GT4 Backup

[spedmetal]

Originally Posted by Warlock

I agree, Instead of spending billions developing a new console they should invest a few million developing games that can push the limits of the console we already have.

I can agree with that.

[reddragon105]

also agreed.
if i pirated a game it would be because it's not worth buying. if i owned a game on dvd-r that i did not have an original copy of it would be because i never intended to buy that game because i didn't consider it worth playing. i buy games i consider worth playing. hence, the industry has not lost any money, because i have not pirated a game that i would otherwise have given them money for.

i also think it's a good idea to push the limits of existing consoles. isn't it interesting how we get a new console with brilliant graphics surpassing it's predecessors, yet years later we get games with graphics that put them to shame - on the same console. using the exact same hardware, developers have managed to squeeze extra performance. compare Gran Turismo 3 and 4, or Red Faction and Timesplitters, early PS2 FPSs, with recent FPSs. it's also interesting that with consoles you can get so much more than PCs. what spec of PC would you need to run Gran Turismo 4, if it were available? certainly a PC with more than a 300mhz CPU which is what the PS2 had.
if they spent more time working with the hardware they had, they would save a lot of people time and money in upgrading. throwing more powerful hardware at games to make them slightly better is complete overkill compared to what they could achieve with a few lines of better code

[Neipas02]

Eh.. Reddragon we all see your point.. BUT Piracy is a NO-NO, no matter how you look at it.. You can't sugar coat it by saying you wouldn't have played it anyhow. If that were the case you shouldn't have wasted your time copying it to begin with.

I agree with Warlock and Sped on the development issue as well.

[Jay_83]

@ reddragon105

Totally disagree mate. If you don't think it's worth buying then you just don't buy it. It doesn't mean it's ok to do a copy of it!

What you're saying is no different than me going into a store, stealing some stock then later when pulled by security saying "I wasn't gonna buy them so they're not losing any money"

[SurfDrifter]

Sorry, I didn't follow the conversation, since I had some issues at home.
I feel I own an answer to Jay_83

It's only gonna be a matter of time before games companies go bust due to the fact noone's paying for the game and instead is simply feeling they have the right to STEAL somebody elses work. I work in the IT industry and I appreciate just how much effort goes into these things.

I agree with this more than you might think, but I think it's easy for everyone to consider piracy as THE cause for problems within companies themselves. And don't forget external restrictions that apply that is caused from Sony (i believe). I mean the fixed price for a game is outrageous!!! You pay the same amount of money for Bust-A-Move and for GT4!

Imagine that Company A developed a game for 6 months and the consumer bought it for 60€ and Company B that developed a game for 4 years and gets paid the same.

This would lead to a tendency, in simple economics, create more games than quality games.

Now here comes the issue of price. I always had two questions in mind.

1) Why games cost differently between platforms? For instance, PC version costs 40€ and PS2 version cost 60€. I believe it has to do with royalties that pump up the price.


2) Why there's a huge difference in price tags of the SAME game, same platform, in different territories?

Let's make a poll and everyone from around the world tell us how much does the game cost and which is the average payroll to make some comparisons.
For instance, in Greece, a PS2 game costs 60€ and the average payroll is 700-800€. To help you out this is about 75$/game and 900-1150$/ per month. My calculations show that i need between 7,5-8,5% of my salary to buy a game. Hence i stopped buying games from Greece and started buying them from www.play.com and eBay, but that's not the issue. The issue is that in poor countries, even the ABSOLUTE price tag is higher than the price of countries that all wealthier! Can someone explain that to me? I would at least expect it to be the same.

As for reddragon105's remark it sounds rational, but this is very dangerous because everyone can easily stand behind that statement and say that i wouldn't buy game A, game B and so on, therefore justify piracy.

Yet, is what i believe is happening to music (and game industry in a way)industry and they are blaming piracy for it. Every time they tell us that sales have dropped(which is true), but for instance they are hiding the fact that CD-singles are selling like crazy.
This means that market has changed and doesn't want CD albums any more and prefer singles and/or compilations of music. Anyway, we shouldn't talk about music now.

