Dissidia: Final Fantasy Downloaded Illegally Over 5 Million Times

[wraggster]

CESA, short for Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association, has been tracking illegal downloads of top selling handheld games. Out of all the titles – DS and PSP – Dissidia: Final Fantasy was downloaded the most.

According to their data, the PSP game was downloaded 5,281,223 times. CESA estimates a loss of 30,631,093,400 yen ($335 million) in sales. The dollar amount is questionable due to used game sales, price drops, and people who would never have purchased Dissidia anyway. In spite of those factors that number is still staggering.

These are some of the other top pirated PSP games developed in Japan.

Phantasy Star Portable 2 –
4,665,510 downloads worth 22,394 million yen ($245 million)

Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce –
2,072,942 downloads worth 9,950 million yen ($109 million)

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite –
1,820,282 downloads worth 8,322 million yen ($91 million)

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII –
1,223,881 downloads worth 7,098 million yen ($77 million)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam Next Plus –
1,1187,341 downloads worth 7,100 million yen ($77 million)

Tales of the World Radiant Mythology 2 –
1,131,319 downloads worth 5,603 million yen ($61 million)

Not all top selling PSP games were heavily pirated. Konami’s Power Pros Portable 3 is the 12th best selling game and it was only downloaded 4,358 times. SD Gundam G Generation Portable, the 20th title in Japan, also had a comparatively low piracy rate with only 65,112 downloads.

It appears PSP piracy increased greatly when you compare Phantasy Star Portable and Phantasy Star Portable 2. Phantasy Star Portable, released in 2008, only has 665,320 downloads, a fraction of the 4.6 million downloads of the 2009 sequel.

CESA’s figures the top 20 selling games in Japan were downloaded 23,249,418 and cost the industry 118 billion in damages.

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/06/09...million-times/

[Bearmon]

Your best bet is dont make any consoles/portables anymore. Make them extinction. Thats only way to stop the piracy.

[absolofdoom]

Can someone please tell me how the heck they know how many copies have been pirated? Aren't they just guessing (making $#@! up)?
Also, 1 pirated copy would not equal 1 sell even if they couldn't be pirated.

[ricosuavez]

how could this be costing them anything,you did not sale that doesnt mean it cost you.lost imaginary sales doesnt account for cost...

[darkpoetjk]

I'll be honest. After how big a POS FF 11 was, I started downloading all my Final Fantasy games, along with others, and after actually playing the game beyond a demo then I would make my decision. I spent 4 hour with a downloaded copy and went out and bought the game. Personally I can imagine those being actual numbers. You have to think people will download torrents that are popular just to seed them and raise their ratio. Final Fantasy games are the biggest. Look at PS1 games. FF7 is still one of the most downloaded games. Heaven forbid they do a study on FF7,8,9,X,and 4 for Nintendo DS. I'm not saying that piracy is wrong. I just think there is a morality that is missing. If you have a pirated game for 30 days and don't delete it, then get punished for it. Within 30 days with a game you should be able to make a decision. Also you have to look at this angle. How many copies of NES,SNES,N64, and so on games that are impossible to find the original games for purchase? Because of piracy we can play Atari 2600 games that no longer exist. With the PSN network and things like STEAM, you limit the need of having to keep the "ORIGINAL" items. If all games went to that then what do you do with people who don't have the bandwidth to purchase online? Its an evil that will always exist but will always be needed and abused.... look how well PS3 games are protected! Eventually yes it will be cracked but look at how many sales there have been, yet how many downloads of PS3 games there have been. Lets look up FF13 torrents there are. THOUSANDS. Does that mean people are playing illegal copies of it?! NO. Nothing plays PS3 game copies at this date and time. So having the digital backup downloaded so many times doesn't mean that everyone is playing the copy compared to the original. Its just good to always have that ability 20 years down the road to go, " Hey I miss that game and damn my disk is wrecked, oh site such and such lets me download it, and 24 hours later you are having your childhood memories relived... "damn you ghost and goblins"!!!

[sabernet]

These figures are usually bull. They're made to inflate actual damages without paying attention to anything as pesky as statistical accuracy so they can justify additional controls, DRM and whatever fewer sales they may have experienced.

Most notably, they ignore the following:

1) How many people are like me and actually bought the UMD, but then got a copy in order to do away with the pesky load times pervasive with the medium.

2) Pirates download many more games then consumers buy. As such, not every downloaded copy would have translated to a sale, regardless of intention. See http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Anot...of-game-piracy

3) How many people downloaded it more then once.

Also, much of these statistics involve doing something silly like loading a torrent, looking at the peer list and multiplying that by the age of the game. An actual statistician would cringe at these practices.

[Qmark]

These figures are usually bull. They're made to inflate actual damages...

Did anyone actually run the math?

$335000000 / 5,281,223 = $63.43
For some reason, each downloaded copy is somehow 'worth' roughly 150% of retail value. Inflated damages indeed.

[mike_jmg]

This is bull.... indeed

They forget about price drops, second hand sales and the people who just tried the game and deleted it cause they didn't like it.

I can honestly say that from that list I only liked Crisis Core and Dissidia the other ones weren't worth a dime and weren't worth my time

[PoorKingz]

Even though the estimated damages are exaggerated, the amount of downloads do show that piracy is a real problem for PSP.

[sabernet]

Even though the estimated damages are exaggerated, the amount of downloads do show that piracy is a real problem for PSP.

Piracy can be said to be pervasive. It can be said to be high. It could even be said to be a sad state of affairs that so few people bothered to pay for it. But it's really only a 'problem' if they didn't make a profit off the game enough to justify its existence. And we're talking a Final Fantasy game, here.