Sony: PSP piracy levels are "Sickening"

[Apelila]

Kotaku - Sony: PSP Piracy Levels Are "Sickening" - PSP

2008 was not a banner year for the PSP in North America, with a software release list that could nicely be called thin. That was in part due to developers nearly abandoning the platform. Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, tells Gamasutra that third-party publishers were "just about ready to jump off the cliff and pull support for the platform," some of which may be chalked up to massive amounts of PSP software piracy.

Dille says that "piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP" and that the company is pursuing both legal and educational efforts to decrease it.
"It's not good for us, but it's not good for the development community," Dille tells Gamasutra. "We can look at data from BitTorrent sites from the day Resistance: Retribution goes on sale and see how many copies are being downloaded illegally, and it's frankly sickening. We are spending a lot of time talking about how we can deal with that problem."
One of those changes may be a move to more digitally distributed titles, as games like echochrome and Patapon 2 go download only.

I love my PSP, it gets more play time than my DS because its a better Gameboy Advance oddly enough. But the reason for that is because when Sony designed it they where increadibly short sighted, IMO.

The UMD, the primary media a PSP uses, crippled its functionality. Anyone who has a hacked PSP can tell you as much: some games are much more playable streamed off the memory card VS the load times that UMD suffers.

As for how that feeds into piracy: Its easy as hell to load copied games on a PSP, you dont need any real technical sophisitication. The only real steps that sony took to discourage the problem was release a PSP that couldn't easily be hacked that had no unique advantages over the earlier models. Wooo, why don't I run right out and buy that, mm hmm.

I hope that the PSP2 takes a nod from all this and does away with optical drives for media, but also doesn't go to far in the other direction and grossly overcompensate to prevent piracy.

[The Stig]

There will be no PSP2 apparently? There was a thread not too long ago confirming/SE stating that they are not interested in making a PSP2. I just tried to search but can't find anything yet... ><

[Guitarman]

I doubt there will. PSP owners shot themselves in the foot for downloading all their games for free. No money to back up development costs? then why bother making another game? Yeah it's fun and all to download illegally but in the end you hurt alot more than the development teams, and this is proof of that.

And before anyone claims im sitting here shouting on a high horse; yeah I admit I might have done this myself if i had owned a PSP. I lump myself in with the rest that are shooting themselves in the foot.

[Draylo]

Really the only reason I hacked my PSP was due to the fact I wanted to play portable PS1 games... I don't ever really download normal PSP games illegally I usually buy them. The fact is they should have just released a lot of the PS1 titles on their store for download and I wouldn't have even bothered getting mine hacked. I don't know what the reasoning for it was whether they needed permission from the companies or what but I know they could make a lot of money off it... instead they didn't do that.

[Darus Grey]

The DS is even easier to hack and yet has broken every sales record imaginable in terms of both hardware and software. Piracy is rarely the cause, it's typically a symptom of not fufilling customer's needs, they can't point to it being the downfall when they have a competitor out-performing them by such a large margin who isn't having issues.

[Elcura]

I think the PSP has been associated with pirating for a long time. At the start, there wasn't much to do on the PSP except hack it and play PS1/SNES/etc games on it, from there it only got cooler and somewhat easier to do.

PSP and the DS have good games, but I bet the majority of people who own a DS don't know or care to hack it. Right now, it's probably to late to change anyone's mind and have them actually buy games.

[Julian]

PSP games have always sucked

[Charismatic]

PSP games have always sucked

lol, that's straight up bullshit.
You might want to check out the library of games before you go spouting nonsense.

[Elcura]

/cue massive image of good psp games

[Julian]

"Good" is relative

[The Stig]

The DS is even easier to hack and yet has broken every sales record imaginable in terms of both hardware and software.

I will be willing to bet that this most "hardcore" gamers go for the PSP. Hard to explain it but lets try:

DS buyers tend to be (generalising here, based on Nintendo's Advertising)

-Adults (for young people or for themselves)
-Old People
-Young People

All 3 of the above have something in common, in general, which is not being aware that games can be downloaded onto a cart and played. Added on top they probably won't use the internet much to find information or anything that is remotely "illegal". Also, a lot of the games can be played together effortlessly, leading to multiple copies being sold.

Where as PSP buyers tend to be:

- Teenagers/Young Adults

Which have all pretty much used the internet for the "good stuff" and is aware of emulation, and when word breaks out of it being possible to emulate other platforms, go buy the PSP and then use it for such purpose.

The few games I own I rarely find people who has a PSP and play the same game as I do, so opponents are harder to come by.

I'm mass stereotyping here of course but this is why I think Piracy is sky high for PSP.

[Elcura]

"Good" is relative

"Bad" is relative as well.

[Apelila]

I will be willing to bet that this most "hardcore" gamers go for the PSP.

(About DS Owners) All 3 of the above have something in common, in general, which is not being aware that games can be downloaded onto a cart and played.

(About PSP owners) Which have all pretty much used the internet for the "good stuff" and is aware of emulation, and when word breaks out of it being possible to emulate other platforms, go buy the PSP and then use it for such purpose.

I'm mass stereotyping here of course but this is why I think Piracy is sky high for PSP.

I editfucked your quote, I know. I realize you where going for stereotyping/generalization, but you may have been a little -to- general.

There no way to know if the people who hack their PSP's don't also hack their DS and such, would be my point. Group A and B could be the same group, why isn't Nintendo baaaawing like mad? Well, according to Wikipedia its because the system is selling at a 2:1 ratio to the PSP. The original DS I mean, thats not taking into account the DS lite. If you take that into account, it becomes greater than 3:1.

