Publishers pay their license fees up front for the number of disks that they are going to produce - not the number sold.

Console games make a much smaller profit per-unit.

So why are people now complaining that PC piracy is unmanageable? Well, I think this has always been a complaint. Sky-is-falling prophecies based off PC piracy aren’t new. What might be new is the apparent collapse of the PC game market. My concern is that it seems to be the convenient scape goat to point to Piracy as the reason people are abandoning the PC market.

If we look at the fall of the PC market, I personally didn’t see any corresponding increase in PC piracy. I saw instead an increase in the Console market where true plug-and-play game experiences were provided that were comparable to PC games for the same price as a new video card. I wonder how many pure PC gamers are left - I think we all bought consoles in the during the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox release and had a corresponding drop in our PC game purchases.

The insane market penetration of the PS2 has its price. Why should I buy a game for the PC where I get to struggle with installation when I could just play on the PS2? The opposite effect also occurs - as a developer, why should I support the sinking morass that is mutually incompatible video card drivers and random hardware performance when I can target a fixed, known, quantity with no variables?

Ah well, I guess we all suffer from our own “sky is falling” fears of our favorite industries…

The question also is not how many pirated copies there are, but how many sales were lost - rarely the same thing.

Also, quite sadly, PC game companies have done little to fight the piracy problem strategically.

But, no one has done anything to adequately protect the media. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD have been cracked.

But, I do agree about protecting things by turning them into a service - and this is clear and natural with games.

It is true to say though, that most people with a chipped console usually have it done to play copied games.

Also, DRM is entering a new phase with Microsofts tie in with Hollywood, in which the consumer can potentially be blocked from watching legitimately owned content on their own PCs if Microsoft determine their video driver, for instance, is compromisable.

Imagine being barred from driving down a road because you *could* drive over the speed limit. Or even just starting your car, because you *could* drive dangerously.

Untill we as consumers either say “No, I’m not buying because I dont like the restrictions and I dont like you assuming I’m stealing”, DRM of one form or another will not go away. And we will all be forced to buy many times the products that are pumped out. Yes, I’m looking at you Star Wars gold boxed set on VHS. I only have a DVD and PVR now. BlueRay HD-DVDs anyone?

I started to take a stand, I stopped buying music CDs and only bought stuff from MP3.com, untill they trashed everything that I had bought when it was taken over.

In addition, just like Windows has the most malware written for it because it is the most popular, if you see a lot of games moving to a console, they’ll become new targets for crackers.

And, you know, with consoles having incredibly powerful CPUs (have you seen the number of jobs completed by the PS3s at Folding@home?) and HDDs and broadband connections (no one plays Halo over 28.8K I bet…), I’m surprised we’ve not seen any malware written for them…

Disclaimer: I’ve not done any reading on the specific security/DRM of consoles.