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« on: August 20, 2003, 04:48:08 AM »
My comment about "Why the psx did well, even with the high piracy rate":
Here in brazil, i'd say 90% of the psx games are pirated copies.
This mean that sony lost a lot of money here, right? Not exactly.
They lost a lot with the games, but they won a lot with console sales.
Because there is no pirate console, the gamers have to buy the console to play the pirate games...
My comment about "Legal uses for emulators":
First some facts:
You can't make copies of your games (not even for backup reasons they say)
You can only use emulators to play games if you have the emulated device.
Based on the 1st fact, you have to use the original media with the emulator.
But what about cartridge-based videogames?
Well, you have to use the original media anyways, so you'd have to interface the cartridge directly with the computer running the emulator.
OR, you could use a rom if you return (without money refund) the original media to the game distribuctor. (by doing this, you would turn your videogame useless, because you can't (legally) put the rom back into a cartidge...)
What about making your own games and playing them on your cartridge-based videogame?
Eeprom's can be used for this reason, but the piracy possibilites turn these kind of devices illegal...
My comment about "Piracy really hurts the big companies?"
for an example: If you had a car factory, developed a new technology to make cars more efficient and had this technology patented.
Let's say this technology was a little expensive, but paid for itself in means of economy.
You'd begin making these economic but expensive cars. Selling them well and having a little profit margin.
A car factory of another country bought one of your cars and developed a similar, but lower quality version of your technology. They start selling cars at a lower price than your cars.
Your cars begin to sell less, but still are selling.
The other company cars sell a lot more than yours, and are making more profit also.
Would you accept this situation? Another company having more profit than yours, by infringing your patent with a lower-quality copy of the same product. I bet you wouldn't.
Even if the game companies continue to sell games, they lose market and indirectly lose money with piracy. If there was no piracy, ppl who can pay for the games but don't buy originals for whatever reason, actually would buy originals if they wanted to play games...
The "Robin Hood theory" doesn't apply here. You aren't forced to play games. So if you want to play videogames and don't have enough money to pay, then get a job and start saving money...