| Scisca said: What? I'm stretching? Seriously, if you want to talk about a certain process that started in the past and claim that something is a given way "especially" now, it's absurd to say that we shouldn't compare the current situation to what was in the previous time frame. In fact such a discussion is absolutely pointless and impossible from the logical point of view. Moreover, you are doing it yourself with your argument about dev costs being higher than in the past, so why are you denying it to me? I understand the costs are growing. Cool. I know that. But the bottom line is - has this influenced the situation of PC gamers? Has the release of secure consoles dealt a blow to the PC market? Was this a sudden gamechanger? The answer is NO. The situation you described hasn't changed a thing for the worse thus far. I see absolutely no negative impact that the 3 new secure consoles have dealt to the PC market. Previous consoles were cracked, current ones are secure and what? And nothing! That's what I'm pointing at. I can't see a significant number of games suddenly skipping PC, there is no sudden exodus. Conina already proved that DLCs are released on schedule. So what has the fact that current consoles are secure changed? Please don't tell me some sad stories from a dev's life, but give examples how this managed to change the market, cause I can see none. That is why I believe your whole rant is unfortunately pointless in this case, sorry. If a change doesn't have any real consequence, it doesn't deserve to be called "the elephant in the room" - all I'm saying. |
And youre still trying to attach the "elehant in the room" comment to the topic in general.
| Tachikoma said: The "elephant in the room" is talk of piracy, since piracy-talk is usually avoided. |
Cannot make it any simpler to you.
| Scisca said: I understand the costs are growing. Cool. I know that. But the bottom line is - has this influenced the situation of PC gamers? Has the release of secure consoles dealt a blow to the PC market? Was this a sudden gamechanger? The answer is NO. |
When a developer choses to "test the waters" with their title on console first, prior to bringing it to PC, for whatever reason, that directly impacts pc-only gamers.
When a developer or publisher discusses the simultanious release of a game on both PC and Console, a long discussion is had over the releasing timing, and the pros and cons of staggerng the release, since the availability of a PC version has the potential to impact console sales, if a gamer is faced with the option of paying $60 for a console game, or $30-40 for the PC version, or lastly, paying nothing and torrenting it, a large number will opt for the latter, each and every major publisher does research into piracy, both console and pc, either themselves or through contracted third parties, and the results of that research and can often does directly effect release timelines, planning and major directional tasks such as choosing to develop a pc version in-house of contracting third parties to handle the porting work.
Again, even when consoles last generation were ALL comprimised and piracy was possible on the Wii, 360 and PS3, the ratio of pirate versus paying player was significantly lower than that of the pirate versus paying player for PC, outlandishly so.
The issue of piracy on the PC is one of the major contributing factors to the reason WHY PC games are generally priced lower than their console counterparts, so trying to argue that piracy on pc and the lower piracy, or lack or piracy on consoles does not play a major role in developers and publishers choices for preferential treatment is just flat out broken logic.
The very fact that development teams and publishers hold meetings to conduct risk assesment for PC versions alone directly underlines the fact that piracy and the existance of a more secure console ecosystem does, definitely play a deciding role in how PC-only gamers are accomodated.
And really, if you'd STILL like to tell me otherwise, shoot me a PM because discussing this here is getting extremely boring.
And if possible, go sit in on an actual risk assetment meeting from a major publisher before doing so.
To be clear on that, don't expect further replies from me on the topic, i've far better things to do with my time.
