Amusing DC/Xbox360 comparison

[alanschu]

For what it's worth, he doesn't run an FTP anymore

 

 

Though I think his reasoning is that he cannot benefit from it much anymore. Bittorrents and whatnot made him unnecessary.

[Drakron]

When I said heavy exposure, I was talking about the prevellance of pirated copies.

 

If you read what is on that link you would realize that Thief sold more that enough, it was not a failure in sales because if Thief 1 had failed Looking Glass would gone under and Thief 2 and Gold would never been made.

 

My roommate at the time had an ftp server and wholeheartedly participated in distributing pirated games.

 

In one week alone he had over a thousand downloads of Thief.  It was one of his "best sellers."  The only other game that was being pirated at a more proficient rate for him at that time was Half-Life.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Again if you bothered to read that article you realized that Thief sales are more that enough to keep then all happy.

 

In theory, multiple offset projects allows the developer to survive a failure. Thief was profit that plugged holes in short-term debt. System Shock II more or less offset the failure of Flight Unlimited III. Flight Combat was thus a financial problem that strained the multiple project system and put Looking Glass in danger again, and cash in hand began to run critically low in early autumn of 1999, despite the royalties coming in from Thief (in addition to, presumably, milestone payments for Thief: Gold.)

 

And what in the end destroyed Looking Glass was:

 

The rights and materials to Deep Cover reverted to Looking Glass, and Looking Glass was allowed to continue to hire the services of the Deep Cover design team from Irrational. Microsoft, however, was unhappy that Irrational would not be involved in the manner originally intended. Despite negotiations, Microsoft pulled out of the deal in February 2000.

 

This apparently subtracted at least one million dollars from the cash that Looking Glass had expected to use to cover its operating expenses. That

[BattleCookiee]

Mmm, why do you deliver more proof piracy killed Looking Glass?

 

could only be a mortal threat to Looking Glass if its finances were already in bad shape.

 

And they were in such a shape due to piracy and low sales of previous games...

 

 

However, the economic instability sweeping the entertainment industry slammed into Eidos, which found itself with insufficient funds to complete the purchase. Eidos asked its bankers for more money. The bank was itself in a period of difficulty, and thus the bankers said no.

 

And why was there economic instability in the first place...? Could be due to reduced sales, which in their place was caused by increased piracy?

[Spider]

And they were in such a shape due to piracy and low sales of previous games...

 

Is there any proof to back this up? Bad finances can have many different reasons such as bad management or games that flop.

 

The thing is people who pirate games are interested in the same type of games as the general public, so if a game is pirated a lot it's pretty likely that it'll sell a lot as well.

 

And why was there economic instability in the first place...? Could be due to reduced sales, which in their place was caused by increased piracy?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hardly reduced sales since sales are still on the rise in the gaming industry. Expenses increasing more rapidly than the sales is more likely.

[Hell Kitty]

LGS doesn't include piracy as a reason for their demise because they have no way to tell what effect it had unless all the people who downloaded a copy of their games called them up and said "If I didn't pirate your game I totally would have bought a copy, suckers!". Maybe it had a big effect, maybe not, no one knows.

[Cantousent]

Furthermore, what about single player games?  How many people actually go out and buy a single player game that they've already beaten?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Let's see...

 

Alpha Centauri

Stronghold

Thief (1 and 2, couldn't find them for the longest time)

Silent Storm

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I like Alpha Centauri, and I've replayed Alice and PS:T many, many times. There are quite a few single player games I enjoy enough to replay. Some of them I've bought more than once when I've misplaced the originals or lent them out and not had them returned.