And the paradigm that Jay_83 gave in response to the statement of reddragon105, is not accurate.

It would apply as someone go to a store, and clone some stock and not physically remove the stock for the store.

P.S: I do OWN GT4 and various other games, most of them are pre-owned just like lucfan does, because i cannot afford to pay them new.
Only the games i really like i buy new. I'm saying this because I didn't explain that specifically in my previous post and Jay_83 was justifiably doubtful about me.

[Jay_83]

Originally Posted by SurfDrifter

You pay the same amount of money for Bust-A-Move and for GT4! .

Not in the UK you don't. All budget titles such as bustamove etc are released at £19.99 max. Many blockbuster stores here put a standard retail price of £12.99 on these from new.

Originally Posted by SurfDrifter

Imagine that Company A developed a game for 6 months and the consumer bought it for 60€ and Company B that developed a game for 4 years and gets paid the same. .

The same can be said about music, the price of recording the album/video can be drastically different but at the end of the day the more popular ranges will always sell more. Hence why GT4 took years to make and as you stated Bust - A Move was simply a arcade conversion. It'l never sell nowhere near as much as GT4 hence less profit.

Originally Posted by SurfDrifter

1) Why games cost differently between platforms? For instance, PC version costs 40€ and PS2 version cost 60€. I believe it has to do with royalties that pump up the price. .

The PC takes a lot less time to program for than a Console, with regards to cross console platform prices they're generally the same in the UK.

Originally Posted by SurfDrifter

2) Why there's a huge difference in price tags of the SAME game, same platform, in different territories?.

Take an RPG for example, Square-enix games created in Japan, then need to have all speech and ingame text translated and rerecorded (FFX for example). As for most other games yet again I can't see much price difference from buying the Jap region from LIK-SANG, the USA Region or the PAL.



The main point is that in your previous post you claimed

Originally Posted by SurfDrifter

I believe that this game must be the biggest commercial hit ever. Every person on the planet playing GT4 is using an original game!

simply because it can't be backed up at the moment. Thats what annoys me

[ottoman]

I think were getting into two separate issues here:

Firstly its illegal (in the uk at least) to make a backup of a ps2 game anyway.

The arguement goes something like this:

Consumer: Generic software law states that I am permitted to make one backup of any software I LEGALLY OWN.

Sony: But the PS2 won't run backups so why would you need to.

Consumer: Cos I've got this mod chip fitted which allows me to boot backups.

Sony: Great, we'll bring a test case against some mod chip suppliers and fitters and make the whole mod chip fitting process illegal.

And they did sucessfully. Therefore law would consider the process of even making a backup illegal.


As for the P1ss poor games that turn up on the PS2.......Sony are very picky on the release of the console. The initial software releases are very carefully quality checked to be of the top standards but after 6 months or so they just don't care. They'll sell the dev kit to anyone and as a result, any old crap that will fit onto a cd or dvd. I don't care if it takes 1000 years to develope a game. Its either good or bad...It's either worth the money or its not. And blaming Piracy for killing the game industry is rediculous. If a game is really good, people will buy it. Whether they copy games or not. If a game sucz no one will buy it anyway hence the developer will suffer whether people are copying it or d/ling it. We simply need better games...

Jay, consider this.....If there was no way to copy or pirate a game people would still not buy crap games and the developers would still suffer just as much because there games wouldn't sell. And i don't believe for a second that prices would fall if piracy didn't exist. People are greedy by nature mostly, especially business people and if people are willing to pay the price they set then why drop it!

[Jay_83]

Modchips may be deemed to be illegal in the uk but are still freely available from the right sources. They've been ripped from sites selling in the UK because they're **** scared sony will file a lawsuit against them, not because they're not selling them anymore. Until they create a law against them we're not gonna know one way or another. One case can't make this a legitimate statement.


Ottoman no offence mate but have you even read everything else i've put??

""Support the developer, buy the game. If you're not sure if it's worth it just bloody rent it.""

