You do realise what kind of bandwidth requirement you're talking about here.
Imagine an hour of some random FPS with only a Video Stream being sent to your PC. It would be out of reach of 99% of the users in SA, and I'm fairly sure even people in first world nations would run into issues.
Yeah, about 5mbs/per sec (their min requirement for HD), well within reach of most ppl with internet within the US, EU and Asia. If you think they haven't done their research/surveys as to penetration and the quality of internet in the first world countries before undertaking such things, you'd be mistaken. The majority of people in the US have internet access well above 5mb. Back in the 90s when I was using dialup, they were laughing at me on mIRC with their 10-100mb, its something I will NEVER EVER forget as I was trying to download 10mb game demos over 2-3 days while they were downloading them in seconds.Originally Posted by shadowfox
Remove South Africa from the equation, we are not even considered when it comes to these technologies, we are a non-factor and count for a negligible amount of sales. We are lucky to get anything at all.
Like I said, 5mb is considered below average in the US since you can get 100mb for half the price of our bare bones internet here and its improving constantly. With Google rolling out fibre lines to the home in the US with LAN latencies and 100mb+ uncapped unshaped bandwidth, the reality is cloud based gaming/everything is going to become more and more of a reality. Yes, its a way off before it becomes mainstream, not because of bandwidth constraints, those were surpassed while we were on dialup, but because of hardware constraints. Gaming PCs/hardware is not cheap, no one "owns" the platform and therefore cannot make the lost platform money up on game sales through licensing fees.
It is more than likely the future, but only once we see a serious plateau in PC gaming hardware and integration of gaming GPUs with the CPU, both of which are many years off.
Ubisoft currently having the latest laugh in the Assassin's Creed II pirate wars.
LinkEarlier this week we learned that pirates have already packaged and released a version of Silent Hunter 5 that supposedly found its way around Ubisoft's new Internet-required DRM scheme.
It turns out that the pirates may have jumped the gun on their victory cries, as there are now reports that players are unable to play Silent Hunter 5 past the first mission. It seems that the game may be making repeated requests for authentication between levels before allowing the player to continue.
An early crack was also released for Assassin's Creed II (which hits Australia and Europe before North America's March 9 release), but those who have tried it say that they are unable to advance very far into the game without being sent back to the menu screen.
In an Ubisoft statement reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the game company said: "You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked. Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete."
In the early hours of the fight, it seems that Ubisoft is one up on the pirates. Thankfully, Ubisoft appears to be making it a little easier on paying customers.
Yeah so don't get too happy too fast.
Evil meet my Sword. Sword, meet Evil!
meh just delaying the inevitable.
Feels so wrong supporting the pirates efforts. Thanks Ubisoft
It's probably just a temporary setback. Now that the crackers know about it all they'll do is set out to "fix" that as well.It turns out that the pirates may have jumped the gun on their victory cries, as there are now reports that players are unable to play Silent Hunter 5 past the first mission. It seems that the game may be making repeated requests for authentication between levels before allowing the player to continue.
I see their strategy. It's like good old Operation Flashpoint. After attempting to use the 10th :"trustdownload-fixedthefix" crack, people would get fed up and go and buy it. Yes, the crack might work in a few weeks, but Ubi has 1 up on the market; they released a fully working game first.
First day of sales are very important and for once the legit users can say they finished the game before the pirates did.
Year I remember that. The game would degrade over time. Pirates still cracked the game though
One thing is for certain, this won't improve their sales at all. Rather try to please the legit customers than to convert pirates.
How to get good sales for pc:
Get the Price right : R300-R350 for standard edition.
R450-R500 for collectors.
DRM where you can choose your verification method.
Disc or Online activation (at least 10 installs limit).
Free DLC and small extras that can only be obtained if you have an original key.
Legit customers must always get the better product with as less hassle as possible. Bioware is doing the best job so far at not pissing off their customers...I would also say they're pc games are selling the best atm.
This is probably the best solution - a combination of the carrot and stick, if you will.
At the moment the majority of the publishers are making the mistake of punishing their customer base - obviously giving some sort of incentive for buying the game will encourage people to buy it. Still not entirely pirate-proof though.
Cloud-based gaming, at least in the form that Blackhand is talking about, is simply not feasible - line speeds aside, the amount of data consumed and the level of infrastructure that would be required would be enourmous - anything less than a best-selling game would be running at a loss.
Summary:
Everyone who was going to pirate the game will still pirate it by downloading the cracked version that does not require always-on internet.
Everyone who was going to buy the game are still going to buy the game, except now they are lumped with inconvenient DRM measures that, as already shown with the Ubisoft servers being "overloaded", have the potential to be very frustrating. If anything, this will drive more people to pirate NOT LESS.
So, what are we left with? The pirates will still pirate and the legit customers have to put up with something designed to stop them pirating something they were never going to pirate in the first place.
DRM like this just does not work
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