Exactly the piracy grew with the industry so while there were less pirates there were also less people to use it. Proportionally it has been more or less the same.

As for Valve and Blizzard, they were doing just fine before Steam and WoW, how do you explain that? Also there is no hassle in pirating WoW. Just download it, install it, and run the crack, done, just like any other game.

So far your explanations have been lacking. My theory is that developers noticed that PC gamers have a much higher standard of quality than do console gamers. Then a lot of the less good devs jumped ship to consoles (look at Bungie pre-Halo to see what I mean). Then companies make a crappy game that is not up to snuff to PC gamers' standards and then they blame piracy on it (Assassin's Creed, new PoP, Crysis, I can keep listing these mediocre games all day long). Meanwhile the people who DO create amazing games flourish, ala Valve and Blizzard. If anything developers are putting themselves out of business by producing subpar games. Then they don't wanna admit they made a mediocre game so they just use piracy as a scapegoat and cite how people with lower standards (because they never had any great games to raise their standards to begin with) are buying the game by the millions.

Blizzard lost more than a hundred million dollars in the years leading to Wow release. It was not evident because it was hidden deep within Vivendi games accounting, but it was there.

Blizzard is doing fine now because they have a cash cow game which you can not pirate ( no credit card no play Wow, period...). The only way to play Wow on Blizzard's server is to pay the fee or steal someone's credit card information ( playing on a pirate server just does not compare).

And weirdly enough most of the people that have no issue pirating games balk at stealing credit card information from others...

Lastly for all the praise you give to Blizzard they are going in the same direction as IW with Starcraft 2, putting restriction in how you will be able to play the game in network ( forcing you to use battlenet in this case).

The game Bungie made last before halo was Oni, which was pretty interesting but it had bland envoronments wooden characters and a few other problems, solid fighting system though. I played it on the PS2 and it worked fine with the controller. As you said, Valve and Blizzard make plenty of money because they make good games and give their audience what their audience wants, when they deliver they get rwarded. Somehow recently companies have begun to think that they know what consumers want better than the consumers themselves. Then they whine about their games getting hacked by their consumers....

Bungie was also known for the Marathon series, something very highly regarded by those who played it.

Also, I think the companies know what they're customers want. They also know what they're willing to pay for. And more importantly, they know how easily people can pirate the game take advantage of certain features, which supersedes what some of the customers want.

As for WC, the last one I played was Prophecy and I heard the follow -up was more or less a rehash, they got bought up by EA and they started just rehashing their games. I mean come on, the follow up to Prophecy came out a year later, not enough time to make a new great game, what did they expect. If anything I'd blame EA mishandling the company and running it into the ground by making it developer subpar games than anything else. Wing Commander and Privateer were very high quality products that only declined when the developer started releasing them year after year after year when they were forced to by EA. See, even you don't want to admit the games decreased on their innovative side (I honestly didn't buy the last WC because I saw it was the same as Prophecy more or less) instead you just want someone else to blame. Well blame EA if anything. Also I don't know if you know but after the last WC came out EA said that Origin will be an online game only studio, working on Ultima and stuff. Wing Commander is dead because of EA, not because of pirates.

Lets keep things straight - the followup to WC Prophecy was released online for FREE. It was then later released in a Gold Edition with WC prophecy for like $30 for the set. It wasn't a whole new game, it was an add-on mission pack, which was standard for the WC series.  Anyone who had purchased prophecy could download it without paying any extra. Gamers were really happy with it at the time, but putting out a quality product and backing it up with free DLC later (which was a lot less common at the time) sometimes isn't enough. Really only Privateer 2 fell victim to this, and even then, it came out WAY after the original Privateer.

That is an issue you don't see with Valve or Blizzard (at least before AV got its hands on Blizz). They made games the way they wanted to make them and they released a game once every few years, not once every year. Also yes I consider anything that isn't innovative subpar and generally "more of the same." AAA doesn't really mean anything because I nejoyed Machinarium and that was ranked in the 80s, yet it was pretty innovative and well told. Also look at Deus Ex, X-COM, and other games which also top "best of all time" lists, they never had strict publishers interested in only money breathign down their necks either.

Also the $30M+ budgets come from people focusing too much on graphics, which let's face it, don't make a good game. Blizzard makes tons of money because you can probably run their games on toaster ovens even when they come out. It's the developer's fault they invest in shiny graphics instead of making an innovative product.

I'm referring to people who do both. Granted, a massive budget doesn't guarantee innovation, but by continually sighting Blizzard and Valve, you're hardly showing how a small developer can succeed.

I woudl also rather have 1 great game in a give genre a year instead of 2-3 all of which are subpar and more of the same, or repetative, or whatever other things the developers didn't do. Also I disagree with the "if it doesn't sell on PCs it isn't good" statement. Platforming games, fighting games and just about any game that has platforming elements would be absolutely horrible on the PC and there are many many great games like that on the consoles.

And what happens when a game isn't your cup of tea? You know, there's plenty of shooter fans who bought Halo 3 and stuck with it as their only shooter for a year or two. But what if people don't like scifi? Being a fantastic, big budget, well made game doesn't mean it's your favorite. Maybe they'd prefer a lower budget WWII shooter, or something. By trimming things to only "top tier" products, you're only catering to a % of people, and reducing options for a lot of others.

As for PC games being better and the gamers having higher standards just look at this very MW2 thread. It's obvious that the game has the exact same features on all platforms, yet people widely consider the PC version to be trash. Why is that, if not higher standards and expectations?

Bear in mind, many of these people are also pirates. All pirates hate the PC version because they won't get to do as much without paying, so they complain. Meanwhile, most console copies of a game play were purchased. For some it's a matter of liking the features, but it's not a matter of higher standards. Console players generally have more opponents available, and for a big game like this (and the naturally lower latecy of consoles) the multiplayer experience can be awesome without all the features that PCs can have to balance it out. The fact is, most people that complain/sign the petition do so because it hinders there illegal game experience. Those who require these features AND would buy the game are unfortunately a minority.

Last note, plenty of people also pirate on the consoles, not to mention EVERYONE has a PC in the world, even countries that don't get some games or are too poor to buy them. However if you are from there and you already have the console bought, chances are you already have enough money to afford new games. You need to provide me with some statistics on how this piracy issue is spread out, because I have a feeling a lot of it comes from poorer countries as well. Newsflash: PCs are used for far more than just gaming so many many more people have them than they do consoles.

Plenty of people pirate on consoles, but it's a LOT less convenient, and a lot less common. For instance, Halo 3 has sold a 1/3 as many copies as their are 360's. That's not even counting second-hand sales. Probably int he vicinity of half of all Xbox users have purchased Halo 3 at some point. Console games are generally bought, because to play multiplayer requires Live, and live periodically comes up with a way to bag/ban all the pirates.

There's no question that a lot of piracy comes from poorer countries, but there's also plenty of countries with money (i.e. Sweden) who pirate like crazy just because there's nothing in place to prevent it. and for areas like this, companies make their games harder to pirate. Also Newflash: Any ancient PC in a poor country isn't going to be playing the latest and greatest of games.

P.S. Actually no, I lurked a lot and if you noticed I signed up to enter the raffle for the HoN beta. You can see me praising LBP and the new mario bros game around the forums too since then.

I kinda wanna see those hundreds of millions, I'd be interested in the article where you got it from. Also note that I said Blizzard was doing fine until Activision got them. Now hey are going down the shitter.