Interesting Piracy Statistic

by | Piracy
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I’ve heard people argue about PC piracy and XBox piracy in the past – saying that PCs are getting hurt badly by piracy, followed by the retort that piracy exists on the XBox as well, but it’s a lot harder and riskier (you have to install a mod-chip, and you risk being locked out of the XBox network).

According to a recent GamesRadar article, the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 was pirated 4.1 million times and sold 270,000 copies. Meanwhile, the XBox 360 version was pirated 970,000 times and sold 6 million copies. That’s a pretty stark contrast. To put it another way, 6% of the people playing Modern Warfare 2 on the PC actually paid for it, while 86% of the people playing the game on the XBox 360 payed for it. Partially as a result of this, Modern Warfare 2 sold 22x better on the XBox than on the PC.

The disparity might be due to a number of factors. Other than the fact that the XBox games are more difficult to pirate, there’s also the fact that Microsoft did a major crackdown on XBox pirates right before the Modern Warfare launch, banning 1 million players – which probably put the fear of god into players considering pirating the game.

This actually reminded me of an article I saw some time ago on a pro-piracy website. They argued that the fact that Modern Warfare 2 was the most pirated game of the year, but still managed to be the best-selling game of the year meant that piracy had no effect on sales. What they neglected to notice, based on these numbers, is that the piracy, the ease of piracy, and the fear of getting caught seems to have played a large role in the disparity in PC vs XBox sales.

Fallout Soundtrack

by | Cool Stuff, Free, Music
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Mark Morgan put together a free hi-quality version of the soundtracks to Fallout 1 & 2:

Mark Morgan’s “Vault Archives” is remastered and mixed full-bandwidth soundtrack from old-classic “Fallout” games (24 tracks).

I think he copied the original music and recorded it in much higher quality. For anyone who spent way too much time playing the Fallout series (like I did), this will bring back some memories. You can download it here or here, and listen to a few tracks using the embedded player here.

[Hat tip to Octopus Overlords]

Defective Earbuds?

by | Miscellaneous
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Recently, I was working at the library with my earbuds in, when I noticed a buzzing noise. Strange, I bought these things less than a month ago. I considered bringing them back for a refund, but I procrastinated.

Today, I was noticing the buzz again, and I started thinking: I don’t remember hearing this buzz when I’m anywhere but the library. I tried moving the cord around, trying to get the buzz to stop. It was intermittent. The wiring must be bad somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out where.

I moved my legs a little bit, and noticed that the buzzing would stop and start again based on the positions of my legs – which made no sense. Then I noticed that picking my feet up off the ground made a difference in the buzzing noise. How weird. Then it occurred to me: maybe the buzz had nothing to do with the wire. Maybe it was due to a bad electrical ground. I pulled the laptop plug out of the wall, and the buzz disappeared. No wonder I hadn’t noticed the buzz anywhere except the library – it was due to a bad ground.

PC Gaming: Oh, How You Have Fallen

by | Business, Games
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I was just wandering around a local GameStop. It took me a minute to find their PC Gaming section – and it was tiny. They had a 3 foot x 3 foot section for PC games priced at $20 or less (apparently inventory they’re trying to clear-out), and an even smaller section for regular-priced PC games. It was literally about one foot of shelf space for all their PC games selling for $30 or more.

I asked a salesman about this, and he said that between piracy and download services like Steam, there just wasn’t much of a market for selling PC Games.

News Bits

by | News Bits
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– I was talking to another game developer last week. He’s a big, big fan of Apple products. He does all his work on a Mac, and he’s the only person I know with an iPad. He also makes Flash games, and has been porting them to the iPhone and iPad. Apple recently decided to ban ports of Flash games being sold in the App store, cutting him off from the market. Google really wants more developers on the Droid. They’ve been talking to him about getting his games on the Droid phone, and asked him if he had one. He didn’t, so they sent him a free phone, and mailed to him overnight. Google is really working hard to knock the iPhone off it’s top position. Looks like Google might’ve just stolen-away the biggest Mac-fan I know.

– Talked to a guy last week that started playing the new D&D Online. It’s a free-to-play MMO, but their revenue model is that players can buy in-game items. He said he’s spent about $150 on in-game items. Wow. I don’t know how many months he’s been playing, but they went free-to-play 7 months ago. If we assume he’s been playing for the past seven months (and it’s probably less than that), then he’s been paying an average of $21 per month.

– Talked to three different people within the last week who brought up the fact that they torrented something. One girl said she was having trouble installing some torrented software and a movie on her computer, and asked if I could help her. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I ended up politely explaining that I couldn’t in good conscience help her with pirated material.

Video player for Creators

by | Cool Stuff, Video
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Here’s an interesting idea. It’s a video-player with a built in paypal-based payment service. Small-time video or movie creators can then put their works on the internet and charge a fee to viewers. It side-steps the whole theater / movie-rental store / Netflix distribution system. Creators end up with 70% of the revenue from each viewing. Prices range from $0.99 to $11.99 (whatever the creator wants to charge), and movies are made available for as many viewings as a person wants, ranging from six hours to seven days (based on what the creator sets).