Despite Whining About Piracy, Secondhand Sales, Video Game Sales At All Time Highs
from the well,-look-at-that... dept
We've been noting how both the movie industry and the music industry had terrific years in 2008, despite the public perception being passed around by certain legacy companies in both industries that they were being decimated by "pirates." Apparently the same is true in the video game industry as well. Dan writes in to let us know that, at least in the UK, video games sales were at a record high, despite all hand wringing about the need for DRM and how piracy and secondhand sales have been destroying the industry. Once again, it seems like if you just put out a good product and give people a reason to buy, they're more than willing to do so. Still, how long will it be until we hear UK cultural secretary Andy Burnham declaring that the video game industry needs special protection against the scourge of piracy?
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Filed Under: competing with free, piracy, uk, video games
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I'd say roughly about election time.
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Jesse
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Anyway, this has been a bumper year for game quality. It's actually been hard to keep up with all the high quality games released in the latter half of 2008... hence the high sales.
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Re: Michael Whitetail
You've got the wrong end of the stick there. Thats when he'll start campaigning to 'protect' the public from video games.
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The UK had best snatch the games up.
Personal note: If you thought EA games were bad (but starting to get a little better), if Disney should acquire EA, all hopes for decent games from them is gone forever and you can damn well expect a gajillion Disney ads placed in them).
There is one good side to having some of these studios go away: it opens the door for new ones to emerge. To those thinking of starting up a new gaming studio, please don't forget about the millions of Wii owners. We're just dying for anything but minigames!
Ahem. At any rate, gaming's always going to be a hit-or-miss industry. While some games do sell particularly well, others don't, and it's these that don't which is costing the industry overall.
It will be interesting to see if this "all time high" persists through 2009. It doesn't look good.
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Re:
The methods vary, but the most popular is to get a big ol' hard drive for your XBOX or PlayStation and download the games to it, then you create a launcher that uses another game (one you actually own) to start it. This then allows you to just cycle through your game titles and pick one to play.
As an added bonus, no load times!
Yet another instance as well of the pirated version being better than the original.
Please note I haven't personally done this, I've just known people that do and have seen it first hand. If you can pirate a PC game, you can pirate a console game.
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Re: Re: Michael Whitetail
that is sooo 2004. the world is liberal again thanks to all the money raised by the obama campaign. video games are a kerbillion dollar a year industry... it's an industry that is drenched in income.
conservative christian family values don't have nearly the kind of profit margins that video games have so clearly the industry needs protection.
in a few years the real estate markets will pick up and the family values crowd will be able to afford legislation again and we will need to protect society from video games, but until then, please think of the developers.
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2008 - 2009 the year of pc gaming here is why
EA's share holders notice pc gaming mmo's and under stand why pc gaming is important
The ression push back sony and micro soft consoles and has made the wii king
The best game on the wii is the world of goo a pc game.
Runescape a pc game is more popluar than Hollywood,britney spears and jesscia abla
MMO's are shing brighter in profit than any console game.
actviion blizzard has become the must important company in gaming in a time of ression. Wow a pc game is holding the company up high
The hotest games are web based kids pc games in a time of ression
Indie pc gaming devs and mod game devs are finaly starting to be noticed.
People are starting to under stand that pc gaming is world wide and govermente and big business are starting to notice.
japan has realise pc game devs are the best in the business
some people may say that 2008 is not the year of pc gaming. But the thing is 2008 is the year of pc gaming. I bet 2009 will be too.
here is why
Console game companies are going bankuprt and it be the pc gaming mods and indie game devs time to shine.
PC MMO's will be become more important to big software companies in times of resssion
Pc mulitplayer and online pc games will shime in a time of resssion
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