First a little about where I live, Bangladesh a poor country in South Asia, where 9 out of 10 stores carry only pirated movies and software. I just came back from a glitzy store across the street that looks just like your run of the mill western software store except every single one of the software products they carry is pirated. And this isnt just your father's pirated shit either, I am talking about gliztzy, shiny, think DVD boxes and discs with labels that only an expert would be able to tell apart from the real deal. The average price for a game is about US $ 2-3.
Now the question is, undoubtedly the North American market as well as the European and Japanese are the three biggest in the world, and piracy has a very small (but growing) effect there. But Asia has a rapidly growing middle class with a taste for fancy electronics, and more and more of them are buying video game consoles, usually the PS2 (modded). And the games they play on them are almost without exception pirated. What to do about this? No doubt Sony still comes out on top since there is no way to pirate the hardware and they sell a shitload of PS2s, but they lose out on the royalties, not to mention the publishers. It doesn't look like the governments will strictly enforce piracy laws (if they exist in the first place), since they have stuff like actually feeding their population to worry about. So that means lesser players in the console market like Nintendo and MS are getting completely screwed, and publishers are losing money due to piracy.
What is the solution? Should publishers lower prices on their software? To think about it, why SHOULD a game cost 2.5 times that of a DVD movie? Should Sony do a Nintendo and go for a media format that is hard to pirate? But then they lose out on the hardware sales. What is the solution? Because you know that if a guy is given the same product for a 10th of the price, he won't go for the more expensive option? Should Asia be ignored while the console makers concentrate on defending the big three regions? How do you think piracy will ultimately affect the industry? Because it sure as hell is not going to go away.
Now the question is, undoubtedly the North American market as well as the European and Japanese are the three biggest in the world, and piracy has a very small (but growing) effect there. But Asia has a rapidly growing middle class with a taste for fancy electronics, and more and more of them are buying video game consoles, usually the PS2 (modded). And the games they play on them are almost without exception pirated. What to do about this? No doubt Sony still comes out on top since there is no way to pirate the hardware and they sell a shitload of PS2s, but they lose out on the royalties, not to mention the publishers. It doesn't look like the governments will strictly enforce piracy laws (if they exist in the first place), since they have stuff like actually feeding their population to worry about. So that means lesser players in the console market like Nintendo and MS are getting completely screwed, and publishers are losing money due to piracy.
What is the solution? Should publishers lower prices on their software? To think about it, why SHOULD a game cost 2.5 times that of a DVD movie? Should Sony do a Nintendo and go for a media format that is hard to pirate? But then they lose out on the hardware sales. What is the solution? Because you know that if a guy is given the same product for a 10th of the price, he won't go for the more expensive option? Should Asia be ignored while the console makers concentrate on defending the big three regions? How do you think piracy will ultimately affect the industry? Because it sure as hell is not going to go away.
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