mine is unmodded.

i play ori games. just got couple of titles today from gamers' hideout. actually, i don't really have time to play that much games nowadays with work and family commitment.

i would like to put things in perspective.

well, i belive that a lot of people here wants to support ori games but can't do so due to the price of ori console games in this part of the world.

personally, for me, i can easily afford ori games, and i was a real hard core gamers. i have most of the game consoles so i practically grew up playing games.

in the early days, pirated games were my main way to get my gaming fix but now, as i can really afford to, i actually go for ori games, most of the time except those that i am getting for my PS2 where i only play sporadically. I will go for PS2 ori for AAA titles though. however, gaming is still a very very expensive hobby for most people especially if you are looking at the current next gen machines with the additional accessories, online subscription and ori games added to the equation. Not many can really go for it. of course, the easy availability of pirated games compounded the matters.

as someone very close to the IT hardware and software industry......ehem, i was involved with a certain biggest software company in the world......i sincerely feel that the console software titles are way too high here. c'mon, it's selling for usd 59.9 a pop in us/uk and here it's rm 160 - rm 220. in perspective, a big mac cost about usd 6.99 there and rm 6.99 here. so dollar to dollar, i would believe there will be a higher percentage of people here who would go for ori. we all can see that there's a increase in shops selling ori and people going for ori titles these days. i can attribute that to growing maturity of gaming crowd who has now grown older, have a good source of income, and are able to put some hard earn cash to support ori.

let me share with you guys an experience that i did, 8-9 years ago. we initiated a big campaign to push microsoft consumer titles(games, reference, edutainment) and gaming hardware. guess where we did it, yup, right in the heart of the IT (also piracy) center those days ie imbi plaza. we figured that we have to make all these titles easily available to the public as it's scarcity will only get people to buy copy versions of the software. single titles were price somewhere between rm 109 to rm 189. we came up with exciting promos and bundles, some multititles tied together, some titles with joypad/mouse/keyboard and etc. we even came out with loyalty program ala bonuslink and newspaper ads. we placed about 1000 boxes of software titles all over imbi particularly the big shops, put up the props, and demo centers plus giving good incentives to the retailers to sell. now, the trick was all these titles were given to this retailers as consignment ie FREE. we send our promoters there once a month to calculate the stocks and only bill them every month for what was sold. the campaign lasted couple of months. of course, at the time, seriouly selling ori titles at the heart of piracy were very very tough. close to the end of the campaign, we cleared a respectable quantity of the stocks particularly top titles like aoe, flight sim, golf and etc. unfortunately, we still have quite a lot of inventories sitting there. now, taking back the unsold stocks was not an option and heads would have rolled if we did that. in the end, we channeled the rest of our marketing dollars to lower down the price of the titles to rm 49.9 and guess what, we never ever get any return of any titles at all. 1000 units, all sold out. so from that lesson, we know that we need shelf space to get consumer to go for ori and more importantly, the correct price point. unfortunately, price is something that can't drop easily for the software publishers ie they don't have bottomless marketing dollars to subsidize the cost. so that explains why xbox was never launched in malaysia even though it was very very close. there were a lot of negotiations that went thru but in the end the power that be decided to pull the plug and left out malaysia.

so, coming back here, it's hard to envisage a mass conversion of gamers to support only ori titles. i'm afraid, like it or not, gaming with ori titles is a hobby that only the elites can enjoy. it will not change until the publisher realizes this and that they decided to go for it and make less rather than losing it to the pirates but i doubt it's ever going to happen cos' of logistics - hard to track different pricing structure across different countries, grey exports (malaysians are good in selling to other regions) and etc but we can all wish.

btw, the big M's employees can buy Xbox titles at only usd 10 a pop at their redmond inhouse store.

cool.......