Hacking Will you still buy a 3DS if it can't be hacked?

[trumpet-205]

God. I hate it when people don't understand economics.

"Nothing is taken away from the creator of said content, they still have it."

So if a maid comes to your house and cleans, and you don't pay, I guess nothing is taken away from the maid company, right? They still have the maid.

Not a perfect replication by any means (what the company is really selling is time), but the point remains. Software is bizarre in that it is easily replicated. No, we're not taking an actual cartridge, but we are taking the service without paying.

Not gaining money from a product is just as bad as losing the product as a whole (especially if it expires), and if everyone pirates, no one gains money. No money circulating, bad economy.

I disagree with your statements. I'm going to tackle your statements with opportunity cost and money circulation (Economic topics)

Opportunity cost -

Let's say I have $40 in my wallet. I can do 3 things with it. I can spend it on a video game. I can spend it on other merchandise. I can also deposit it into my savings account for interest. As you know in economic, we not only look at the explicit cost (cost in terms of number), we also look at implicit cost (cost that is hidden to us). If I spend my $40 on video game, then I lose the opportunity to spend it on other merchandise (say groceries) or earning interest in savings account. If I spend my $40 on other merchandise (and be a pirate), then I lose the opportunity to spend it on video game or earning interest in savings account. If I deposit my $40 into my savings account to earn some interest, then I lose the opportunity to spend it on video game or spend it on other merchandise (say groceries). You see, even if I pirate video game, I still lose something in return. Even if I become a lawful citizens and buy every video game, I still lose something in return. Being a pirate does not mean it will bring down the whole nation's economy. No one is going to hold on to their money. They will use their money on something. So if people pirate video game, they will use the money to buy other things, or to earn interest from it.

Money Circulation -

Let's say I have $40 in my wallet. I can do 3 things with it. I can spend it on a video game. I can spend it on other merchandise. I can also deposit it into my savings account for interest. If I spend my $40 on video game, then my money goes to the video game industry (which by the way is more lean towards oligopoly since there are only few sellers in this market). If I spend it on other merchandise, then my money goes to other field of market (most likely monopolistic competition). If I deposit it into my savings account, my money goes to the bank which then lend it to other people. You can see that no matter what choice I make money circulation is happening. No body is going to hold on to that money should they pirate the game. They are just going to spend it somewhere else.

I would also like to point out that monopoly and oligopoly are the type of market system with slowest velocity in terms of money circulation. This is because they have the lowest efficiency in terms of economic sense. These type of market system will hold back their supplies just to raise the price up. They can do this since their competitors are low in the same market, making them have much more power in terms of price labeling. They will not achieve allocative efficiency by holding their supply up. They are, the most inefficient market system in capitalism.

With monopolistic competition, you have a high number of sellers and high number of buyers. So neither sellers nor buyers have huge power in terms of price labeling. In fact it is competition that labels the price. Monopolistic competition will have higher allocative efficiency compare to others (though not higher than perfect competition). This means that will are more willingly to produce more outputs to satisfy the society. More production = higher velocity in terms of money circulation (and by your definition, drives up the economy).

 

[Deleted User]

Yes, of course. Support ninty=Better games and consoles=less shovelware=less Imagine™ : Your Mum

 

[Ikki]

Of course I will.
Even if it is hacked I will buy the games. This baby has a brilliant future, we have to support Ninty

 

[DiscostewSM]

Opportunity cost -

Let's say I have $40 in my wallet. I can do 3 things with it. I can spend it on a video game. I can spend it on other merchandise. I can also deposit it into my savings account for interest. As you know in economic, we not only look at the explicit cost (cost in terms of number), we also look at implicit cost (cost that is hidden to us). If I spend my $40 on video game, then I lose the opportunity to spend it on other merchandise (say groceries) or earning interest in savings account. If I spend my $40 on other merchandise (and be a pirate), then I lose the opportunity to spend it on video game or earning interest in savings account. If I deposit my $40 into my savings account to earn some interest, then I lose the opportunity to spend it on video game or spend it on other merchandise (say groceries). You see, even if I pirate video game, I still lose something in return. Even if I become a lawful citizens and buy every video game, I still lose something in return. Being a pirate does not mean it will bring down the whole nation's economy. No one is going to hold on to their money. They will use their money on something. So if people pirate video game, they will use the money to buy other things, or to earn interest from it.

