Hey look! A game I'm not gonna buy now.

Hey look! A game i'm going to pirate instead of buy now!

i can't always be sure the internet at my dorm is up - its screwy like that, but if i pay good money for a game I damn well better be able to play it.

If the lack of C&C's classical resource gathering formula isn't enough to bring this game's sales down, an EA DRM will.

If I may ask why is this only affecting PC games? I mean is there a substantially lower pirating rate for consoles/much easier to rip on a comp?

>>795
It's much easier to pirate a PC title than a console one. To pirate a PC title, all you need are a few software downloads. To pirate a console, you'd have to break open the console itself and install hardware. That, and some consoles, notably the Xbox 360, have devices installed in them that detect if modifications have been made to the system itself. If it has, it can permaban the users on that 360 as well as the system itself.

>>796

The thing is, people in the hardware business always have much less motivation to stop or even inhibit piracy than people on the software side. Because they don't care if you pirate stuff, you can't play your pirated stuff without the hardware. S'why even when the anti-MP3 movement in the business was just starting to hit its height, all you saw on CD players and stuff were "Plays MP3s!"

I think Microsoft and Sony don't really care that much about piracy among the console modders. Most of the stuff they do is to please the game-makers. Sure, it's there, and it can be pretty severe, but just how much they bother to do something is always tied to the bottom line of profit, not the more intangible "Piracy hurts our sales!" whining of the software creators. You'll notice that when Microsoft bricked all those modded 360s, it was just in time for people needing a new 360 to bump up the Christmas sales numbers.

That's really the reason anti-piracy measures are so much stronger on the PC. Since no one actually connected to the game in any way is making any money off of the "platform" you bought, they're free to implement as draconian a measure as they wish.

EA already gave me an excuse to not buy the newer Command&Conquer titles, it was called "Command&Conquer: Generals".

Oh, and have a relevant pic, Sage.

>>797
Don't Sony and MS make a net loss on each console they manufacture and sell, though?
I thought it was only the Wii that made a profit on that.

>>803

Depends. I'm not sure what the margins are for each console, but they only make a loss up to a certain number of consoles sold. Basically, they have to keep selling consoles until they reach that point where their manufacturing costs have been met and they begin making money. The PS3 is now reaching that point, I believe it's just been recently reported.

So again, it's still in their best interests to do what it takes to sell a lot of consoles, and circumventable copy protection is part of that.

>>796
>To pirate a console, you'd have to break open the console itself and install hardware.

Unless you softmod it. But usually you'll never be able to use the internet on it either way. Of course, you could just completely remove the mod every time you want to connect, which isn't at all time consuming and incredibly difficult for the common man to do.

>>797
>I think Microsoft and Sony don't really care that much about piracy among the console modders. Most of the stuff they do is to please the game-makers.

This. Not to mention other than Sony's PSP, I can't really name a system that's had huge trouble with modders, and even the PSP has been in sharp decline with their newer generations. Heck, they probably wouldn't have cared about that so much, except for the fact Nintendo has curb-stomped practically every other hand-held since the Gameboy came out. Not to mention how hand-held systems always sell about a million percent more than home consoles.

>>794
They did this in RA3 as well, there was little to no resource strategy - not to mention the entire thing was dumbed down to console standards, that is to say that everything they did in the past to accompany the Keyboard (like the extensive hotkey feature in C&C3 inc. Unit specific hotkeys) was removed.
-

I'll be giving this a miss, for reasons beyond the DRM such as EA fucking up Command and Conquer, RA3 and Generals. Generals would have been awesome on its own yet they instead decided herp derp lets make it Everyone Vs Arabs, make references to the Afgahnistan war and directly copy off the Warcraft III/Starcraft GUI. The Story in all the new ones are just plain crap in comparison to the old games and the strategy is slowly becoming less immersive than it was before.

The only thing this DRM really shows me is that EA is much more concerned about making sure people buy the game and hate it rather than having them try out the game (i.e Pirate) and then decide "I'm not buying this crap", instead of providing a reasonable service and a good game. The whole "cloud computing to keep track of your progression" is absolute crap; EA had this "keeping track of user data" on games as old as Battlefield 2, yet the data wasn't exactly beneficial enough to need to maintain your internet connection, I can't imagine why it's crutial it needs to be in this game.

You really have to be retarded to put a game with DRM on Steam.

>>806

>>They did this in RA3 as well, there was little to no resource strategy - not to mention the entire thing was dumbed down to console standards, that is to say that everything they did in the past to accompany the Keyboard (like the extensive hotkey feature in C&C3 inc. Unit specific hotkeys) was removed.


Gas Powered games did the exact same thing with Supreme Commander 2, which sucked, because it completely broke everything that made the original game great in the process of watering it down for consoles.

For those of you who don't know, Supreme Commander is the type of game that lets you zoom all the way in to see one of your little mecha mooks pick his nose, then zoom out a wee bit to see an army of his fellow mecha mooks, then zoom all the way out to see several enemy army's and a nuke bearing down on that position. And all of that, whilst not giving you time to shit yourself.

The trailer for the original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHothxZQoWo

If you're anything like me, than you most likely just jizzed your pants watching that.

So the sequel most be good too, right? No.

It's nowhere near as impressive, everything got either nerfed or axed for the console release of the sequel.

Now that it's been brought up, who the fuck even plays RTS titles on consoles? Srsly

Sorry to rant and rave like that guys, it just seems like game companies care more about money than making a good product these days. And yes, I am aware that they have to turn a profit, but i can't help but feel cheated in the process.

/Rage

>>806

But still, we didn't expect the same treatment to be given to Tiberium series, and it really is the only thing left C&C has going, yet EA still believes it's acceptable to ditch what remains of C&C's solid game mechanics and alienate older C&C players.

And all this time, I can't help being reminded about SimCity Societies. EA isn't learning from its mistakes, that's for sure.

>>808
I...I play rts(when they're good, I.E. pretty much just the original supcom this gen) on consoles...

I honestly don't understand why companies feel they need to "dumb down" rts games for consoles, well other then like graphics wise so they'll run smoother and to map the mouse and some of the hot key functions to a controller layout.
They just really need to come to terms with the fact that rts games just aren't the type to sell multi-millions of copies in a single week like shooters or other crap.

>>806
>Generals would have been awesome on its own yet they instead decided herp derp lets make it Everyone Vs Arabs, make references to the Afgahnistan war
So I take it you were thick enough that you didn't catch the "China rises to dominate the world through pretty talking" part?

>>815
I thought the whole 'China takes over teh world' thing occurred mostly in Zero Hour.

>>815
I'm talking about the start of it, which mimiced the War on terror.

>>816
Yes, they did. And that was a substancial upgrade to Generals that at least attempted to mimic the first C&C games with the use of reporters telling where the story is in the mission intros.

Generals ended with the USA army arsefucking the GLA. In Zero hour you played the reverse order of the armies than in the first one - USA first, GLA second, China third.

>>808

only thing bad about SupCom1 is that when you get big enough with units and whatnot, and your opponent does too, then the pathfinding bogs down your machine to a crawl. the game becomes virtually unplayable.

as for DRMs - ya, its retarded. the more they tighten the grip, the more they scare away costumers and turn people to piracy

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/03/eas-mouthpiece-foiled-by-command-and-conquer-drm.ars

Karma's a bitch.