Some personal thoughts on piracy (warning - long post)

[BeefJerky]

Going back to the whole console vs pc vs piracy, console games also enjoy notable piracy rate. There is no real doubt about that and even with comments like "well there's less 'noobs' on consoles who don't know anything" it doesn't really hold up.

It does hold up when we're discussing consoles. We're talking degrees of profit here, not absolutes. The reason consoles have gotten so popular isn't because people suddenly found consoles and all their ridiculously expensive peripherals and subscriptions so appealing: it's more because the gaming industry has pushed them hard because they make more money than PC games. There's no mistake or fluke going on there.

It doesn't matter whether or not a game allows multi-player. All that matters is that there's a single "must have" game that requires an internet connection to play beforehand. "Must have" multiplayer games serve as insurance for non-multiplayer games on consoles. Microsoft and its sponsors knows you're going to forget to unplug that ethernet cord or cave in to playing Call of Duty online eventually. Go try to sell a bricked 360 on Ebay. You're lucky to get 50 bucks for it if you're honest about it being banned on XBL. All it takes is a single second being connected to the internet and your console is virtually worthless.

And don't fool yourself into thinking that that's just a coincidental, unintended consequence on their part. That's a hardcore business decision you're looking at to protect intellectual property, multi-player or no multi-player. The development of Halo for the 360 was as much of an attempt to garner confidence in the system as an outlet to protect intellectual property as it was to sell the damned game.

You do have one assertion right, however, and that's that the gaming industry makes more money on consoles, which is why Frictional would even consider it.