Crytec video in regards to our favorite subject Piracy

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/site/flash_videos/second_take_crytek_blames_pc_piracy.html

Btw I'll start by saying I think Piracy sucks!

Discuss...

Totally agree.

I have downloaded stuff in the past but PC games i haven' touched a torrent site for 3 years. I think governments need to do more to stop torrents.

There is pro and cons on the argument and can go on forever but truth be told if a PC only developer comes out with it then we have to take it seriously.

Whose next??? I don't want to play big icon simplistic console games for the rest of my life...lol.

On gamershell.com I saw them quote an article on seekingalpha.com. Can somebody tell me how reliable that site is, seekingalpha.com?

The reason why I'm asking is because I found this on that site:

"Our co-publishing and distribution business delivered big. Revenue in the quarter was $372 million ex deferral, up more than seven times that of last year. Rockband, Orange Box and Crysis all exceeded expectations. EA Partners is a core part of building our business and segment shares."

Here's the source, use CTRL-F to quickly search for words. Am I using that quote out of context? Am I wrong for using that quote in this debate? Reason why I'm asking those questions is because that quote sounds too good to be true.

EDIT: I just noticed that I said ALT-F4 instead of CTRL-F...

Totally agree.

I have downloaded stuff in the past but PC games i haven' touched a torrent site for 3 years. I think governments need to do more to stop torrents.

There is pro and cons on the argument and can go on forever but truth be told if a PC only developer comes out with it then we have to take it seriously.

Whose next??? I don't want to play big icon simplistic console games for the rest of my life...lol.

Sirfruitytooty

I think most governments do try to stop it but the pirates then move all their servers to countries where there are no laws against piracy, like Russia or some country in Asia.

That statement is legitimate.

EA stated that crysis sold better than they expected on one of their financial reports; i think this was when crysis reached the 1 million sold mark.

Well, if it's a valid source then I also would like to add that Activision said that 2007 was their best year so far and they expect to do even better in 2008. Call of Duty 4 sold lots of copies on both the PC and consoles and we will see a COD5 in 2009 on the PC and all the big consoles. They obviously don't think that piracy is a big issue. Source. (I found that one at gamershell.com)

I kind of figured because if piracy was really such a big issue then the companies would actually do something about it, rather then keep quiet about it and continue using the existing anti piracy methods that always fail to eliminate the piracy threat. I think that if piracy ever becomes a serious issue, the companies will let us know and we'll see some serious changes.

I thought the comparison to Halo 3 was a good point. I liked Cyrsis as well, but to expect a new name with an average plot to outsell one of the most beloved games out there, is rediculous regardless of platform...KillOBKilled

I actually thought Crysis on the PC was better than 360 halo 3. But again there is were you have a difference of opinion. Halo thrives on its large multiplayer community and and icon to sell a console. Jutst like Mario and Sonic did in the past.

If only EA advertised Crysis like blizzard did for WoW :\ the only reason halo if popular is because of the big advertising machine of M$.

I don't know what Crytek expected with Crysis. 1 million in 3 months is pretty good for something that only a small % of the community can run. Even EA are extremely happy of these numbers. Now it makes more than 6 months and I am pretty sure they are close to the 2 millions judging from the germany/France pc game chart and the good sale of the geforce 8000 series. It cost me 1000$ of upgrade to run this game on high. I had to do it, because my old comp was 5 years old, but I am probably the minority that would waste that much $ to run a single game.

This is how I see it.

PC gamers are different from console gamers. There haven't been that many PC games in the past where a flood of millions of gamers suddenly rush out in the first week and buy a game by the truckload. This seems to happen more frequently with console titles. I don't know why that is, but in general that seems to be the case. Notice I said 'in general', because I'm sure someone can point out specific exceptions to me (like WoW and others).

Going back say four or five years ago, and there were times when I would preorder some titles. Other titles I would just go out and get on the day of release, particularly if I trusted the developer. But times have changed.

The PC I had prior to this one (still have it actually), kept me going for 6 years. That's right. I had the same PC for 6 years, and in all the time I had it I only upgraded/replaced a few parts. Obviously the graphics card was one of those.

When FEAR and DOOM 3 came around, it wouldn't even run the demos. At all. As in it wouldn't even load the demos after they were installed. So I figured then was the time to upgrade (for work as well as for gaming, because the PC had been struggling for a while to keep up with my work as well). So I bought myself a completely new replacement, which was mid-range at the time.

