Amiga Piracy Discussion!

[amiga_Forever]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

They found the magic bullet that will kill piracy (along the second hand market and everything that is evil) which is cloud based gaming and app stores.

Finding something is good.... Killing it will be harder. since not all will go quietly...

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Zoltar

Now, a question for everybody: If the Amiga games could have been ROM cartridge based instead of floppy disk, do you think it would have made much of a difference? There are a lot of advantages to using ROM carts besides copy protection, speed and durability would be the main ones that spring to my mind but I think C= may have overlooked something in not giving the Amiga a cartridge port.

It would have made a difference. A lot less people would've bought an Amiga had it been sold as a cartridge only machine. When it comes to piracy though cartridges would not have made any difference since they can be cracked just like "normal" disks too. Where there's a will there's a way. Look at the C64GS (sold in Germany only if memory serves me right) which was a "castrated" C64 with cartridge port only. It failed miserably for obvious reasons.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by StingRay

It would have made a difference. A lot less people would've bought an Amiga had it been sold as a cartridge only machine. When it comes to piracy though cartridges would not have made any difference since they can be cracked just like "normal" disks too. Where there's a will there's a way. Look at the C64GS (sold in Germany only if memory serves me right) which was a "castrated" C64 with cartridge port only. It failed miserably for obvious reasons.

Quite agree. The MSX tried it and failed miserably, all cartridge games were cracked to disk, if Amiga had gone the same way, that too would have been cracked.

[amiga_Forever]

Cartridges would have made a big difference, but ya, they can easily be ripped, as we have now today with emulation and the Action Reply III


*and I used to use this cartridge too*

oh well...

Would have made it more difficult, for sure.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by amiga_Forever

Cartridges would have made a big difference, but ya, they can easily be ripped, as we have now today with emulation and the Action Reply III


*and I used to use this cartridge too*

oh well...

Would have made it more difficult, for sure.

It really wouldn't.

I suspect it would have been stupidly easy, getting access to ROM contents, transferring it to RAM, and then copying onto Hard Drive or Floppy in parts.

In fact it would probably have been easier than cracking some of the disc protections out there.

[StingRay]

Indeed. Besides, the games would have been even more expensive due to the additional hardware. Cartridges never were any successful way to stop piracy. The only tricky thing about cartridges is the extra memory/hardware that can be used (but rarely was!). But even that can be worked around to a certain extent.

[gilgamesh]

CDs were practically copy proof because of sheer size. It didn't rescue the CD32 or CDTV, though.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Maybe before the internet and BBS's it would have, but why bother going out to buy a game when you can download it without leaving your chair?

(I know this is an older post, but I just read it, so..)

For me, because I liked a lot of the original boxes and "stuff" that came with it..

The box art, the posters, the maps, the trinkets, the t-shirts....

I loved that stuff.
(Still have my SoTB T-Shirt.. It isn't looking to good tho..)

desiv

[dJOS]

As a poor Teenager in the late 80's/early 90's there was no way hell I was going to plonk down $90aud for a TripleA Title - when I got my first Playstation my entire game buying strategy was wait for the game to go platinum and then buy for half price from Sony's platinum range.

Imagine how many more sales software publishers would get if they priced their software sensibly in the first place!

[daro2096]

Common sense doesn't apply to software publishers.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Zoltar

Some interesting points made here in the thread.

Piracy certainly didn't kill the Amiga. The possibility of getting software either for free, or very cheaply, certainly influenced some people's buying decision when it came getting a games machine. I have friends and family members that did that and I might have even helped sway their opinion. Some years ago, my older sister bought her young son a Playstation in preference over a Nintendo 64 specifically because, at the time, she could get games for £5 each.

I think we must attribute some of the sales of that machine down to the availability of cheap pirated software. And, I would say the same for the Amiga.

That certainly didn't help the game publishers and, in the above example, I think it might not have helped Sony either, in the long run, as they didn't get their cut of the income from the pirated games these people were playing but C='s situation was slightly different because they made dollars purely on selling hardware.

The main reason the Amiga died its death, as a market for selling games in, was the fact the hardware itself was left behind. I think we all know this. The release of the Playstation, perhaps more than any other rival's machine was, I think, the single most devastating blow that killed Amiga games market stone dead. Even if the A1200 had maybe a 28mhz CPU and some Fast RAM as standard (as I think it should have) it wouldn't have made that much difference in the end as the Japanese 32 bit machines offered so much more than would ever be possible even on the most expensive 68060 based machine for considerably less initial outlay.