Take into account that you have to buy extra hardware to utilize a hacked DS. So lets say 10% of all PSP owners hack their system, and thats being silly. Thats 5 million people. Thats just less than 3% of the DS's userbase if its true. Lets say this is correct (I don't think 5 million people are that smart) then this illustrates why a problem for one company isn't the same for the other: the people buying software outnumber those not buy a much higher margin.

To the person who said there are no good PSP games: Suck a donkey cock. They're are tons. The problem is that many aren't truly 'good' until you can play them off a memory card, going back to a point I made in my original post.

The system is so awesome, and very versatile but got fucked so incredibly hard by the asnine decision to use UMD. It would be very sad if they chose not to have another go at it, but at the same time I hope Nintendo takes note that a gigantic, beautiful screen makes for an awesome handheld.

[Krandor]

At last check Sony IS releasing a PSP2 that will take the UMD drive out of the equation.

Patapon 2 is a test run to see if they can go with an internet based distribution medium for a game (though they already sort of fucked this up by releasing it in Europe, thus leaving an easily acquired rip version for all the hackers out there).

[darkepyon]

Seeing this made me think of this.

[Charismatic]

Seeing this made me think of this.

Please, never let me forget about this again.

[The Stig]

There no way to know if the people who hack their PSP's don't also hack their DS and such, would be my point. Group A and B could be the same group, why isn't Nintendo baaaawing like mad? Well, according to Wikipedia its because the system is selling at a 2:1 ratio to the PSP. The original DS I mean, thats not taking into account the DS lite. If you take that into account, it becomes greater than 3:1.

Thanks, I didn't work with any stats so I'm not aware of the sales, although I did know DS does better than PSP.

Another thing I want to bring to mention is that, as we all know DS encourages gamers and none gamers to play games due to the interactive screen. I myself own 1 PSP and the family (of 4) overall owns 5 Nintendo DSes. 1 Fat, 4 Lites. And we might be purchasing 2 DSis in the future. DS games promote multiplayer heavily and fun with friends/family, whereas a few PSP games I own never promotes it (Crisis Core, Castlevania, Final Fantasy I & II, but I do own Shin Budokai 2, Ridge Racer, Need for Speed). As said above, popular DS games = easy to find opponents to play with, whereas PSP is left in the dark as no one I know has any of the (multiplayer) games I own.

I love both systems, I'm not saying "no this is better" but what I mean is the PSP requires a lot of additional parts to get started with, i.e. a memory stick. Coupled with that the (in UK) games when released were expensive, compared to DS games where it got cheap really fast and widely available. And due to the encouragement of multiplayer on the DS, if someone gets a DS and X game, others will follow suit.

Also, I rarely see PSP games advertised on TV anymore, but DS/Wii games get advertised heavily. PSP games are only advertised when a "huge" "movie based" game is released, which spans multiple platforms... along the lines of

"Available ON! The PS3, XBOX360, PC, Wii, DS and PSP" (followed by a graphic of all the boxes together).

EDIT:

I understand what you said Apelila, but what I think is because of the larger group of the people combined in the Nintendo group compared to Sony, Nintendo isn't QQing about piracy because they know the less intelligent (ones that do not know how to go about pirating DS stuff, children, adults, elderly) group will likely be the ones driving their sales, not the smaller groups who will hack it and obtain the stuff.

However I have to admit pirating the DS is quite easy.

1. Find out where all the goodies are (games, primarily)
2. Amazon --> buy memory reader, memory card and the RD4 card (or whatever version it is nowadays)
3. Purchase equipment, put games onto card, play!

I haven't kept up now but I believe the benefits of hacking a DS is not as much compared to the PSP? If someone can fill me in.

Where as PSP is quite difficult nowadays

1. Hack it via the traditional means, with chance of bricking it if you're an idiot
2. Skip step 1, purchase readily hacked PSPs off eBay or your dodgy shop of choice
3. Find the software, isos, stuff, and play (or use)

[Uzor]

I actually haven't downloaded a single game, except for games I've already bought, since PS2.

The reason for it is quite simple, I think they deserve to get paid for what they do. Now, movies are different. If they were released as a payable downloadable version simultaneously in the states and Europe instead of 6 months after cinema release in the states, then I would buy movies as well.

Quite honestly, I don't want to buy a movie, then pay 20 bucks extra for shipping to get it in a reasonable ammount of time, to watch a movie for 2 hours.

Might be off-topic, but it is my reasoning for piracy.

[Reapz]

I actually haven't downloaded a single game, except for games I've already bought, since PS2.

The reason for it is quite simple, I think they deserve to get paid for what they do.

I am kinda the same, I had my PS1 chipped and have an R4 for my DS(started out buying a bunch of games for it then got an R4 and downloaded a couple of games, getting DSi now and will go back to buying them) but my PS2/Gamecube/Wii/PS3/360/PSP I have always bought my games for. I know it works out alot cheaper to download them but yeh I believe they deserve to get paid for the work they have done and if everyone thought that way maybe it would help develop future games

[Jaybar]

I didn't bother cracking my 2000 series PSP, but I do emulate some DS games. I buy DS games the same way I buy music - If I really like the game/band, I will put money forward to support them. For the most part, I emulate DS games to see if I like them first before buying them.

I do agree with those that believe Nintendo isn't as upset with downloading games illegally because most of their player-base doesn't know how to or won't do it.