Also I can guarentee you if piracy didn't exist that Rockstar Games, Bungie and many more DECENT developers WOULD have higher profits. There's people always posting, "Why is my backup of GTA saying disc read error" reply "Use the original" Answer "I don't have it, I rented it, lent it my friend, the dog eat it"

[SurfDrifter]

Originally Posted by Jay_83

Not in the UK you don't. All budget titles such as bustamove etc are released at £19.99 max. Many blockbuster stores here put a standard retail price of £12.99 on these from new.

Hmm, you should come visit Greece. Same prices everywhere (with very few exceptions...). Few days ago, I saw Broken Sword:Sleeping dragon at 60+€, more than GT4, which is 59€. Things should change here...

Originally Posted by Jay_83

The same can be said about music, the price of recording the album/video can be drastically different but at the end of the day the more popular ranges will always sell more. Hence why GT4 took years to make and as you stated Bust - A Move was simply a arcade conversion. It'l never sell nowhere near as much as GT4 hence less profit.

OK, but what about selling it at a lesser price, therefore raising the sales more? This result at more customers, which can have many benefits other than the actual monetary profits. (More publicity, the-neighour's-kid-has-it, why-don't-we?, etc.)

Originally Posted by Jay_83

The PC takes a lot less time to program for than a Console, with regards to cross console platform prices they're generally the same in the UK.

Didn't know that thing about programming...Thanks!

Originally Posted by Jay_83

Take an RPG for example, Square-enix games created in Japan, then need to have all speech and ingame text translated and rerecorded (FFX for example). As for most other games yet again I can't see much price difference from buying the Jap region from LIK-SANG, the USA Region or the PAL.

Yes, that is logical, but I wasn't referring to that difference in territories.
Look at the prices within EU, which the system is PAL. I bought Silent Hill 4 from play.com for 45€ and in Greece it was selling for 60€. I'm talking about that difference. I mean with the same amount of money you buy 3 games in Greece, whilst in UK you buy 4.

Originally Posted by Jay_83

The main point is that in your previous post you claimed
simply because it can't be backed up at the moment. Thats what annoys me

I can see how that might have sounded, but I didn't want to sound in that way. The game by itself its fantastic, so it would sell like crazy whether it can be copied or not, so eitherway it will be the biggest commercial hit of PS2(at least in my opinion) And it is worth it 100%.

I would like to see the faces of all "retail pirates" around the globe that cannot sell NOT EVEN ONE copy of GT4! And believe me, the "profit" loss for those "poor" pirates is huge!!!

[reddragon105]

Originally Posted by Jay_83

@ reddragon105

Totally disagree mate. If you don't think it's worth buying then you just don't buy it. It doesn't mean it's ok to do a copy of it!

What you're saying is no different than me going into a store, stealing some stock then later when pulled by security saying "I wasn't gonna buy them so they're not losing any money"

actually it is different. i was trying to point out that, while i don't condone piracy and i buy all the games i think are worth buying, there is a difference between stealing and piracy.
stealing a game would be going into a shop and taking a game without paying for it, hence taking money away from the shop (which is what you were talking about when you said.
piracy is making a copy of the game, so doesn't involve taking anything away from the shop.
so the companies don't lose money, they just lose potential earnings.

it is of course still theft, as the software is copyrighted and you have to pay for permission to use it, hence copyright theft. but they're not losing money over it, they're just not getting as much money as they would get if piracy was impossible and everyone had to buy the game if they wanted to play it.
which brings me back to the first thing i said - if i pirated a game it would be because its crap. well thats just a hypothetical situation because if i thought a game was crap i wouldnt bother pirating it, there would be no point. if i thought it was worth playing i'd buy it.
it's certainly wrong for someone to copy a game if they wanted to play it, and they play a pirated copy instead of buying a real copy. but my point is that they have NOT taken £35 away from the shop, they have prevented the shop from getting an extra £35 that they should have got because they should have bought the game.

see the difference?
i'm not saying piracy can be justified because it only prevents potential profits, i'm just saying there's a difference between preventing profit and taking money away.

