Widescreen Gaming Forum

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33866696/ns/technology_and_science-games

Anywhere between an estimated 600,000 and 1 million players who use Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming service will be cut off from the service because they have modified their game consoles or played games that were illegally downloaded from file-sharing sites

So what is that, 1 in 20?

If we assume 600,000 have been banned in less than 2 weeks according to the reports, then we also know that a very large number has also been banned prior to the 2 week bannings. We could round the total number of bans to 1 million. According to NextGenWars 32.5 Million 360's sold, so stick 33 Xbox 360 owners in a room and odds are that one of them is a pirate.


ARrrrr

that's rather low
so either the rest of the pirates are taking more precautions
or the banning method isn't too successful
or there isn't that much "pirates" & "hardware modders" on Xbox

32 million sold however only about 20 million Live users, and these are only the ones form the US and Canada that they found, so a higher percentage than that!

When I was looking for an XBox on TradeMe (NZ version of EBay) the majority of hits were offering modded (if wanted) versions.

_________________
Dipping bags at Mach1.9

that's rather low
so either the rest of the pirates are taking more precautions
or the banning method isn't too successful
or there isn't that much "pirates" & "hardware modders" on Xbox

Not really. We have to define gamer too. Almost everyone that I know personally that has a 360 I would not really classify as a gamer. They are like wee I have guitar hero and madden and the one night a month that we end up drinking at my place we play some for 5 minutes!

I would say 1 in 20 (based on the info from Mach1.9) is a substantial number of pirates on the console. Many people have not been banned yet either!
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=695363 According to this nearly half of the users polled are not banned.

Now back to defining gamer, if we define every single person that owns a 360 as a gamer; then its also reasonable to call even The Sim's (only) players gamers as well.

I would agree if we were talking about hardcore gamers.But a gamer is a gamer whatever the time passed on games...
playing a lot of games/time or not, has nothing to do with being a pirate or not

Back in the time of audio tapes, people with very few audio stuff were still copying tapes ...

Considering that one can't eliminate all piracy, one in twenty is pretty low
As an editor if I was 100% certain that one user out of twenty will pirate my game I wouldn't consider bothering the 19 left with a heavy copy protection.

As an editor if I was 100% certain that one user out of twenty will pirate my game I wouldn't consider bothering the 19 left with a heavy copy protection.

Yes but the point that I was trying to make is that; those 'gamers' probably have never even heard of such a thing as playing backed up games on their console, much in the same way that the average sims player has probably not heard of pirating PC games. I think if we compare everyone across the board, pc probably ends up having a smaller percentage of piracy.

Which explains why say the sims sells so well, its demographic does not even realize the possibility of pirating. (or does not have the technical skill to) The same goes for console 'gamers' who own a 360 as a party machine, not a gaming machine.
Something like say Dragons age, MW2, Borderlands or Crysis for example, it's demographic on the PC is 'hardcore' PC gamers, they tend to be much more technically savvy in general.

Something that I seen on a MW2 post on facebook was some console guy calling the PC gamers fags for complaining about dedicated servers, and that they should stop being virgins and get laid because its not something that you should care about. And that really sums up the average 360 owner I think. The easiest comparison is that I think most if not all of us have spent friday and saturday nights alone playing games, when I honestly don't believe the average joe 360 owner has. (note that theres definitely exceptions, and that average joe gamer can be found on the PC too)

Well, I'm all for banning cheaters. As long as there are never any innocent people caught in the bans, since MS are adamant that they're permanent.

I don't think it's "cheaters" that are banned if I understood the topic correctly