| HappySqurriel said: Who buys more copies of a game would largely depend on the game ... Nintendogs was (probably) dominated by the casual market whereas Dungeons and Dragons online was (probably) dominated by the hard-core market. Beyond that I would say that (in general) hard-core gamers are probably 100 times as likely to pirate a game than a casual gamer, buy used games and sell their old games. I would suspect that inspite of playing a (dramatically) disproportionate number of games they are really not that responsible for a disproportionate number of original game sales. |
From my experience its the other way around. Hardcore guys WANT the hard copy because they are hardcore after all. The ones who pirate are usually average joes who dont really care about gaming that much to justify paying for them. Pirates also usually fall under the category of poor (thus nothing would have sold to them anyway) and young high school - college kids who again wouldnt have money to pay for the games anyway. Pirating is not as big of a deal as companies and security folks want you to believe. If 99% of the pirates couldnt pirate, they still wouldnt buy the game becuase they cannot afford to plus many games became huge because of pirating. Blizzard is a prime example. If WCII/SC weren't pirated like bunnies in heat, they would be a no-name 3rd party company today. Same can be said of some musicians. Metallica is the prime example there. If people didnt record and distribute their work early in their career, they would have never gotten anywhere which is why so many hardcore fans were pissed when metalica sided with the RIAA a few years back. Fun times.
Hardcore gamers usually buy less games because they are more selective (and take advantage of sales and such) thus most of the money is with the average joe who tends to buy on impulse. Impulse is what sells games like "Spiderman 3" and look how many those sold...