[Jay_83]

@ reddragon105 - Your post makes little sense, you'd only pirate a game if it was crap, yet you wouldn't pirate a crap game.
At the end of the day if you're gonna copy a game it's gonna be because you want to play it again, hence it's wrong. No two ways about it. You can't pirate a game because it's crap and you're never gonna play it again. Thats just wierd

piracy is making a copy of the game, so doesn't involve taking anything away from the shop.

I don't care about the shop, EBgames/game can suck my dong. It's the developer, the one thats sat behind a desk working his/her butt off. Every time you pirate a game the developer loses as well. If ebgames/game don't sell their game, They won't buy more hence less sales.

@ snake2 -

if you can't aford the games then why would you have the system that plays the games?

We're not talking about the one game buddy, we're talking about principle etc.


@ ottoman - Mate your views are exactly the same as mine, think we just explain them differently


@ SurfDrifter - Sounds to me like the problem lies where you live and not the industry as a whole. I'd be the same mate, if they were releasing budget pooh games for the same price as things like GT4 i'd be pissed too....like this ---
Sounds like you're already buying online and it's probably the way to go in greece. (Actually i'm thinking of a holiday their this year )


Well done people!!!! If you type "GT4 BACKUP" in google we're 4th from the top

[reddragon105]

@ Jay_83 - sorry for sounding weird, i hope this is a clearer way of putting it:
take, for example, a game that i like and a game that i don't (just personal opinion here, so don't take offence anyone!). i like San Andreas, think it's worth buying, so i've bought it. i don't like Need For Speed Underground 2, so i haven't bought it.
now what i was trying to say, is that by not buying NFSU2, EA (the publishers) have not got the £30 from me that they would get if i bought the game. if i went into a shop and stole a copy, the shop would lose money (however much they buy them in for, say £20). however if i made a pirate copy of the game, that would *not* be stealing from EA. they would never make the £30 from me, because i wouldn't need to buy the game because i have a copy. but it wouldn't be taking any money *away* from them would it? they wouldn't lose £30 because i've pirated the game.
but of course i wouldn't pirate it if i didn't like it and didn't want to play it. that's why i said it's only a hypothetical situation. i hope that's a bit clearer.


as for the developers - the average person working on developing a game will work 9-5 and will be paid a salary. they will turn up to their desk every day, do some programming/modelling/testing/whatever, then go home having made their hourly wage. they've made their money regardless of how many copies the game sells.
it's the publishers that pay the developers to make the game. once they've made the game, the publishers mass produce it and distribute it. they make all the profit. if they've paid the developers, say, $1,000,000 to make the game, and the game only makes $500,000, then that's their problem. if the game makes £10,000,000, then it's the publishers who benefit.

that's how companies like EA can afford to buy out loads of smaller companies, so they have the rights to all the games they make, and get these profits. that's why publishers are faceless corporations that make loads of money simply for being the ones who coordinate development, production and distribution. that's why Valve released Half Life 2 over Steam - to cut out the middle-man so that all the money went directly to the developers.

we all care about developers, they're the talented and artistic people who make the games we love. but at the end of the day, they're shafted by the publishers. if they made a game and didn't publish it, they'd make no money at all, so they have no choice but to use a publisher. i suppose that some developers get contracts that give them a lump sum to make a game, then a percentage of the profits, but that would be a tiny sum compared to the slice the publisher takes. i guess some publishers might be nice enough to give their developers bonuses if a game does unexpectedly well, but really the only thing a games success will do for it's developers is give them the right to demand more money from the publisher to develop their next game.

[Jay_83]

You wouldn't pirate a game you don't want, hence whats the point of you even arguing about it. If you pirate a game whether you want it or not the developer DOES lose out.....noone in their right mind pirates a game they don't want so it's a stupid argument that you can't get out of.

Also yet again, If the developer's company doesnt have a good turn over....
generally because the game game doesn't sell well do you honestly thing the company will keep them all in jobs? um, no.

Lastly publishers DO NOT pay developers to make the game, i've never heard something so stupid in my life. Hence why different region games often have different publishers

Virgin most definatly did NOT pay capcom to make SFA in the uk!