KeisukeFD
says:
actually, modding has a short term loss and a long term gain for consumers.
Short term loss is that you lose the $100 or so you spend on getting the chip.
Long term is you will always be able to get games overseas, why is that a gain? because as someone who imports on a semi-regular basis, I can tell you that $100 AUD games here, cost about $60 AUD overseas, including shipping. So within 2 or 3 games, I've recuperated my loss for modding.
Now about the economy, it's not so simple. This is really a chicken and the egg scenario. The gaming industry say that if people bought it here, they'd make more and be able to sell games for less. The people who pirate games claim that it'll never happen, because in the history of gaming, back in a time when pirating did not have such a massive impact, there was no reduction in prices due to game companies making massive profits, reductions came because the companies had already sucked all the potential profits at the original price, reduced prices were just to target the potential buyers (case in point: Sony's Platinum games, only games that sell 1 million go platinum, that's basically the amount of consoles that were already in our homes back then).
No side is willing to budge, like the chicken and the egg, did the lack of price decreasing cause pirating to occur or is it because of pirates that the prices won't change? Therefore, are you, a potential consumer, willing to buy from these producers at
04/12/2007
Melbourne, Vic