AGA, whilst AAA would have been so much better, wasn't bad, for the time. C= really needed to have something like Hombre ready in about 1994/5 to have had a hope of competing. It's just a pity that by that time, they'd ran out of money. I'm sadly of the opinion that the Amiga's worst enemy, always was Commodore Business Machines.

The piracy aspect is interesting here too though. Remember that, when the Playstation was released, cheap CD burners didn't exist and so, it was for a time, an almost perfect marketplace for the publishers where everybody had no choice but to buy legitimate copies. And, if you're a company that makes games, which machine would you develop for?

Now, a question for everybody: If the Amiga games could have been ROM cartridge based instead of floppy disk, do you think it would have made much of a difference? There are a lot of advantages to using ROM carts besides copy protection, speed and durability would be the main ones that spring to my mind but I think C= may have overlooked something in not giving the Amiga a cartridge port.

What say you?



SJ

I think it was both. The PC was on the rise and piracy was propably there as high as on the Amiga but the market was much bigger so still enough sales. The second problem was hardware lagging behind. Beginning of 90s was A500 with two floppy discs (without HD) was still standard. Most games were already created for PC and ported to Amiga so the market was not only much smaller but they also had to invest to cut down graphics (from VGA), optimize the games for the slow hardware and make it possible to run the games from discs. So both effects combined killed Amiga as the leading gaming platform.

[Oldskool Bitz]

[dJOS]

Originally Posted by daro2096

Common sense doesn't apply to software publishers.

very true

[Hewitson]

I'm not sure how you can blame the Playstation when Commodore folded before it was even released.

Many people upgraded their computers to play the PC games of the time such as Doom or Jazz Jackrabbit. In the Amiga world, for some reason games were always coded for the 1mb A500 with no hard drive. Simply laughable compared to the PC specifications of the time.

The Amiga was stuck in the past. People were unwilling to upgrade, and games companies were unwilling to release anything which actually required a decent machine.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I'm not sure how you can blame the Playstation when Commodore folded before it was even released.

Many people upgraded their computers to play the PC games of the time such as Doom or Jazz Jackrabbit. In the Amiga world, for some reason games were always coded for the 1mb A500 with no hard drive. Simply laughable compared to the PC specifications of the time.

The Amiga was stuck in the past. People were unwilling to upgrade, and games companies were unwilling to release anything which actually required a decent machine.

The Playstation was a major factor for the demise of Amiga, Megadrive and SNES. Here was finally a machine that could do it all.

Its why Psygnosis pretty much rush released all the last of their Amiga games in 1994 because it was full steam ahead for Playstation.

Ironic really that when you look back over some Playstation titles and some Amiga titles, the Amiga ones generally have aged better, with no reliance on blocky bitmapped vectors!

[Dunny]

Amusingly, although I used to pirate when I first got the Amiga, I started buying games by the shedload every week when I found a market stall that sold them for a few quid each - all originals too. I rapidly built up a great collection of stuff that way.

Nowadays, I actually pirate far more Amiga software than I ever did back in the day - just the other day I pulled down an entire TOSEC set in just a few hours :-)

D.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The Playstation was a major factor for the demise of Amiga, Megadrive and SNES. Here was finally a machine that could do it all.

Its why Psygnosis pretty much rush released all the last of their Amiga games in 1994 because it was full steam ahead for Playstation.

I agree about the MD & SNES, but the Amiga was stuffed whether the Playstation existed or not. Very few companies would have continued producing games for a machine that wasn't even made anymore.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I agree about the MD & SNES, but the Amiga was stuffed whether the Playstation existed or not. Very few companies would have continued producing games for a machine that wasn't even made anymore.

Not strictly true. You don't ignore a machine with an installed userbase of 4million. Obviously if the sales of games don't reflect the effect of bothering then you ignore.

But Xmas '93, the Amiga was still doing very well, lots of AA titles released, it was effectively the Amigas last big year, its amazing how quickly it stopped.

[TCD]

Actually 1994 still saw about 400 new non-CD32 commercial titles (it was a bit more than 450 in 1993). In 1995 it went down to 250 for all commercial Amiga releases (including CD32). Just from those numbers, the last year was 1994 for the Amiga...

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Actually 1994 still saw about 400 new non-CD32 commercial titles (it was a bit more than 450 in 1993). In 1995 it went down to 250 for all commercial Amiga releases (including CD32). Just from those numbers, the last year was 1994 for the Amiga...

"last big year"