3 ms·

"And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content" I think this is most of the story. I mean, it's fun to hack, but a lot of peopl

by jariel 6y ago

"And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content" I think this is most of the story. I mean, it's fun to hack, but a lot of people's ideology about a lot of things go out the window as soon as they have a regular job and can afford to buy regular stuff and see these things as pretty much regular products and services.

vmception 6y ago
Where I would disagree is when I think about Xbox and PS2, they had hardware to be media centers. They had compelling region locked content that just couldn't be used. Hacking any of that meant hacking all of that, and now you could also download games which was faster and more convenient than going to the store. And play Japanese games you couldn't get anyway. Future generations of consoles made that default behavior, and games are released in multiple continents at the same time with their respective localization. American flagship games are now more appealing and engaging than their Japanese counterparts. Its not just the money.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  More importantly they no longer do the stupid region locking & on the Switch for example you can even buy digital games from other countries eshops.
saagarjha 6y ago
No, not really. Things that annoy me are not going to get my money, even though I have some to spend now. What really happened once I started earning was I started paying for things that I had appreciated back when I was running their free trials, or ones that I had ahem "extended" the trials for (or added one :P). It's still fun to hack, by the way, I just have less time to do it.
bananamerica 6y ago
When the currency of your third world country is worth less than 1/5 of the US dollar and a single game amount to a quarter of many people’s incomes, piracy don’t register as something even remotely wrong.
- jariel 6y ago
  I don't think MS is hugely concerned about piracy that doesn't affect sales. In fact, if they're smart, they'll be fine with it, because it's a form of 'perfect price discrimination'. That said, the question is to what extent piracy from other areas bleeds into the higher value markets. Which I believe does happens, ergo 'a crack is a crack is a crack' probably. It's funny because if the cost of getting a 'hack' of a game literally entails buying a 'CD-ROM' and going through the pain of copying it like in the 'old days', which is a small pain but more than many want to bear, it puts a natural bound on the copying/hacking: it will happen a lot in poor countries, less so in rich countries. But if a hack is 'discovered once', wherever, and then easily exploited everywhere ... not so good.

by jariel 6y ago

vmception 6y ago

Where I would disagree is when I think about Xbox and PS2, they had hardware to be media centers. They had compelling region locked content that just couldn't be used. Hacking any of that meant hacking all of that, and now you could also download games which was faster and more convenient than going to the store. And play Japanese games you couldn't get anyway. Future generations of consoles made that default behavior, and games are released in multiple continents at the same time with their respective localization. American flagship games are now more appealing and engaging than their Japanese counterparts. Its not just the money.

m4rtink 6y ago
More importantly they no longer do the stupid region locking & on the Switch for example you can even buy digital games from other countries eshops.

saagarjha 6y ago

No, not really. Things that annoy me are not going to get my money, even though I have some to spend now. What really happened once I started earning was I started paying for things that I had appreciated back when I was running their free trials, or ones that I had ahem "extended" the trials for (or added one :P). It's still fun to hack, by the way, I just have less time to do it.

bananamerica 6y ago

When the currency of your third world country is worth less than 1/5 of the US dollar and a single game amount to a quarter of many people’s incomes, piracy don’t register as something even remotely wrong.

jariel 6y ago
I don't think MS is hugely concerned about piracy that doesn't affect sales. In fact, if they're smart, they'll be fine with it, because it's a form of 'perfect price discrimination'. That said, the question is to what extent piracy from other areas bleeds into the higher value markets. Which I believe does happens, ergo 'a crack is a crack is a crack' probably. It's funny because if the cost of getting a 'hack' of a game literally entails buying a 'CD-ROM' and going through the pain of copying it like in the 'old days', which is a small pain but more than many want to bear, it puts a natural bound on the copying/hacking: it will happen a lot in poor countries, less so in rich countries. But if a hack is 'discovered once', wherever, and then easily exploited everywhere ... not so good.