Capcom Blames Piracy for Poor DMC4 PC Sales
by Aaron Linde, Aug 01, 2008 8:00pm PDTCapcom corporate officer Christian Svensson revealed that the PC edition of the company's demon-slaying action title Devil May Cry 4 (PC, PS3, 360) saw poor sales since it debuted early last month, owing in some part to rampant piracy of the game.
"It's not doing as well as I would like in the US at retail," Svensson wrote on Capcom's official blog. "It's such a good version and it really deserves better sales. I know it's getting pirated to hell and back (it was up on torrents literally the day it shipped)."
The executive added that he had pushed for more prolific digital distribution of Devil May Cry 4's PC incarnation, but was stonewalled by Capcom Japan. Despite the frustration, Svennson reiterated his commitment to bringing more Capcom titles to digital distribution outlets.
"For the record all CEI-developed titles will be distributed extremely widely via digital channels... I've spent the last year building up that channel," Svennson stated, noting that GRIN's downloadable side-scroller Bionic Commando Rearmed (PC, PS3, 360) would see "broad digital distribution for PC."
"I have a presentation I'm making shortly that I'm hoping will make that approach something we do with all of our PC content, even those developed in Japan, but no promises. It might not happen," he added.
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Comments
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After that, it doesn't take much - and as CryTek said, they'd have almost doubled their sales if even a vast minority of pirates (10%? 20%? don't remember) would have paid for the game. Margins of profit are small enough that the tiniest amount of pirates-who-would-have-paid can make a huge difference, that between loss or even bankruptcy and profit and another game
But of course, it's the devs and publishers who say this so it must be wrong. I'm still having troubles with this "pirates and their defenders have the moral high ground" thing...
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