A single person being a pirate does not bring down the economy. Hundreds of thousands can make a dent, as if those people pirate from a single company, that company generates less revenue. The income can becomes less than the expenses, and that's when a company would then need to make some cuts, whether that be the quality of their titles, laying off people, etc. When a company goes downhill, people notice, and stocks in the company diminish. Things could get so bad, that the company might file for bankruptcy, and so on and so forth, and now, the piraters can't pirate anything new from them. Your example assumes multiple options, but because of limited funds, you can only use the money on one of them. If you pirate the game, you now just took away one of the options because you then have no need to spend the money to buy it. But, no one can gain something out of nothing. It had to come from somewhere, and in this case, it came from the company who made the game because without the company, the game would not exist in the first place. By removing one of many "sacrificing choices", you then placed it on the company, transferring responsibility for the outcomes from you to them.

Money Circulation -

Let's say I have $40 in my wallet. I can do 3 things with it. I can spend it on a video game. I can spend it on other merchandise. I can also deposit it into my savings account for interest. If I spend my $40 on video game, then my money goes to the video game industry (which by the way is more lean towards oligopoly since there are only few sellers in this market). If I spend it on other merchandise, then my money goes to other field of market (most likely monopolistic competition). If I deposit it into my savings account, my money goes to the bank which then lend it to other people. You can see that no matter what choice I make money circulation is happening. No body is going to hold on to that money should they pirate the game. They are just going to spend it somewhere else.

I would also like to point out that monopoly and oligopoly are the type of market system with slowest velocity in terms of money circulation. This is because they have the lowest efficiency in terms of economic sense. These type of market system will hold back their supplies just to raise the price up. They can do this since their competitors are low in the same market, making them have much more power in terms of price labeling. They will not achieve allocative efficiency by holding their supply up. They are, the most inefficient market system in capitalism.

With monopolistic competition, you have a high number of sellers and high number of buyers. So neither sellers nor buyers have huge power in terms of price labeling. In fact it is competition that labels the price. Monopolistic competition will have higher allocative efficiency compare to others (though not higher than perfect competition). This means that will are more willingly to produce more outputs to satisfy the society. More production = higher velocity in terms of money circulation (and by your definition, drives up the economy).

When one person pirates a game instead of buying it, that becomes one less amount of money being circulated in the system. The company that developed the game spent money during the game's development cycle, such as buying the equipment to work on, paying employees, etc, and so that money gets circulated into the larger picture. In a sense, each game to be sold is a portion of what the developers spent to make it exist. If a game isn't sold, then the company doesn't get the result of the purchase. When a person buys an item, they give something to receive something. When a person pirates, they are getting something without giving anything in return. That becomes one less game purchased. In the end, the company, when money circulation comes back to them, ends up with one less amount of the game's worth.

 

[trumpet-205]

DiscostewSM,

Your opinion focus on the video game industry, where my point is focused on the whole.

Also like I said, you are going to spend your money even if you pirate video game. So in the end money is definitely circulated.

 

[DiscostewSM]

So in the end money is definitely circulated.

True, but is money the "only" thing being circulated? Aren't goods, labor, etc. also forms of money to be circulated? If you spend 8 hours working for a company, you'd expect 8 hours pay, yes? You put into the system 8 hours, and got back 8 hours. A company puts the game into the circulation cycle, so shouldn't they get back what they put in, which is equivalent to the money, time, labor, etc. they spent? What is the pirate putting into the system to equal the amount he's taking out? (Now I've got Full-metal Alchemist and Equivalent Exchange stuck in my head.....I need to watch that anime again)

 

[XXLANCEXX]

Yeppers

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Yes, of course. Support ninty=Better games and consoles=less shovelware=less Imagine™ : Your Mum

Nintendo sold more games published/made by them on the Wii and DS than ever before and both consoles got probably got more shovelware than any other console. Plus that make crappy games like Wii Music, Wii Play, Wii Party, whatever.

