It's not free by any means, but Half.com can really help. My friend grabbed the 360 orange box for $40, and I've gotten a ton of my games there as well.
I have no issue with emulation and subsequent "archiving" of dead systems. Once it's dead, it's dead. You're only skipping the secondary market where the developers bottom line is not hurt, but to do it on a current gen system? C'mon, just because the stealing part is easy it doesn't mean you should. It's far from a victimless crime regardless of what you think about various corporations, at the end of the day you're endangering developers who do work hard for their money and deserve the dignity of their audience voting with their wallets in stores.
Just wondering, how do you view the Wii's Virtual Console? Because of the Virtual Console, old games are being brought to life. Since the games are old, they should be 100% profit besides the licensing rights.
Both QFT. Stealing a game from bittorrent or stealing a loaf of bread from a store is still stealing. Just one is much easier than the other. Little off topic, but the message is the same. My wife volunteers at my daughters school. She told me about one of the older grades that were in the library. In this class, the topic of stealing came up. She was floored (as was the teacher teaching the class) that NONE of the kids understood that the music they were downloading and sharing with their friends was stolen. It seems that we've become immune to the concept of theft in these situations.
How do I view it? Money for old rope. Not that that's a bad thing. I have issues with the pricing, but as that's in the hands of the platform holder and not of the publisher, I won't really go in to it. The problem is that it's a new business and as such it's hard to guage just how long it will be a -good- business model and not just a fad. It's interesting that Sony have pretty much all but ignored old school games that aren't from the PS1 whereas Nintendo are currently ONLY focusing on old shit, with MS somewhere in between, doing a little of both. It's current popularity certainly strengthens any argument that "old school" emultion and roms aren't harming anything, but it does give publishers and platform holders a strong incentive to clamp down on homebrew emulation. Ideally games would be like movies, with an unlimited shelf-life, playable forever and ever. However they -are- disposable, even on a "constant" platform like the PC and until that stabilises I think we'll ping pong between hard tech curves and nostalgia. To answer more directly; I honestly don't know.
I read your entire post and I do agree. I also agree with everything you've been saying in this thread. The Virtual Console is such a grey area.
here are my mods. (no need to talk about internal mods) my wii is just "retro" my theater 360 is college themed and I've got my favorite 360 in the gameroom I also made a DIY elite faceplate with filled in memory card holes.
HAHAH I dont see why you would get upset about something like this. It's not like I'm stealing from anyone here, especially not you. Games are not going to get cancelled for bad sales either. I dont know where you heard that from. Anyway.... why dont you take your flaming elsewhere! Unless you have something possitive to contribute to this thread.
Well I am paying for a binary news server every month. So 'no' it's not free by any meens. I still do support developers by actually purchasing the big games I like. People have been posting and accessing this stuff through binary news servers for many years. If it wasnt me downloading something... it would just be someone else. Call me a theif or pirate.... I dont really care. Just dont turn my thread into a flame-fest.
speak of the devil ... http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/14/nintendo-estimates-it-lost-975m-worldwide-in-2007-due-to-piracy/
While I agree that piracy may hurt the gaming industry, I just don't believe there is a reliable way to measure loss from it. Any number you see will be largely inflated. Just because someone downloads something illegally doesn't mean they would buy it if they couldn't download it, and even if they did buy it they may opt for a used copy from the second-hand market instead of buying new, or just rent it. Fact is, there are plenty of perfectly legal ways to play games that don't involve buying it from the company first hand. Do they figure that into their piracy amounts?
That looks really cool bud...the lights look great And the clear case looks slick....I bet it looks really nice in a dim to dark room
How do you know? You dont know what games he's worked on. It happens all the time, series getting cut short due to bad sales. it's pretty common knowledge. Look at the great Megaman Powered Up and Megaman Maverick Hunter X for the PSP. They're two of the absolute best games on the system, and they won't have sequels because of low sales. See, the "I can't afford it" excuse doesnt work for you. That server costs money, as did the mods you made to your 360, not to mention DVD-Rs. That's money that you could have bought actual games with. If there's games you want that you can't afford, you could always ease up on your transformer-buying for a bit, or just wait to get it. you don't have to have everything on day one. the "I wouldnt have bought it anyways" excuse doesnt work for anyone either, because if you didnt have the option of pirating, you wouldnt have any other choice. buy it, rent it (a very affordable option with things like gamefly) or go without. that's how the world works.
