ZenfoldorVGI said:
Someone in this post said that if your authentication messes up 3 times, then the game thinks it's pirated and you can never play it again, and will be forced to buy a new copy.
If that's true, then that is my only concern. |
"If my PC blows up", "If lightning strikes my house", etc...
I doubt the authentication process would fail like that, or else EA wouldn't be risking so much on it.
As for your other post, for every Iron Lore there's several small developers that have a success story: CDProjekt with The Witcher selling over 600k for a unadvertised, unhyped, new IP RPG; Telltale Games leading the Adventure genre's salvation of digital distribution with Sam & Max; GSC Game World shooting through the roof with the new IP S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (which sold 1,65 million); Stardock with Galactic Civilizations; and Iron Tower with Sins of a Solar Empire, etc...
Besides, the demise of Iron Lore doesn't really prove anything.. maybe that piracy might be a problem for some companies, but definitely not the decline of PC gaming. Also its funny that you quoted a dev from Infinity Ward when COD4 is selling like crack on PC, on par with World of Warcraft and The Sims. If this continues, COD4 might even reach 10 millions copies sold on PC alone (more than PS3+360 combined), and the game is selling great in DD services, still being in the top-selling games of Steam 6 months after it's release...
So far you really haven't backed up your statements with facts, so I'll start supporting mine (if you even bothered to read my previous post) :
According to DFC, The online Market Growth: http://www.dfcint.com/game_article/may07article.html
So if the estimated value of 5.8 billions revenue of the online market is true, and since PC probably has atleast 90% of the cake, that would equal to 5.3 billions, which would be around 6 times bigger than the US PC retail market, and 60% of the entire US boxed retail market.
Also, another look at the boom of active subscriptions from MMOs:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart4_files/Subscriptions_21524_image001.png
begining of:
1998 - 50 thousand(?) subscriptions
2000 - 1 million
2002 - 3 millions
2004 - 6,5 millions
2006 - 12 millions
2008 - 16 millions
PC has currently 16 million people paying 10/15$ each month, and the numbers will only increase with time. Basically, there's more paying MMO players than there are PS3 owners, and each one of them is spending money every month (unlike the PS3 owners).
DFC also stated (although very briefly) that PC has been increasing game sales in europe and the PC's online market is going strong. I even made a thread about it: http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=25390