How much does piracy affect game sales?

[HappySqurriel]

FayeC said:

hellonearth said:
@happy. I believe you are wrong. I believe people think this way: "Why spend money on the game when I can have it for free".

True. SOME games they pirate that they wouldnt have bought, but then they get so used to pirating all games that they never buy anything.

You can expect someone who has pirated the entire SNES library on their computer to have gone out and bought them otherwise can you? The same is tru with current games. Some may have been bought, but most are simply taken because "The price is right"

This is (more or less) what I was thinking ...

You regularly hear people on these forums say things that imply that they would only (ever) buy 90% or higher rated games on metacritic, and they wouldn't rent anything that got less than 80%, because the investment of money into buying/renting the game makes them far more careful about what they buy or rent.

While I'm certain there would be higher sales with the elimination of piracy, I'm also fairly certain that the vast majority of pirated copies of games would not translate into higher sales of those games.