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Originally Posted by TheGame
Um... I saw more piracy on Psx than any console in my life.. and that didn't exactly hurt the userbase did it? MS wants user right now, not money.
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Userbase means jack and sh** if the said users do not purchase games for it.
Do you honestly think that those users pirating Xbox games are going to be the sort of the loyal, staple pool with which MS could risk its next venture (the same sort of venture with which MS is gambling right now with the Xbox; given the losses)?
The argument that MS is losing money on the Xbox to build userbase only holds water if the users will remain loyal for future consoles. Loyalty is not the paramount characteristic for userbase springing from piracy; they want whatever's easy to pirate for - the flavor of the month, a la Dreamcast.
And let's suppose that the piracy userbase do remain loyal and purchase the next console. What then? Do you think they will, out of their respect for the company, begin to actually purchase the games? I think we all know the answer to that question.
Really, I don't think you're understanding the magnitude with which piracy is being undertaken for the Xbox. The piracy with which you refer to - bootleg games from southease Asia - didn't even begin in large prevalence until the end period of PS. By then, PS already had its loyal users and whatever piracy hardware sales accrued were insignificant.
The means for Xbox pirating available via the usenet nowdays is simply astonishing. You do not have to worry about badly-ripped games (given that it is so simple to encode Xbox games into dvd images), nor do you have to PAY for the bootlegged games; it's all free, clean and most of all, convenient.
Case in point, my friend just shot me an IM saying that he d/led Soul Calibur 2 (the Japanese version). In no time, he was playing it through an aftermarket HDD he purchased specifically for pirating. He can erase it to make room for other games, or keep playing it at his will and leisure. No blank dvd's gone to waste, no bootlegged copies to pay for. What's all this cost you say? $60 mod chip and a $80, 100gig HDD.
This sort of pirating is idiosyncratic to the Xbox due to its computer-like setup; a feature which I foresaw would bring a dilemma of calamitous proportions.