Dear Future Gamer,

Re your reply to Sam Brookes’ letter 'Profit Margins'. Sam Brookes may not have worded his missive to you very elegantly but it held more water than your bar room opinion 'journalism'.

“Piracy can destroy a company” - when? Give an example and I'll agree, otherwise this is pure speculation. “Suppose pirated PlayStation games became readily available to everyone” - they are. “They've got dozens of fingers in dozens of other pies, but they'd cut anything that was losing them money hand over fist” -lovely images - is this over metaphorisation? “They charge that much because....” surely the end to this sentence should be “… they can”.

Finally your logic on the profit margins on hardware is reasonable but again is based entirely on speculation. Have you any factual information about the total cost involved in getting a PlayStation into the shops? Give Sam a break and stop putting down contributors in such a 'smarter than you' manner. Other than that FG is excellent value for money.

Matt Davey

FG: Piracy may not be the single factor that closes a software house, but it certainly contributes. Pirated PlayStation games are not readily available to the mainstream public. Name me a High Street retailer selling them? Sony have just closed 15 factories around the world, cutting some 17,000 jobs. Yes, that was over metaphorisation but the fact remains, Sony are a profit-making organisation, not a charity. As for your last point, the last thing I was trying to do was come across as ‘smarter than you’. He asked for my opinions, and that’s what I gave him, albeit in the style of ‘bar room opinion journalism’. I shall endeavour to be more sober in future. This could prove difficult though.