Sony Sees PSP Piracy Slowdown, Observes ‘Good’ Beating ‘Evil’

[wraggster]

Piracy is a real problem for PSP. It’s not hard for your everyday consumer to simply download games to their handheld.

One of the ways Sony hopes to battle piracy is by offering their first-party PSP games as downloads through the PlayStation Store.

Is that enough?

We’ll have to wait and see, but John Koller, Sony Computer Entertainment America’s head of hardware marketing, told Multiplayer they’ve seen piracy slow down in the last few months.

Why?


Even though hardware sales for PSP continue to do well month-to-month, we almost never see PSP software charting in the NPD Group’s monthly top ten. Given PSP’s multimedia functions, it’s possible they just aren’t using the thing for games — or all the games are being pirated.

“We’ve made really no secret [that there] certainly has been some piracy on the PSP,” said Koller in a phone interview last week. “We’ve seen that as a significant issue — it’s trending down right now, we’ve seen the piracy not be as such prevalent in the last month to two months. But it has been a problem for us.”

Sony keeps a close eye on PSP-related message boards and the discussions happening at web sites focused on promoting video game piracy.

“We’ve noticed there’s kind of a ‘good vs. evil’ battle that we track on many of the forums and many of the pirated web sites,” laughed Koller. “There’s certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP. And then there’s certainly the other side that believes that they can take as warranted. It’s kind of been nice to see other consumers going and help and fight the battle for us.”

Is piracy killing PSP software, readers? You don’t have to divulge your own habits here, but what about your friends? Do they pirate PSP games?

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/11/24/psp-piracy-is-good-vs-evil/

[Airdevil]

The reason why Piracy for the psp is slowing down, is because there havent been all that many new games coming out, so there have been no games for people to pirate.

[jeegee]

Piracy is rife, unfortunately its sites like this (i love dcemu by the way :)) that have opened up the psp pirate side of things to a much wider audience. Guys at my local car boot sales do flashes for 20gbp and sell copies for 5gbp a disc (with a disc containing a few titles), hell, there's even a phone shop in my town that does the flash. They even advertise it!!!!!
Sony ARE doing their best to block this through regular firmware updates, but with hackers working on the new psp 3000 successfully, it looks like they're fighting a losing battle. Shame really cos its an excellent multi media platform.........

[Poem58]

I stood in line, on a cold day in the snow to get my PSP the day it was released...I bought 3 games that day...MLB,Lumines, and Twisted Metal. I eventually added NFL street (due to Infrastructure play which was falsely printed on the box), an Activision Poker title and Coded Arms....basically, I liked MLB, Beat twisted Metal and the rest....well...I traded all of them in except for Lumines and just played homebrew and emu's....the games cost too much, ones I would borrow or try were OK to bad...nothing was so awesome I had to have it.

If it weren't for running homebrew...I would have gotten rid of my PSP. I'm afraid to say, but If I am ever in a position to get a Pandora...my PSP will probably be a paperweight. It's a nice machine and was way ahead of it's time in terms of capabilities...but I got it to be wowed by the games and I spend most of my time playing games on it that were never intended for it....ESPECIALLY the Atari 2600! thanks ZX-81!

EDIT: PS anyone tell me what this Casino cash amount thing is under my name? I clicked on Casino above to see if that would answer it but it just keeps having me log in over and over....
Thanks!

[gamefreak199101]

whats the point in putting the games on the ps store, when we download , we need large mem card which probably some kids around the world, couldn't possible get and have basic 32 mb cards and they need the umd, so that's my opinion although i wouldn't mind cuz i have 2 2gb card and 2 4gb cards. but think of others $ony

[Spanishpeacock]

The PS store is good and all, but the games cost too much. They should try charging the cost of the game from gamestop in used condition. Because I paid $23 for Joanne of Arc and I probably could have gotten it cheaper at a used game store with the case and manual. $20 for a file doesn't sound right to me.

