MikeCooper

Nintendo DS: Getting Killed Off by Game Theft

This is an argument from the Napster days. Unfortunately statistics and experience have proven that consumers are not this rational. Most game and music sales are impulse buys based off of current fashion and social trends, i.e. what's hot/what's not. Advertisers and PR experts get paid very well to predict and influence these trends. Remember beanie babies? Remember how many BILLIONS in profits were made before consumers realized they were just stuffed animals? When a consumer can download a game for free you lose those sales.

The profits made off of genuine appreciation of a product, which you are highlighting, are real but they cannot compare with the more superficial and more lucrative sales built off of niche advertising, and mass-marketing.


On Jul 29 02:19 PM Gaucho420 wrote:

> I copy games all the time and I have a boatload of copied DS games.
> HOwever, Nintendo and the publisher aren't missing a dime, as I wouldn't
> have bought them at any price.
>
> I however, do not copy 360 or Wii games, although I easily could...but
> I like them, so I pay for them outright. The DS? Nope, I rarely play
> it and therefore, no money is lost on me getting it for free as I
> would've never spent a dime on most games.
>
> So there's a point to be made about this...if anything, copying DS
> games has had me recommend certain games to my father and little
> brother, who do have a DSi and went out and bougth the games I recommended
> as they don't have time to mess with those downloads or getting the
> chip required to play tem. So without me getting them for free (and
> again, I would never had laid out a dime to buy them, so no loss
> of sales on my account), my dad would never have bought certain DS
> games.
>
> And I loved GTA: Chinatown so much, I went out and bought the real
> thing.
>
> Same with music...I have copied MP3s of a billion tunes that I never
> would've bought normally, at any price. But after having free MP3s
> of certain artists that I really liked, I went out and bought actual
> albums and that's happened quite a bit on the music side.
>
> So its not truly lost sales on every account, as again, I wouldn't
> have bougth any of the DS games or those MP3s at any price...for
> free, I'll give them a shot and if I like them, I'll recommend them
> or buy them next time myself.
>
> I'm not sure how often this happens, but for sure...free things lead
> to money made at least for some customers.
>
> Just because we take something for free, doesn't mean we would've
> spent any money on it if we couldn't get it for free.

Google Must Be 'Terrified' Right Now

Others here aren't giving Microsoft enough credit. I've tried Bing. It's not as good as Google yet, but it is close and that should definitely scare Google. The Google search engine that we know and love is a solid set of core algorithms combined with usage data from years of of use and millions of searches. Eventually Bing will have that advantage as well. The deal with Yahoo gives them sole access to that data. I suspect that was the real reason Microsoft wanted the deal in the first. place. Over the next several years. it will pay off.