nickc07 :
Lastly if companies stopped putting out such bad games and building the media hype up so much then I personal would not pirate as much.
I "test" play all games before I buy. If I dont like it I will spend less than a few hours on it then delete it. If I do like it I will uninstall go to the store and buy it.
Although this may look sympathetic to some, it is destructive to normal market demand and supply drivers.
Let me explain with another example: if you go to a car dealer, you want to test drive the car, if the dealer won't let you test drive it, you take your business elsewhere. You don't just steal it, do some joyriding, and then come back to the dealer and buy it (or leave it somewhere if you don't like it). The main reason why most dealers let you test drive their car is because they would not be selling any if they did not. There are some dealers/shops that actually sell cars that you cannot test drive, but they offer other benefits in return (as well as they are claiming the cars are that good that they don't need a test drive). There is another reason why it is commonly accepted that you test drive the product before buying which is the initial investment.
Now let's take this to gaming: initially, asking for a tryout of a game was not deemed necessary by both the industry and the consumer: if you don't like the game you will not buy another one of their products next time. With more and more games being released, and enough people like yourself being disappointed time after time with the quality of their purchase, now it is common practice that demo's are provided for free, giving you the test drive experience. If a demo is not a good representation of the full game, it kind of defeats its purpose, and thus the publisher should be held accountable for that. The ONLY way to do that is not to give them your money (which in the honest way of doing business means you will not use their products anymore).
What is piracy doing? It is removing BOTH the drivers supply and demand. In a non-piracy situation you would be really looking out there for a product that would satisfy your need for a good gaming experience, and it would be worth something to you if you can get it (supply and demand at work). In the piracy situation you just satisfy yourself with playing crap games for a few hours hoping to find the odd jewel once in a while. In fact you are reducing demand (next to that supply is overwhelming) which only results in more crap games, as there is not enough drive to come up with really good games.
Personally i would love a business model where you pay let's say $10, get the full game and a few hours of gaming experience, but then you'll be prompted to pay the full monty if you want to continue. However, as long as there's too much piracy around there is simply no driver to do this. I'm a realist, there have always been pirates and there will always be pirates, but what is new as opposed to material products is the fact that the pirated copy is just as good as the original product and digital distribution makes availability of pirated products too easy. That, and because circumventing security measures is relatively easy you see a lot of Robin Hoods out there that want to share value with the rest of the world for free.
In another thread someone proposed taxes to insure income for gaming companies but if that means companies get reimbursed no matter what they produce, then we will only see more and more crap being released instead of quality product. In short, the demand and supply drivers need to be restored if we as consumers are serious about wanting quality games.
And to get back on track with the subject of this thread: as a consumer i want maximal freedom to make personal choices with regard to what games I play at what cost, and that means that the software should be decoupled from the hardware (ergo PC gaming). I hate the model of exclusivity where industry is trying to bully you into buying their hardware platform, just so you can play the game that you want to play. Standardisation of interfaces should not be equated with monopolizing specific elements of the PC solution (like the current situation with the Microsoft OS) but given the size of the current monopolist it is questionable whether this situation will ever be corrected, one can dream about Linux doing that but it looks like the window of opportunity has passed for that one.
Content should be separated from the platforms that deliver it, that will result in the best options for consumers. Hopefully some companies will start picking up on this with some great products to get that ball rolling. (As an example Apple is doing the opposite, more and more coupling of platform and content. As much as I like their designs, I'd never buy a single product from them until they change their strategy).
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