Sony admits extent of PSP piracy problem

Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior VP of marketing, Peter Dille, has admitted that the PlayStation Portable has been hit hard by piracy - with as many as 50 million units in the marketplace potentially having been compromised.

"I'm convinced and we're convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP," Dille told Gamasutra. "It's been a problem that the industry has to address together; it's one that I think the industry takes very seriously, but we need to do something to address this because it's criminal what's going on, quite frankly.

"It's not good for us, but it's not good for the development community. 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."

The admission comes at a point when Sony is finally giving the handheld platform a significant boost, with a string of key titles set to hit the shelves this year, including Assassin's Creed and MotorStorm - but Dille agreed that older hardware could pose an ongoing problem for genuine software sales.

"Those numbers are correct," he said, referring to the 50 million units. "There's a lot of hardware out there; toothpaste is out of the tube. We're not going to get that hardware back into the toothpaste container.

"I'm not naive, but I do think that most people are inherently honest," he continued. "We learned a lot from the music business, and it became so easy and so common to download illegal music - everyone was doing it. It's almost like people lost sight with the fact that, well, 'If everyone's doing it, then it can't be that bad.'

"But, it actually is bad; it's bad for the platform. Again, I'm not saying that that's a magic wand; I think that we have to make sure from a technological perspective that it's not as easy as it is to do that."

Dille also admitted that the company faced mass desertion from third parties over the PSP, with developers "just about ready to jump off the cliff and pull support for the platform".

Sony's UK MD Ray Maguire recently told GamesIndustry.biz that the company had under-supported the platform, but was happy to see a groundswell of support for the handheld building over the course of this year.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...piracy-problem

Public SDK.
App Store.
Now.

I bet you anything, most (not all of course) of those people wouldn't have bothered to buy the game anyway. FPS + PSP = No. The piracy wouldn't be so bad if they made something worth buying and didn't try to keep our homebrew off the console. Most people I know only download the games they wouldn't have bought in the first place. If they love a franchise or game they buy them right away.

psp is in a interesting situation

sony and the dev's holler piracy at the drop of a hat

but, and lets be honest for a second, theres not that many titles even worth stealing on the psp

Quote:

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Originally Posted by osgeld

psp is in a interesting situation

sony and the dev's holler piracy at the drop of a hat

but, and lets be honest for a second, theres not that many titles even worth stealing on the psp

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This is just me but if I was going to make a game and sink a large budget into it to insure it was of utmost quality the PSP is simply not where im going to put it. Why would I, or anyone else for that matter? People aren't going to buy the game, they're going to steal it.

Potentially 50 Millions of CFW's PSP?
Sum1 at s0ny is tryin to pull a donkey out of my @ss.

They shouldnt have include Memory Stick function at first place, stick with UMD at all time. But thanks to ur mistake, i can enjoy more out of it... for free.

Someone at Sony has been smoking wacky weed again. 50 MILLION customized PSPs?!? Really?? Does he actually expect people to believe that?!? And they know that because of "illegal downloads". Yeah, pull the other one.

Considering Sony's own figures show that only 50 million PSPs have been SHIPPED to the entire world, Sony now wants people to think the EVERY SINGLE ONE has been hacked. A good trick considering that you can't yet hack the 3000.

More likely, IF the "illegal download" stat is true, it's almost certainly idiots on PCs who think that the existing PSP emulators will play commercial games. The number of CFW PSPs is TINY compared to the base, and growing smaller as 3000s continue to sell.

Sony needs to drop the bullshit and tell the truth - they don't care about the PSP enough to put resources into encouraging third parties to make games.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JLF65

Someone at Sony has been smoking wacky weed again. 50 MILLION customized PSPs?!? Really?? Does he actually expect people to believe that?!? And they know that because of "illegal downloads". Yeah, pull the other one.

Considering Sony's own figures show that only 50 million PSPs have been SHIPPED to the entire world, Sony now wants people to think the EVERY SINGLE ONE has been hacked. A good trick considering that you can't yet hack the 3000.

More likely, IF the "illegal download" stat is true, it's almost certainly idiots on PCs who think that the existing PSP emulators will play commercial games. The number of CFW PSPs is TINY compared to the base, and growing smaller as 3000s continue to sell.

Sony needs to drop the bullshit and tell the truth - they don't care about the PSP enough to put resources into encouraging third parties to make games.

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^^ Yeah what he said.. I totally agree man

I dont think they're saying that all 50 million PSP's have been hacked. They said "50 million units in the marketplace potentially having been compromised." . What they're saying is that with that many vulnerable PSP's out there its going to be really hard to stop people from hacking them and pirating games.

They are definitely wording things to sound like they have a good excuse for the PSP's problems though.

sony is right, take one look at completed downloaded bittorrent numbers on multiple trackers and you will have well over 2 million illegal downloads of resistance retribution, there is no arguing against this fact.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by juiceface

sony is right, take one look at completed downloaded bittorrent numbers on multiple trackers and you will have well over 2 million illegal downloads of resistance retribution, there is no arguing against this fact.

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Wait, 2 million? That's it? And Sony is getting worked up about piracy? With 50 million PSPs that can potentially run pirated games, they're worried about 2 million? With over 50 million PSPs out there this is a piz poor excuse for not supporting the console. If only 4 percent of PSP owners downloaded one of their biggest titles (and as others have pointed out, there's nothing saying that all 2 million people who downloaded it can actually play it), then they clearly have a title that's either sinking or swimming on it's own merrits. Don't get me wrong, piracy is inexcusable, but a downloaded game doesn't always translate into a lost sale. Did Sony offer a demo download for this game? I'd love to see the number of people who downloaded a demo vs. the number of people who downloaded the torrent.

Crocodile tears.

Surely,pirated games on torrent sites have fuelled console sales.

Since piracy ain't going away in the near future, here's two
stratagies for Sony.

1) Make the PSP more attractive for developers by beefing
up the devkit and game specific modules of the SDK, and reduce
their commission rates.

2) Capitalise on the advertising potential of those millions of illegal
d/loads, with more in-game product placement and sponsorship. EA
Sports do this very well.

Sony needs to provide options for the psp owner instead of locking up the security and failing as cfw quickly comes out.

They need to realize that if you can pirate iso's, you most likely have an internet connection to download it from, thus, make options for content on the psp to download.

Appeal the customer to not pirate, dont restrict them.