What I've noticed is that each successive year since I bought this PC I've had to turn the settings down lower a lot faster than I had previously with my old rig. I'm now reaching the point where I'm going to have to upgrade again soon.

This leads me to a conclusion - that the hardware requirements to play PC games are increasing more rapidly year on year than they have at any other time in the past. If that is the case, then there will be lots of PC gamers left struggling to try and catch up.

So when Crysis started getting a lot of publicity as a 'PC killer', I was very dubious that I was going to be able to run it. In fact, I was almost expecting it not to run, just like FEAR had failed to run a couple of years before. But it's not just Crysis, this encompasses lots of other modern games as well.

So I'm left with the situation that I absolutely HAVE TO try a demo before buying any new game to ensure that it will run on my PC. Luckily, with Crysis they released a demo, and I was able to see that I could run the game on lower settings at an acceptable frame-rate, so I eventually bought it. I didn't buy it right away, because as with all games these days, I was concerned about the depth of gameplay, after the game had been hyped so much about its graphics. So I waited for reviews from gaming sites to come pouring in. Then I waited a little longer for reviews and feedback from everyday users, until I finally decided to buy.

In many ways I've become more wary of getting games on the day (or week) of release. I've been stung once too often in the past getting games that didn't perform as I expected, or weren't as good as I'd hoped. I think PC gamers in general have become a more cautious breed.

So when I see that some guy from Crytek is blaming piracy for low sales, and moaning about not getting multi-million sales right away, it surprises me. If you make a graphics intensive game with steep hardware requirements, you've narrowed your potential audience. That is basic market dynamics. If you aim your product at a niche market, and then raise the bar for requirements, you restrict your target market even more. It does not matter how good your product is - you have chosen to narrow your own market through your design choices. If you build a car designed for midgets, don't expect everyone to rush out and buy it - because only midgets will be able to use it.

Then if you factor in the purchasing habits of your target market, you should accept that you are not going to see a massive amount of sales straight away, and you build your business model accordingly. If you want the 'mad rush' and people camping out on pavements in line because they can't wait to buy a game mentality, then for sure you should be looking at the consoles as your platform of choice. There were plenty of people camping out for the consoles when they first came out.

If you are aiming at the PC market, however, you need to understand that your sales are going to build up gradually over time, even over the course of a year or more as people eventually upgrade their hardware and buy a game they had been looking forward to play, but couldn't previously due to their PC not meeting the requirements. It takes people time to upgrade.

The market is different, no matter how much they want it to be the same.

Yes, piracy is an issue. But piracy is an issue on consoles as well, and I'm frankly tired of hearing the same tired old rhetoric. So for all those at Crytek: if you are so concerned about piracy, please be aware that consoles suffer from piracy as well. How are you going to deal with that as a company? Or are you assuming console gamers can do no evil?

Anyone think that maybe all this is just an excuse to make console games now? SinfulPotato

Of course it is. They are 'maximising their sales potential', like every other developer.

And just a further point - I find it ironic that they will now be having to downgrade their engine to fit within the hardware limitations of the console. Maybe if they had limited the hardware requirements of their engine on the PC, they would have had more sales.

Just a thought.

Those guys don't know what the hell they are talking about. First they say that it sold bad because of piracy and then they name a dozen other reasons why the game "might" have sold bad. Then they say most legitimate buyers were forced to download the game to check if their PC could run it. But that means that those "legitimate buyers" were actually pirates all along. That's when I stopped watching. I've heard much better arguments on this forum.BlackAlpha666

yeah the whole ppl where forced to download the game to c if we could run it is bull there is a demo that while pretty much tell u if u can run crysis on the higher settings.

So does anyone else think it's weird that Crytek is telling us how bad their sales are because of piracy and that they could've sold so much more copies, while EA says that the Crysis sales have EXCEEDED their expectations? What is going on here? Am I the only one here that thinks that Crytek used piracy as an excuse to move to consoles? Maybe they were trying not to hurt their fanbase, which are all PC gamers?BlackAlpha666

[QUOTE="BlackAlpha666"]So does anyone else think it's weird that Crytek is telling us how bad their sales are because of piracy and that they could've sold so much more copies, while EA says that the Crysis sales have EXCEEDED their expectations? What is going on here? Am I the only one here that thinks that Crytek used piracy as an excuse to move to consoles? Maybe they were trying not to hurt their fanbase, which are all PC gamers?Makari

If that's true, it means that Crytek should've expected the low sales aswell and shouldn't act surprised.

