> Even so, somebody still has to buy the game in order to pirate
it. The
> companies are still making money, as there are still thousands
that buy
> the games as well.

AFAIK you can't buy the game and pirate it because you can't
read the GCD with a burner-you have to download the ISO of the
internet for free.

Even if you had a situation like PS1 where people can just rent
games and make a copy thats all they'll do.  Sega and its
partners get money from selling a few titles to the few video
stores in each city rather than selling a couple games to all
the DC players in the city.  HUGE difference.

Yes, there are thousands that don't know how to do that or don't
know somebody who can do it for them.  But there are thousands
who now instead of buying a couple DC games per year will buy
none.  If these people couldn't get all their games for $2 they
would still would have bought a handful at full price.

Last year just over 2 billion premade CDs were sold and 3
billion blank CDs were sold.  Thats a pretty strange ratio...

Please don't try to justify piracy around here when everybody
can see it has a direct impact on the sales of games.

Perhaps John Byrd would be able to drop us an estimate of how
sales have been affected since DC piracy became mainstream?