 

[ball2012003]

So I guess those 64 people who voted no will never get to experience the 3ds, how sad.

 

[Apex]

So I guess those 64 people who voted no will never get to experience the 3ds, how sad.

ITT: Asking for peoples opinions then criticizing them. How sad.

 

[JonthanD]

I would still get the system, but I would probably end up buying less games if I could not at least get get demo's.

I am one of those people who does pirate, but also likes to collect so I need to have originals and boxes and all that jazz so.... I tend to buy the great ones first then pick up the junk ones after the system "dies".

If I was not able to "pirate" it would mean less buy now and more buy used.

 

[DiscostewSM]

So I guess those 64 people who voted no will never get to experience the 3ds, how sad.

ITT: Asking for peoples opinions then criticizing them. How sad.

Criticizing the criticizer. How......delightful? All ball2012003 had to do to make it non-criticizing was to not add "how sad". It would have made the statement lean more towards "pointing out the obvious".

 

[omatic]

God. I hate it when people don't understand economics.

"Nothing is taken away from the creator of said content, they still have it."

So if a maid comes to your house and cleans, and you don't pay, I guess nothing is taken away from the maid company, right? They still have the maid.

Not a perfect replication by any means (what the company is really selling is time), but the point remains. Software is bizarre in that it is easily replicated. No, we're not taking an actual cartridge, but we are taking the service without paying.

Not gaining money from a product is just as bad as losing the product as a whole (especially if it expires), and if everyone pirates, no one gains money. No money circulating, bad economy.

Not gaining money from a product is NOT just as bad as losing the product as a whole. Saying it's the same is a ridiculous statement. If I have a yard sale, and nobody decides to buy anything, then by your logic, all those who didn't come and pay me to buy my stuff effectively pirated my items by not paying for them. In reality, I still have the potential of making money off of the items in the future. Now, if people with magical duplication machines (MDM's) stopped by and cloned my yard sale items without paying me, I'd STILL HAVE THE ABILITY TO SELL THE ITEMS I HAVE, while those who duplicated the items unfairly profited from my situation. They didn't steal, but they did unfairly (and arguably immorally) come to possess my items. Regardless, I still have the value of those items in my possession.

Your maid analogy doesn't work with this, as cleaning is a SERVICE, while the video game is a PRODUCT. You cannot own the SERVICE that the maid provides, however you can own a copy of a video game. The video game is a tangible object that you can hold and interact with, while the cleaning is a concept that is applied to an object(s). Retailers are charging you money for a copy of the game you're buying, while a maid or cleaning company will be charging you money for the one-time (or per-time) basis of the action of cleaning.

The fact that software can be sold in copies is why we only pay 30-60 dollars (in the USA) for games, as opposed to one person paying the entire development cost, which would be many thousands of times more. I hope nobody is suggesting that we're paying dev companies for the service of copying games. If so, then I'll be happy do the copying on my own, for free.

Okay so its like this.
Lets say you are pirating right and then you pirate this game and you are like "Man this game sucks!" and you don't buy it.
Now lets say you can't pirate you buy the game and then you still say that the game sucks but now the company that made that game now gets money! As you can see, pirating can change on how a company estimates on how much copies they will sell. Don't forget, the companies PAY to release their game and if people don't buy they get no profit. You see how that works?

Also to your "cloning" statement. If someone cloned your items without your agreement then that's illegal, especially if they make profit from it. Those items are something you have earned but someone just got it for free. If a customer comes by and buys the "cloned" copy then they surely won't buy yours which leaves you to gaining nothing.
And yes their are people that sell pirated copies of games. Check Ebay.