But they are not so low, actually. They just don't make you instantly rich.

Those guys don't know what the hell they are talking about. First they say that it sold bad because of piracy and then they name a dozen other reasons why the game "might" have sold bad. Then they say most legitimate buyers were forced to download the game to check if their PC could run it. But that means that those "legitimate buyers" were actually pirates all along. That's when I stopped watching. I've heard much better arguments on this forum.BlackAlpha666

I think there is some truth to their argument.

Do you know why?

I am one of those people they described.

Downloaded, tried, then I went out and bought the game from a retail store.

[QUOTE="Makari"][QUOTE="BlackAlpha666"]So does anyone else think it's weird that Crytek is telling us how bad their sales are because of piracy and that they could've sold so much more copies, while EA says that the Crysis sales have EXCEEDED their expectations? What is going on here? Am I the only one here that thinks that Crytek used piracy as an excuse to move to consoles? Maybe they were trying not to hurt their fanbase, which are all PC gamers?Deihmos

I wouldn't say NA has a poor PC fanbase. I don't know where that came from. NA has the second largest amount of WoW players (Asia #1) and according to game-monitor there are more Americans online playing PC games than all the other regions and it has the second largest amount of game servers (Germany #1). There just isn't a huge market for high-end games. At least the ones willing to pay for the product.

I think we can both agree that WoW is hardly a typical PC game and therefore can't be used to judge PC game sales. You could try to use game-monitor but even that doesn't give an accurate picture because it only covers FPS games. Go ahead and add up all the servers in the world and see what percentage America holds. It's kind of sad that our nation with a population of 300 million gets beaten by Germany which has maybe one fourth to one third as many people. It wouldn't surprise me if many countries in that game-monitor list have higher server densities than America does.

Btw, what did that Crysis commercial look like? I've seen commercials for lesser games like Lost Odyssey play over a dozen times but not a single one for Crysis.

[QUOTE="BlackAlpha666"]Those guys don't know what the hell they are talking about. First they say that it sold bad because of piracy and then they name a dozen other reasons why the game "might" have sold bad. Then they say most legitimate buyers were forced to download the game to check if their PC could run it. But that means that those "legitimate buyers" were actually pirates all along. That's when I stopped watching. I've heard much better arguments on this forum.ElectricNZ

I think there is some truth to their argument.

Do you know why?

I am one of those people they described.

Downloaded, tried, then I went out and bought the game from a retail store.

Maybe. I just always thought that the people that do that kind of stuff are pirates, since they know all about it and probably do it more often and sometimes don't end up buying a game. So in that video I thought it was bad how they put all the pirates and legitimate buyers in the same boat.

Not that I got anything against pirates or you, by the way. At school I've met LOADS of them.

Well, no two people are the same, some people pirate one or two games in their lives, some people pirate more, some people have but have stopped pirating, some people buy games and pirate the other, some people... some people.... etc.

There never are clear lines and groups, I have never met a single person in my life who owns their own PC for longer than a year without some sort of copyright infringement.

Hell, students pirate for teachers these days. I study graphic design, seriously theres 1 person in my ****who has legit Adobe Photoshop CS2 that she bought for 1.7K, all the rest of us are running around with with pirated CS3. Even teachers dont run legit software.

The only reason Crysis sold badly is because of its stupid system requirements... end of story. dbowman

I think that would be the MAIN reason, I'm estimating 80% of the reason. But if you think about it, once people do catch up with hardware, I think Crysis will get more sales.

[QUOTE="evilbanshee"][QUOTE="Deihmos"]

[QUOTE="Makari"][QUOTE="BlackAlpha666"]So does anyone else think it's weird that Crytek is telling us how bad their sales are because of piracy and that they could've sold so much more copies, while EA says that the Crysis sales have EXCEEDED their expectations? What is going on here? Am I the only one here that thinks that Crytek used piracy as an excuse to move to consoles? Maybe they were trying not to hurt their fanbase, which are all PC gamers?Deihmos

I wouldn't say NA has a poor PC fanbase. I don't know where that came from. NA has the second largest amount of WoW players (Asia #1) and according to game-monitor there are more Americans online playing PC games than all the other regions and it has the second largest amount of game servers (Germany #1). There just isn't a huge market for high-end games. At least the ones willing to pay for the product.

