I do not believe for one second that 95% piracy rates equates to 95% loss in sales.
That being said, like it or not, the facts are that pc games ARE pirated multiple times more than console games.
Sure, the xbox and PS3 can be hacked to play copied games, but it takes a certain savvy to do this, and even then you are risking permanently screwing your console from going online.
I know so many people who have pirated software, and most of these guys are on PC. I am not wearing any halo myself either! I would be a down right liar if I said I had never copied anything. These days I dont bother, my disposable income is better now and my gaming time less, plus online plays a larger part of my gaming and generally online gaming is some what crippled with hookie copies, but it still means I have been part of the problem myself.
I also suspect this kind of subject brings about the largest amount of self denial and hypocrisy over any other topic I can think off. I know so many people who are happy to say pc game pirates are scum and yet are happy to torrent music/films/MS Office/what ever (again I am not innocent here either so dont think I am preaching).
Ubisoft may be exaggerating, but step back for a minute.
There is no conspiracy against PC gamers, I am sure when crytek / etc made their AAA pc game with a shed load of money invested in it they were not hoping it would get pirated to hell to give them an excuse to jump ship. These guys are in it to make money, hate console gamers all you like but imo if it was not for consoles and their fairly low piracy levels I suspect there would be even fewer AAA titles coming out for pc.
When even PC Die hards like Carmack come out and say piracy is killing the platform I think it is time to take heads out of the sand and accept there must be some truth in it.
From another angle, years ago, to be able to game well on a pc you had to have a fairly expensive high end rig, so you may have argued that pc games sell less numbers than console as not everyone has a pc capable of running games.
This has changed now however, pretty much even low-mid range pc's are gaming ready, capable of running most titles at at least middling specs. With this in mind, I would say there are more gaming capable pcs in the average home than ever before.
PC games are cheaper than console games
People constantly tell me (many on this forum) that PC gaming is now as easy and convenient as any console gaming (I disagree but thats another topic)
All these things SHOULD be meaning that pc sales will outstrip console sales, and by a decent margin, but (apparently) this is just not the case. PC gaming right now has everything going for it to outsell console gaming, certainly the games are generally far better on pc. If pc games cant outsell their console couterparts when competing against 7 year old hardware, what chance do they have in 12 - 18 months when the next gen of consoles hit?.
sorry for long post