Edit: Oh and I'm guessing the reason why Nintendo thinks they will be selling millions of units is because they are using the hacking scene as customers as it is the most anticipated item to be hacked right now.

You totally missed the point of what I said, and I don't know if you really read what was written. I never talked about illegality. Never did I mention the word "legal". I spoke entirely about economics and morality. Legality is determined from those things, but is NOT the same as those things. Legality changes from country to country and region to region.

I don't think anyone is saying it's moral or economical to sell counterfeit software at all. I don't get where that's coming from.

 

[alphafour]

people keep saying we shouldn't pirate because it really hurts the developers but actually I can easily turn around and just say it's their own fault for selling games at like £30 or more when alot of them (especially on DS) are shitty gimmicky games with possibly less than 10 hours play value at all.

It's a bit like the chicken and the egg... which came first?

Did pirating get big because games were perceived as too expensive?

Did games get more expensive due to a need to cover the huge losses from piracy?

Would people pay for all of their games if the DS games were permanently sold at £20 rather than £30-£35?

I suppose we couldn't give a definitive answer to any of those questions..

as for myself- I would say that £30 is mental for most DS games as the vasssst majority of DS games are shit!

I got a rom of Pokemon Heart Gold in Japanese but then when it came out in England I actually bought it since I liked it so much.

I got a rom of ????DS?????????2010 and then after a week I bought it for around £50 in total from play-asia (which is the last time I buy anything from there! I wouldn't say whether or not it's good value I just can't afford to shell out £50 again for a DS game.. or any platform game for that matter)

I suppose I only buy games if they are REALLY good!

I am quite new to the whole flashcart thing, around a year ago I didn't even know what an R4 was and I used to buy all of my games, and waste alottt of money on shitty DS games which I traded back in at GAME for an only slightly less shitty game.

So anyway, as someone else suggested- 3DS is the next gen so I guess it will mean next gen prices of possibly £40 for games.

I'm gonna lay off the 3DS for a few months and if the price of games stays around £30.. I might buy one.. if the prices are anymore there is no way Im getting it if it can't be hacked.

Anyway I'll be in Japan from September 2011-September 2012 so hopefully I can pick one up there for a bit cheaper than it would be in UK

 

[monkat]

^Above

I only skimmed your post so I could be completely off-topic.

This is exactly why region-locking can be an amazingly beneficial thing, assuming games are localized - independent countries can set their own prices. If a game doesn't sell in, say, Greece, because of a poor economy and high pricing, they can lower the price without a loss in Britain.

 

[yellowthunder]

I'd still buy it, hacked or not.

I'm already loving each and every bit of it I keep seeing.

(except autoupdates)

 

[jceggbert5]

OFCOURSE! I will... It's an awesome system, that's why!

Granted, I may wait a bit longer if it's unhackable (I'm hoping that SCDSTWO's claim is true, that it'll work on the 3DS), but I'm just excited to play it, honestly...

Remember, kids, if there's a will, there's a way!

* Jceggbert5 goes wait in line for 3DS, despite his above claim...

 

[alphafour]

God. I hate it when people don't understand economics.

"Nothing is taken away from the creator of said content, they still have it."

So if a maid comes to your house and cleans, and you don't pay, I guess nothing is taken away from the maid company, right? They still have the maid.

Not a perfect replication by any means (what the company is really selling is time), but the point remains. Software is bizarre in that it is easily replicated. No, we're not taking an actual cartridge, but we are taking the service without paying.

Not gaining money from a product is just as bad as losing the product as a whole (especially if it expires), and if everyone pirates, no one gains money. No money circulating, bad economy.

Not gaining money from a product is NOT just as bad as losing the product as a whole. Saying it's the same is a ridiculous statement. If I have a yard sale, and nobody decides to buy anything, then by your logic, all those who didn't come and pay me to buy my stuff effectively pirated my items by not paying for them. In reality, I still have the potential of making money off of the items in the future. Now, if people with magical duplication machines (MDM's) stopped by and cloned my yard sale items without paying me, I'd STILL HAVE THE ABILITY TO SELL THE ITEMS I HAVE, while those who duplicated the items unfairly profited from my situation. They didn't steal, but they did unfairly (and arguably immorally) come to possess my items. Regardless, I still have the value of those items in my possession.