I think we can both agree that WoW is hardly a typical PC game and therefore can't be used to judge PC game sales. You could try to use game-monitor but even that doesn't give an accurate picture because it only covers FPS games. Go ahead and add up all the servers in the world and see what percentage America holds. It's kind of sad that our nation with a population of 300 million gets beaten by Germany which has maybe one fourth to one third as many people. It wouldn't surprise me if many countries in that game-monitor list have higher server densities than America does.

Btw, what did that Crysis commercial look like? I've seen commercials for lesser games like Lost Odyssey play over a dozen times but not a single one for Crysis.

I sawcommercials for Crysis when it launched. You really can't expect PC publishers to have huge marketing budgets due to returns. WoW is pretty much the only game I see being advertised. You are right I can't judge sales according to servers especially since 90% of them are usually unoccupied and most are for old games. A PC market does exist but mostly for games with low requirements like TF2, COD4, Sims etc.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Doom 3 sold 3.5 million copies. Far Cry sold about 3 million I believe. But then again, I don't know when they hit these marks. It may or may not have been a few years later.

[QUOTE="Makari"][QUOTE="BlackAlpha666"]So does anyone else think it's weird that Crytek is telling us how bad their sales are because of piracy and that they could've sold so much more copies, while EA says that the Crysis sales have EXCEEDED their expectations? What is going on here? Am I the only one here that thinks that Crytek used piracy as an excuse to move to consoles? Maybe they were trying not to hurt their fanbase, which are all PC gamers?BlackAlpha666

If that's true, it means that Crytek should've expected the low sales aswell and shouldn't act surprised.

But they are not so low, actually. They just don't make you instantly rich.

The only reason Crysis sold badly is because of its stupid system requirements... end of story. dbowman

I think that was a major issue as well, you may recall the threads being created the day of the Demo launch....
This scared people away and just didnt buy the game. think it was largely Crytek's problem of rushing the demo out incredibly early . felt like betal!

It doesn't even matter if piracy caused the game to fail or not. The point of the story is that developers are leaving the PC in droves and quite frankly, I can't blame them. When you consider that PCs outnumber consoles by a massive amount, and an average game on the consoles still outsells a good game on the PC, what do you expect a developer to do? The PS3 and Xbox360 combined haven't sold as many Wiis but GTA4 is making Take Two over $500 million....IN ONE WEEK!!!

The PS3 and Xbox360 combined haven't sold as many Wiis but GTA4 is making Take Two over $500 million....IN ONE WEEK!!!

fynne

If that's not an incentive to jump on the console bandwagon, I don't know what is.

Mind you, the same could be said of MMOs on the PC when you look at Blizzard raking in $1.2 BILLION a year. Probably why we've seen no many MMOs announced over the past year.

You can just hear all the developers shouting from the back row "Me! Pick me!" like Donkey off Shrek.

Or are you assuming console gamers can do no evil?

RobertBowen

As another response to you.

Consoles suffer nothing like the piracy of PC games and you know it.

Well they got me to buy two copies LOL :P

So cant be mad at me :P

I really wonder if Crytek was expecting an enorumous anount of sales from a game that only 20% of PC gamers can run.

Crysis was fine enough without all the eye-candy. They really didn't need to make the eye-candy that crazy but they did anyway and they should've known that they're sacrificing a lot of sales because of it.

Why are you such a nob?teh_goonster

Games sell better on consoles. They'll make more money.

What problem do you have with that?

Has everyone on this forum got their head stuffed up their PC elitist backside?

Christ..

It doesn't even matter if piracy caused the game to fail or not. The point of the story is that developers are leaving the PC in droves and quite frankly, I can't blame them. When you consider that PCs outnumber consoles by a massive amount, and an average game on the consoles still outsells a good game on the PC, what do you expect a developer to do? The PS3 and Xbox360 combined haven't sold as many Wiis but GTA4 is making Take Two over $500 million....IN ONE WEEK!!!

fynne

With a name like GTA has, I imagine it would have sold a helluva lot on the PC had it been released for that platform. Probably not $500 million worth, but it would have sold at least the $150 to $200 million mark. Also, while it is true that PC's outnumber consoles, you have to remember that every one of the consoles was purchased just to game. The majority of the PC's were bought to do email and word processing, not gaming. Most of them are probably in a controlled, corporate environment at that, with no games even allowed. So, that's not a fair numerical comparison.

Think you meant to say Crytek bud instead of "Crytec" located in the topic.