War.mongeR1

Yeah, all they have to do is do what Steam does. I've seen people try to join a Counter-Strike server with obviously pirated copies and it will boot them right back out saying "Steam ID already in use" or something to that effect. So sure, people can copy the game all they want, but it's not going to do them much good if they can't play it online while another person's online with the same pirated copy. Same with BF's CD key. My friend could never play online with BF 1942 because someone else was always on with the same copy. The old fool finally broke down and bought a legit copy so he could actually play for once. I think Steam's model is the way to go, though.

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Buccaneer

Have Console games been pirated (and work) in the past?

Never had a console but my wifes son has had the PS, Gameboy, DS, and since December last year the WII (Which I think is brills)!

My first "Computer" was an Acorn Electron in 1983, and ever since, "pirating" software has always been an issue. I can't see it ever being stamped out completely.

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xTYBALTx

I believe that console piracy is pretty common actually.

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TheFeniX

Yes. Console emulation has been around forever. You can emulate pretty much any console system and play either downloaded games themselves, the actual CD/DVD (provided you can read them, but most are standard CD or DVDs so play fine in PC readers), or burned copies of the games (you can download the iso's off certain sites and burn them to CD/DVD).

It's just not as easy as pirating PC games, but it's not THAT much more difficult. If anything, console piracy is WORSE because you can completely bypass the need for the console itself. You have to OWN a PC to pirate PC games.

Most pure console owners are too computer inept to pirate and emulate the games, but pirating is also stemmed by rental companies.

That said, the first/second gen PSXs and Dreamcast would play "burned games" with little to no modifications. The former could be done using one retail game and a paper-clip (I'm not joking).

But this whole issue is glossed over with "OMG PIRATES R KILLING TEH GAMING IDUSNTRY!"

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snooggums

As this hasn't been mentioned before: Epic and id make gaming engines, and happen to put out a couple of games using those engines. id, and most likely Epic, actually make their money by licensing the engines to other companies to make games. That is why they are multi platform, it gives them a bigger area to sell for.

Here's some games that use Epic's engine:
RainbowSix Raven Shield
America's Army
Splinter Cell
Magic the Gathering: Battlefields

Doom 3 was used in Prey, didn't look for a list. All of Halflife mods were based off derivatives of Quake engines which id also makes. Quake itself is currently developed by a different company, they just use id's engine.

PhunDrm

Pirating on consoles is a little more involed and requires some hardware (ie. modchip), but I have heard of people on XBOX that have 300+ gig HDs that rent from Blockbuster/Netflix, download the game/movie to their HD and run it off of there. Piracy on consoles has been around (as far as still using the console not emulating) since the edition of cd/dvd based systems. Ps1/2, Xbox,and Dreamcast games are all available for download. Soon, I'm sure Ps3 and 360 games will follow suit if they haven't already. And seeing as more gamers seem to be shifting to console, that would only facilitate more pirates to be moving to console.

Companies don't move to console because they're less prone to piracy. As has been said before, it's all about the money. Why go through testing to make your product compatable with a bunch of different hardware setups when you only have to make it work on one?

To use piracy as an excuse for moving to console is a little ludicrous. It's just easier and more cost effective to make games for console.

Don't worry though, I'm sure they'll try to dupe us into buying some of XBOX/PS3's ported scraps. **cough** Splinter Cell Double Agent **cough**

CingularDuality

?

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evacke

This has 2 sides to it. I'm a PC gamer personally, but I have a lot of friends who will only play on their consoles. I usually don't delve too much into piracy, not that I have some sort of moral objection or anything, just because its easier to install from a package in 5 minutes rather than spending hours downloading and cracking someone else's stuff.

However if Tribes 3 was announced or some other game that I've been dieing for to come out and it was announced to be a console only game, I'd pay for that system that was forced on me by selling modded systems and ripped game copies to all my friends.

These companies need to remember whose paid their bills for the past decade and remember that disgrunted PC buffs are the people who know how to bring piracy to the next level. The console gamers aren't normally going to know how to use bittorrent or where to order mod chips.

Most PC guys are very loyal to their chosen companies and usually will pay for the game not because they can't get their hands on a free copy, but because they want to support the company's product. Where do you think that vendor loyalty is going to go when they pull our WASD keys and mice away and stick a gamepad in our hands in order to play new games?

PC gamers aren't just their biggest supporters, they are also potentially their biggest enemies. Just look what happened to the music industry when they charged ridiculous prices for CDs after PC buffs were done with them.

harntrox

what a joke. where's my xbox 360 emulator, written by a disgruntled pc gamer who got sick of the direct ports from consoles to the pc...? oh yes, its being worked on as we speak.

some greedy corporate-heads are gonna roll when the pc haxxors open up the can of Emulation Whoopass here in the next 2 years.

there has never been a way for anyone to tell how many cd's/dvd's are copied worldwide, regardless of the arrangement of 0 & 1's they contain. binary data tells no tales.

RGM-79N_GM_CUstom

God I miss the Dreamcast. That being said everyone I know was pirating the DC including myself. I had atleast 3 friends that could get you any Dreamcast game for 5 dollars.

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evacke

omg, the dreamcast pwned. I remember having a boot CD with 1000 super nintendo games on it you could play on the DC. Mario Cart ftw

Sirusblk

Maybe this market trend is saying alot about the whole business in general. I mean honestly haven't games gotten overpriced alot? I remember when I could buy a gameboy game for $15, sure that might be comparing apples to oranges you might say but I say it's pretty relevant.

Gamers are willing to play your games, they aren't however willing to pay that much for them. Take for example, if I could buy whole songs for 10 cents a song, I'd become more of a music afficianado. I believe the same goes for games.

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Zid

my father had set up the sickest setup for pirating snes games we used to place the games on floppy discs and insert them into this device that sat on the snes i was like 7 years old but it was the sweetest thing ever.

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vanity11

I whole heartedly agree with this post. They're marketing the same **** over and over, just now to a different audience. Thus it's profitable again.

Zoopy_T

I think we established that fact that:

Yes, you can pirate console games.

Yes, newer consoles (except the Wii) don't require additional hardware to play pirated games, making it almost as easy as pirating PC games.

The fact is simple, more people play console games, therefore release games for the largest user base. It has nothing to do with piracy. There is always a way around everything, it is just the way things go.