Your maid analogy doesn't work with this, as cleaning is a SERVICE, while the video game is a PRODUCT. You cannot own the SERVICE that the maid provides, however you can own a copy of a video game. The video game is a tangible object that you can hold and interact with, while the cleaning is a concept that is applied to an object(s). Retailers are charging you money for a copy of the game you're buying, while a maid or cleaning company will be charging you money for the one-time (or per-time) basis of the action of cleaning.

The fact that software can be sold in copies is why we only pay 30-60 dollars (in the USA) for games, as opposed to one person paying the entire development cost, which would be many thousands of times more. I hope nobody is suggesting that we're paying dev companies for the service of copying games. If so, then I'll be happy do the copying on my own, for free.

Okay so its like this.
Lets say you are pirating right and then you pirate this game and you are like "Man this game sucks!" and you don't buy it.
Now lets say you can't pirate you buy the game and then you still say that the game sucks but now the company that made that game now gets money! As you can see, pirating can change on how a company estimates on how much copies they will sell. Don't forget, the companies PAY to release their game and if people don't buy they get no profit. You see how that works?

Also to your "cloning" statement. If someone cloned your items without your agreement then that's illegal, especially if they make profit from it. Those items are something you have earned but someone just got it for free. If a customer comes by and buys the "cloned" copy then they surely won't buy yours which leaves you to gaining nothing.
And yes their are people that sell pirated copies of games. Check Ebay.

Edit: Oh and I'm guessing the reason why Nintendo thinks they will be selling millions of units is because they are using the hacking scene as customers as it is the most anticipated item to be hacked right now.

You totally missed the point of what I said, and I don't know if you really read what was written. I never talked about illegality. Never did I mention the word "legal". I spoke entirely about economics and morality. Legality is determined from those things, but is NOT the same as those things. Legality changes from country to country and region to region.

I don't think anyone is saying it's moral or economical to sell counterfeit software at all. I don't get where that's coming from.

I think the economics of this situation is that the demand for games at such a high price is getting lower since people realise how shit most of the games are..

I suppose the piracy of computer data is difficult to compare to any other type of product. I wonder if it would be similar to say that.. if you walk into a shop.. pick up a newspaper and read the most striking article, and then don't buy it.. would that be stealing in the same vein?

it's difficult to say isn't it

Perhaps you could compare it to a firm inventing some innovative product.. and then a group guys buy it.. disassemble it and work out how to build an exact replica.. and then they start to distribute it to other people who want it but don't want to pay the price that the original firm set. Whether or not the copiers charge is irrelevant... I suppose the firm will still be losing potential sales due to the piracy

here's a thought if Consumer A (CA) pirates GAME because he is not willing to buy at Price X (PX), Is Firm A (FA) actually losing any money? if FA is not willing to drop the price to such that CA wants to buy.. and CA's situation never changes such that he will buy it.. was CA ever a potential customer? If the answer to that is no, could FA really consider CA's piracy as a lost sale? Factor in the concept that the data is intangible and is not physically stolen as a result of piracy.. and we have an interesting picture.


And although it may be "wrong" to pirate a game on which a company worked hard... wouldn't you say it's also "wrong" that a company who makes a shitty pointless and almost featureless game like "face exercises" should make the same profits as SQUARE ENIX which actually makes GOOD games?

 

[Zerousen]

Most likely, yes. But the PS3 was supposedly unhackable, yet, it was,and the scds2 might work.

 

[XXLANCEXX]

Most likely, yes. But the PS3 was supposedly unhackable, yet, it was,and the scds2 might work.

DSi is Suppose to come out with 4.3U and it Cripples and Brickes most Flashcarts like AK2i,SCDSTWO,and others