Ubisoft, the developers of the new video game Tom Clancy's Endwar have decided to offer their game only on Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. They defended their decision to do so by saying that computer piracy has destroyed the PC gaming industry.
"At the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version," said Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater. "Piracy’s basically killing PC."
Other critics have pointed out that it is far easier to pirate video games on a computer than a console. PC software pirating is as simple as finding an image of the game and mounting it on an easy to use virtual drive. Console piracy usually requires cracking open the case to modify the system, though after modding a system the piracy just means burning a cd.
But I disagree. It requires more money and technical skills to ensure your computer can play games than it does to buy or pirate them. Either you drop tons of money to regularly buy new computers, or you order new video cards and RAM to upgrade your existing computer. It takes a great deal of technical knowledge to appraise what you are buying, regardless. The effort in doing so makes piracy pale in comparison.
The problem with the PC gaming industry is that it is out of control - it has little to do with piracy. Poorly QA'd systems seem endemic to the platform, with buggy software and limp-wristed hardware being all too common. And there are no reliable metrics to judge what you are buying. Reviews are almost uniformly meaningless, "hardware requirements" are close to lies, and technical support / consumer protection is laughable.
As a result, consumers are relying entirely upon branding. PC gamers buy from Blizzard, or they buy from Will Wright, or they use a service like Steam to pick up vetted games. Console buyers are able to mostly trust that the games they buy will work on their machines, and are partially backed by Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo.
If developers want their PC games to succeed, they need to start optimizing for a broader range of systems, and that means everything from flexible code to scalable art direction. If a coder can't enjoy a game on their parent's computer, they need to ask themselves what their market is.
And industry leaders need to create a trusted source that can give accurate and reliable advice to consumers worried about buying a lemon. It isn't surprising that people are wary of an industry that so regularly fails to deliver on its promises. Hyped up market failures like Crysis, overly technical hardware options, and terrible driver deficiencies in operating systems (like that dud Vista I'm running on) all contribute to a stagnant industry far more than piracy.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/006522.html
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