$6 for a Playstation game sounds okay, but they need more on there, but that doesn't matter, because everyone paying $6 for a 200MB file or $10 for Castlevania:SOTN a 600MB file is making them money. They're only paying for the storage of the file on their network. They didn't have to re-make the game, bump up the graphics, add new cut scenes, anything at all but convert the ISO of the game to a PBP file. If they put the whole library of PS games on there, they'd make a killing. Let's face it, they don't even care if it works 100%, (try entering the name for 100 luck in C:sotn, it usually freezes) they just put a "due to compatibility problems, some parts of the game may not work as well as the original title" warning on the first screen.

How many people would buy FF7 for $10-15?
How about FF8 for $15-18?
Resident Evil? RE2? RE3? (RE2 is 2 disc, so probably $10)
How about a Resident Evil bundle? 1,2, and 3 for $20?

Sony needs to realize the money they're loosing by not having a larger PS library before everyone goes and buys a second PSP just for PS games. My black PSP is at 3.71 m33 for FF7 and a few others that seem to work pretty well on that FW (I have the Darth Vader slim for OFW stuff, like UMD games and PSN). I basically have a $120 system around for PS games, emulators, and homebrew.

[LewisCamel]

I'm guessing that 99.99% of the jokers who visit this site Use the .iso feature on CFW PSPs.

Why doesn't Dark Alex relese the next CFW without .ISO support if he is so against piracy? Let us face it. Most people use the CFWs so they can play pirated games. I used to love the homebrew scene, but now it's a bit of a joke! Ah well. Another large company shafted by a bunch of geeks.

If you are a dirty pirate, "GO DO ONE AND STOP BEING A SCRUBBER, I THINK I CAN HEAR YOUR MUM CALLING YOU FROM YOUR CARAVAN"

[geise69]

The main reason .ISO support is still in the CFW is because the UMD drive is terrible. A lot of games have terrible loading times. Anyone who has played Ys Ark of Napishtim knows what I'm talking about. Well that's not a great example since 5 people probably played the amazing game. Anyways, after playing a dumped .iso of the game it was like night and day. It's like installing certain games on your XBOX360 HD. Does wonders for Last Remnant. The sad thing is that allowing people to do this keeps the door open for the piracy side. Still...the whole piracy thing is a bit blown out of proportion on the psp. Look at the ps2 and DS. Rampant piracy! Still the DS sells like hotcakes and so did the ps2. If there were more and better games even with piracy the psp would be doing a hell of a lot better, and piracy wouldn't be as big of an issue.

[guymelef]

I strongly believe that crappy games have led to a decline in piracy, while homebrew has led to an increase in console sales.

If it weren't for the ability to convert my old PSX games without paying SONY again for the exact same game, as well convert my own movies to psp, then I might not have a bought a PSP at all. (no joke)

It's programs like PiKey and hopefully JPSP (the java RE) that keep me extremely interested in the future of PSP.

What I am saying is that after playing the new games at my local game store I found that there are very few games that have the replay value for me to purchase new. I have purchased about 25 games used from friends and resellers but since none of that money goes back to the publisher I feel like I still owe a debt to them, but without a better selection of games (why did we get castlevania chronicles and not a new castlevania? or both?) I don't see the PSP being as popular in the future.

The PSN store will replace the UMD. That is the hope of both Sony and 3rd party publishers. It is too expensive and too scratchable to be portable anyway. They should've just used the mini-discs that the UMD's were modeled after anyway.

[ziegrim]

UMDs too scratchable? They're about the only current gen media format that I don't have any broken copies of...honestly they come in a case what are you doing to them? I agree Sony really is lacking in games. I bought 2 games when I got the system about 4 years ago and I didn't buy another game until crisis core. I have about five games all together even though I've had the thing since launch and only three of them are any good. I see some good square enix games on the horizon but I'm not sure it's enough to save the psp library.