipating the release of black and white for US.
 

DiscostewSM

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So what drives video gaming? If it was hardware, then I'd agree with you, but it isn't hardware. It's software, and in either circumstance with a pirate and hardware, being bought or not, software wouldn't get bought. Software can't be used without hardware, but hardware is not worth buying without software running on it. By pirating, hardware will get sold, but not necessarily software, and if software sales are low, then companies won't feel the need to (or just plain can't) continue developing them. Nintendo, Sony, and MS may be well off, but that's because they aren't dealing with only software (and Sony/MS aren't strictly working on video game stuff). You and your friends may be helping Nintendo out by buying their hardware, but all the stuff you've pirated isn't helping out those other companies that made them.
 

epicCreations.or

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BlueStar said:
Imagine/Horse titles sell well and the consumers of those titles rarely pirate them. And who cares if the platform is making games for other audiences? There's an absolute ton of fantastic games on the DS and no-one forces you to play the games aimed at 12 year old girls with a horse fetish.
I lol'd. SO HARD.

...considering my best friend from elementary and intermediate was one of these people.
rofl2.gif
 

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Guild McCommunist said:
Canonbeat234 said:
You can't expect sells to be in the millions each time an all-star game comes out.

Um, yes you can. Even Nintendo's "worst" seller that they thought would sell a bagillion copies, Wii Music, sold 2 million copies. Nintendo doesn't release Mario games thinking they'll only sell a few. Microsoft doesn't release Halo games thinking they'll only sell a few. Activision doesn't release Call of Duty games thinking they'll only sell a few.

As for Sonic he just doesn't sell as well because his popularity plummeted. Mario essentially won the platformer war and Sega lost the hardware war as well. They had no mascot to flagship their consoles and Sonic essentially became just another third party character. A lot of people know who he is but he's not nearly as big a household name as Mario is.
The controls in the Wii Sonic Games are broken. Take Unleashed. The game was promising in the early stages but by the time you got to the later levels the clumsy unforgiving controls were making the game unplayable. My boy and I stopped playing after being forced to restart levels over and over due to clumsy controls when attempting to jump from the moving poles.

I would much rather play games with shit visuals as long as the game play is silky smooth. A lot of developers these days seem to be more interested in visuals than they do in the game play or controls. I guess for the average smuck the game will be purchased on the visual appeal alone. For me the controls in a game will make or break it, the visuals are secondary. My son is the same, if he finds a game annoying to play he will not go back to it.

I have pirated a lot of games for various consoles and have found that my Son and I only play a handful from each. These are the ones I have purchased. I feel sorry for consumers who are forced to buy games off the shelf. I downloaded Batman Arkham I while back because I liked the sound of the game and the reviews were favourable. I played it for about an hour and hated it and have never gone back. That would have bee £38 wasted. My son tried a demo of Sonic and Sega and liked it. I downloaded the game only to find he hated it. We found the track design horrible and the game a very frustrating experience. That would have been another £35 out the window. We had a similar experience with my Sims racing.

As you can see, reviews and demos will not always help a purchase. The game can seem ok in the demo only to go to pot a little further on. Shitty controls will usually not cause major issues until later levels.

Why do I pirate? I don’t like and can’t afford to waste money on shit.
 

iNFiNiTY

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The lower attach rate and game sales for Wii/DS is pretty obviously because they marketed heavily to an audience that doesn't even buy games. The kind of random people who never bought a system or games before. And now the novelty has worn off (especially the Wii) they are not the type of people who are going to go out and buy more games for it. Metroid wouldn't sell well in the UK anyway because its simply not a particular popular franchise here.

Also it's not surprising Nintendo would come out and say this, because in their position they would never admit piracy was a huge problem as they don't want to give a bad impression to third party publishers/developers who hate releasing games on such poorly secured systems. In reality they do think it is a problem, particularly for DS, or they wouldn't be constantly updating the DS protection which is now standard in the SDK. And they wouldn't take aggressive action against the R4. So in this case their actions don't match their words.

Also i dunno why every time piracy and sales is mentioned tons of people have to write big essays up on their personal justifications for pirating games. I mean really how many times does this get debated, and it's always the exact same points. Who are you trying to aim these justifications at? Others on the site already know the reasons because we've heard it hundreds of times. It's really boring and pointless now.

Zetta_x said:
I argue that if Sony can keep in business in two years and continue to maintain great shape, the raise in popularity with PS3's will earn them greater revenue in a few years. When a system increases in popularity, this brings incentive to various other developers to join the bandwagon. Look how many developers are willing to jump on the 3DS bandwagon, the hype for it is amazing part of which is all the popularity the DS has (by pirates or not).

I think it's a pretty shallow point of view. One of Sony's big successes and something very attractive to 3rd party developers was the fact it was a secure system. There has not been any extreme rise in console sales after the PSJB and clones came out, so they didn't benefit from it in any way.
 

Mantis41

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iNFiNiTY said:
Also i dunno why every time piracy and sales is mentioned tons of people have to write big essays up on their personal justifications for pirating games. I mean really how many times does this get debated, and it's always the exact same points. Who are you trying to aim these justifications at? Others on the site already know the reasons because we've heard it hundreds of times. It's really boring and pointless now.
You would be suprised to find out who listens in on our little conversations.
 

antwill

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Mantis41 said:
iNFiNiTY said:
Also i dunno why every time piracy and sales is mentioned tons of people have to write big essays up on their personal justifications for pirating games. I mean really how many times does this get debated, and it's always the exact same points. Who are you trying to aim these justifications at? Others on the site already know the reasons because we've heard it hundreds of times. It's really boring and pointless now.
You would be suprised to find out who listens in on our little conversations.
And they think anyone reading is going to think, "Oh they're breaking the law, but it's okay as they have self-entitlement issues."?
 

Mantis41

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antwill said:
Mantis41 said:
iNFiNiTY said:
Also i dunno why every time piracy and sales is mentioned tons of people have to write big essays up on their personal justifications for pirating games. I mean really how many times does this get debated, and it's always the exact same points. Who are you trying to aim these justifications at? Others on the site already know the reasons because we've heard it hundreds of times. It's really boring and pointless now.
You would be suprised to find out who listens in on our little conversations.
And they think anyone reading is going to think, "Oh they're breaking the law, but it's okay as they have self-entitlement issues."?
No of course not illegal is illegal but, it may get the following messages across:

a) People are sick of paying for crap games.
b) Console manufacturers should should take a greater interest and control over the games that are released on their consoles.
c) Stop blaming falling sales on piracy, its like a get out of jail free card. Our games are fuken useless but, oooh! look!..... points the finger at piracy. (I think this one at least is starting to sink in) Billions! Where is this supposed money coming from? I certainly don't have it.
 

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