Do you often pirate things on a computer?

[dunno001]

Alterego-X said:

dunno001 said:

Alterego-X said:

I honestly believe that the entertainment industry should change its attitude, not me. Nowadays, anyone is able to freely copy any software trough the Internet, therefore they should accept this and try to earn their profit from other services, such as quality cinemas, live concerts, game hardware (consoles and peripherals, etc. ), instead of selling copies of the software for money, based on archaic copyright protection laws. 

Ah, but you don't see the flaw within. If software becomes unsustainable, there will be ways found around requiring it. Right now, yes, what is used is what you call "archaic copyright protection laws." However, if we freely allow software to be pirated, then how would any game company, except Sony, MS, or Nintendo, ever make money? Simple- they couldn't without drastic change. And the change I see happening? A return of a console property of the early-mid 1970s: a console designed to play 1 game, and that's it. Of course, this will drive the price of games through the roof, as each one needs to be its own system. The big 3 will also join in this game, as they have no incentive to pay to make more games for their systems, if they can be stolen and played freely. So, sorry, but I do want to keep those "archaic" laws around, as it keeps games in an affordable price range for me. (I guess the question to ask is, would you pay $400 for FF13? Or, for that matter, any HD game? How about $250 for a Wii game?)

There are various ways around that, for example, the most simple one would be selling the three consoles for about $200-$300 more, and let all games be freely distributed on them. Third parties could get their share from the 1st party like $1 for every hour someone spends logged in a game (that was legally copied/downloaded for free). 

This would create a system where everyone would pay and get the same amounts, but would remove the insecurity of paying for untouchable software. 

Another plausibility I just thought of, is that all the mergers an acquisitions will result in very few companies that will all end up being first parties. This is where we are heading more realistically thinking, a few more mergers happen like Activision-Blizzard's was, and we will have 2-3 entities strong enough to launch their own consoles, and let Sony and Microsoft rot with their weak first party. 

Right... so, in the first case, where does this infinite money come from on the first parties? So... I like Atlus and the games they make. How's about I leave my system running for a week straight with an Atlus game in it? So someone has to pay $168 to Atlus for this week. I do this, say, 4 times, and that's $672- more than any current system on the market with a $300 markup. At this point, they (1st parties) are going to be selling time to play, rather than systems. Otherwise, there's no incentive to release a system at all, if it opens you up to payout liabilities that can easily far exceed the total revenue from a system sale.

The second case still falls to an argument I made prior. Say we do only have 3 companies left. (Whom they are is irrelevant.) What incentive do any of these companies have to make a game for an existing system, if they won't see any ROI from it? They won't. It will again push us back to the 1 system, 1 game method. After all, I certainly wouldn't spend $10 million making a game that I won't see anything come back on. If I want to see money come back to me from it, I'll have to make it on a new system, forcing people to buy the upgraded (?) hardware.