Limiting Piracy of Cricket Games

[Chief]

I've spent a lot of time keeping track of the Indian markets over the years, because obviously it IS a massive market if you can crack it.

Sadly the right hardware isn't in place (comparatively few consoles in India, and those that are tend to be the cheaper NTSC consoles on the grey market, which means the games for sale in the shops are sometimes incompatible).

The other big consideration is the price. You don't set the price to what consumers will pay for it (well, not completely), you set the price as a proportion of what it costs to make.

I agree that Cricket and India is a no-brainer, but console games aren't the place to exploit it: browser, mobile and Facebook much better platforms (and THOSE have their own challenges when it comes to getting people to pay for them!)

I suggest that if you want to further this debate, we ONLY discuss facts which can be backed up with publicly available numbers, rather than hearsay and just claiming "If you had Yuvraj Singh on the box you would sell a bajillion units"... (we did... and we didn't).

 

[barmyarmy]

Interestingly we have the same problem in miniature with regard to hosting/advertising. The Indian members we have cost the same per unit in bandwidth terms but we don't get as much from advertising in the Indian market to cover our costs.
It means our headline figures for uniques can be misleading as we get such low CPC rates in India/Pakistan etc.

 

[MattW]

The other big consideration is the price. You don't set the price to what consumers will pay for it (well, not completely), you set the price as a proportion of what it costs to make.

Even if you work on the assumption that somehow it's pure profit to distribute at a local market price - it would destroy the value of copies in the rest of the world. People already import from England to save $20 on a game sold here - but it's orders of magnitude different when you consider the pricepoints that you probably need to get to.

If there was a foolproof way of distributing the games in emerging markets without impacting western sales then you'd probably see a bit of it. But the only real ways are very restrictive DRM checks, which bring you up against issues of the quality of internet connections and the fact that DRM is a pain for people who buy games legally and most pirate games don't have that problem.

Perhaps that's the older editions of the games - once they hit the bargain bins in Australia/England, give them a new name, strip out the licences and sell it like that in other countries - but then you're still in the position of needing to compete against pirate copies of new games.

Valueadds like Big Ant's Cricket Academy and Online play in general probably help encourage legal versions - but the relatively low usage of these kind of features is likely to make it really hard to build a model off that.

Pepsi Cricket Revolution probably got the closest to where I think you'll see the short term of Cricket Games in these markets - but I remember a lot of anger from people who paid the $25 for it on release for it to be free a bit over a year later, pcfan123 for example.

 

[bestfriendh]

I agree with the general points raised, that even though India is a huge market for cricket, cricket gaming hasn't been able to achieve anything significant yet, largely due to the piracy/price point issues.

My point is, when you say Indian market, don't restrict it to India. Think about the probably millions of Indian expats in Non cricket nations, USA/Canada etc. I would think (and this is purely conjecture on my part from personal experience), these folks are the real untapped market. They have the Money, probably have a good PC/console, and piracy should be at a minimum.

Being an expat in USA, none of my friends/peer circle knew of either games existence until I told them. Now we must realize, majority of them are casual gamers. They wont go looking into planet cricket or other places for these games.

So My point being, cricket game developers/publishers should make an effort to reach out and create awareness to this population, which might be largely untapped.

 

[barmyarmy]

I guess that's partly due to the cost of advertising in a market like North America for a potentially small demographic.

 

[bestfriendh]

I guess that's partly due to the cost of advertising in a market like North America for a potentially small demographic.

Yes, could be. Although I should say lately, lots of mediums have opened up which might help better target the ads, and hence reduce the cost. Willow tv, is a prime example. It caters to cricket watching expats, and I would think the cost of advertisement is not overtly prohibitive on there. Cricinfo is another. This in addition to the plethora of Indian channels, a lot of the "Dish/Satelite" users subscribe to, which have localized ads.

 

[Chief]

Yes, could be. Although I should say lately, lots of mediums have opened up which might help better target the ads, and hence reduce the cost. Willow tv, is a prime example. It caters to cricket watching expats, and I would think the cost of advertisement is not overtly prohibitive on there. Cricinfo is another. This in addition to the plethora of Indian channels, a lot of the "Dish/Satelite" users subscribe to, which have localized ads.

You're making dangerously reasonable points.

Did you know that (anecdotally) one THIRD of a well-known cricketing magazine's subscription-base in is the US/Canada? Largely ex-pats sub-continent communities making Cricket the fastest growing sport in the region...
But no-one has really gone after it.

 

[bestfriendh]

You're making dangerously reasonable points.

Did you know that (anecdotally) one THIRD of a well-known cricketing magazine's subscription-base in is the US/Canada? Largely ex-pats sub-continent communities making Cricket the fastest growing sport in the region...
But no-one has really gone after it.

Good to know someone agrees that this section of the Cricket Community is largely ignored when it comes to Cricket Games. Should be interesting to see how the two new cricket games would fare in this market.

 

[Sniper]

There few tweaks that have been done in past few games to overcome piracy:
10 Fun Ways to Stop Video Game Piracy

 

[shubham1]

I thought ******* was legal site.
But even they are pirating EA Cricket 07
[link removed]
How the hell are we going to get out of piracy?

 

[barmyarmy]

Perhaps we could start by not posting links to sites like that...

 

[shubham1]

Perhaps we could start by not posting links to sites like that...

Sorry I apologize
Was just feeling horrible that how popular sites are doing so

 

[SVR24]

No you will and must have a controller to play the game.

thats sad. can't they make it to play with keyboard .
bigant will lose many customers in india .

 

[angad]

thats sad. can't they make it to play with keyboard .
bigant will lose many customers in india .

Sorry....just couldnt control myself

 

[BigAntStudios]

thats sad. can't they make it to play with keyboard .
bigant will lose many customers in india .

I ask this with some trepidation... but how many legitimate copies of FIFA do you think were sold in India last iteration?

If you get in the closest 10,000 then I will be extremely surprised.