We recently caught up with Jason Borea, local marketing director of Megarom – one of SA’s most prominent video games distributors. Megarom handles massive publishers such as Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Take-Two.
One thing that Borea and most gamers can agree on is that while publishers are within their rights to protect their software with DRM, the end result of these schemes is usually not beneficial to the consumer. Which is why he believes that more positive reinforcements are needed to combat piracy.
“Developers are now starting to incorporate additional value adds into their games to encourage end-users to pay for them. Services like Battle.net can enhance the experience to such a degree that you actually don’t get the full experience when pirating a game like StarCraft II,” says Borea.
This is a sentiment we have to agree with, as without its league match-play, achievements and other cool Battle.net features, the game simply doesn’t have much to offer.
We touched on the painful DRM imposed by Ubisoft with previous PC games such as Splinter Cell: Conviction and The Settlers 7. “Publishers are just trying to protect their property, but there are cases where this DRM has a negative impact on the legitimate end-user’s experience.”
“It is important to remember though that these publishers do most of their business in regions with very high broadband penetration rates, and for the vast majority of gamers the DRM is not a huge problem,” says Borea. “However, publishers have obviously learned from the process, and it is good to see a push towards more positive incentives.”
Fortunately for local distributors, broadband prices in SA have been prohibitively high in the past, and it is still not viable for most internet users here to download 8GB games from torrent sites. With most DSL users sitting on 384kb/s connections, it can take days or weeks to download large games. This has to change, however, as uncapped broadband accounts come down in price and we gain access to additional international bandwidth.
“While lowered broadband prices are good for gaming in general, they do make it easier for pirates to download games illegally. However, with publishers building incentives into games, like Battle.net, I believe there are better reasons for gamers to go legit,” says Borea. “Digital distribution platforms such as Steam are probably more of a concern with internet becoming cheaper and faster.”
The PC game market is still very strong in SA, and Borea confirmed that Megarom’s latest blockbuster, Call of Duty: Black Ops, has sold more on PC than PS3 and Xbox 360, although the PS3 version is apparently showing better longevity than the PC version. Borea expects that the PS3 version will overtake the PC version in time.
The PS3 has shown tremendous growth in the past year, and multiplatform games reportedly sell far better on PS3 than Xbox 360 in SA. This can be put down to a variety of reasons, one of which is that South Africa is simply a PlayStation territory, and PS3 sales are riding on the legacy of the PS2.
Whatever the reasons are, local distributors may have to depend more on Sony’s console in coming years, as the PC market will become vulnerable to digital distribution with improving bandwidth prices.
Local games distributors wary of cheaper broadband << Comments and views
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