The state of piracy on PSP

[wraggster]

Over at Neogaf (Which is a forum that the Gaming Industry seem to use as their forums) Rlan posted this rather sad viewpoint on the PSP:

With the recent discussions of piracy for the PC (seen here), I thought it might be interesting to see similar numbers for the other, possibly easiest thing to pirate ever console - the PSP.

The PSP can be turned into a pirating machine purely by installing Custom Firmware - other uses include a Playstation Player to play your own PSOne games on the thing [Which is what I used it for] or use emulators for other consoles like Megadrive, SNES, or even just applications for taking PSP images, DivX playback. etc, or purely homebrew applications of games.

Incidentily, I know a dude who got a job as a games programmer purely by some of the homebrew games he was working on in the PSP!

Anyhow, we know PSPs are selling but the software really isn't. So I went to a Torrent site (Don't think I can mention it anyway) which has a number of people who have downloaded the torrent file from that site directly - so this is just one site.

Let's have a look. I decided to choose some recent big games that were released, some of the bigger games of last year, and some games which were critically acclaimed but sold like $#@!.

God of War: Chains of Olympus - 94,154
Patapon - 112,183
Ratchet & Clank - Size Matters - 197,113
Crush - 48,959
LOCO ROCO - 163,904
Wipeout Pulse - 116,965
Castlevania X Chronicles - 102,354
Metal Gear Solid - Portable Ops (Not Including Plus) - 231,054
Burnout Dominator - 269,486

This is just one website, not including private trackers that keep to themselves or many other huge download portals, and I'm sure some torrents were taken down from this website anyhow (Looking up either GTA PSP games brought back very small numbers), but even then this is pretty big.

Is there anything Sony can do about this? Maybe cheaper prices? It's really like the Dreamcast all over again, except this time we have internet speeds that can actually download games in a minimum amount of time. Discuss.

Remember that Piracy ruins it for everyone including yourself, game makers are more likely to move to a console where piracy is less of a problem

[JKKDARK]

The article is right. Don't expect great games if the piracy is still big.

[wolfpack]

If you cant afford it, dont pirate it, plain and simple.

[Gene]

It makes me sick how people won't pay $30 for a game. GoW was released about 5 days ago and people have already stolen well over a million dollars from the game developers. Grow some brains(and balls) and pay the $35 for a used one.

[phsychokill]

actualy the game developers get under a half of the retail the price. the majority of the retail price is made up by publishing costs, shop price mark up and tax. if we only had to pay the game developers the games would be under half the price.

[kyyubidx]

its sad to know but for every 1 person that download a game there should be about 5 or 6 that buy them... piracy was a big issue with the ps2 but that didn't affect it in the long run...

[phsychokill]

yeh but there were that many of them at the end that even if 10% of the owners got the game they would sell millions.

[kyyubidx]

it can't be THAT bad... PS2 Sell examples:

GT3: A-Spec (14.87M)
GTA: SA (12M)
GT4 (9.54M)

and the list goes on... If you keep that in mind its a pretty good sign things DO sell... Because consider the price a PS2 game had at the time and multiply that by the number of copies... Entire companies got righer thanks to that... Well a little rich...

Back on the PSP topic... I think PSP game are WAAAAAAAY overpriced... I own very few and i'd like to have more... But many games that have no replay value or are too short are like 49€... Its crap... Sony should review their price policy

[phsychokill]

the problem for me with getting games for the psp was while im in the house what am i going to prefer playing games on a 4 or 5 inch screen on the psp or a 19inch pc monitor / 32 inch hd tv. it wouldnt of been so bad if sony had put the tv out in the original psp but even then im betting its not to great. not sure if you can play on tv through ps3 as dont have one yet hoping to get one soon tho.

[Justise]

It makes me sick how people won't pay $30 for a game. GoW was released about 5 days ago and people have already stolen well over a million dollars from the game developers. Grow some brains(and balls) and pay the $35 for a used one.

In Europe, PSP games cost 50-60 euros (about $50-60), they get released 1-24 months after the US release and many many many times they are not released at all.
What should we do?

I'm the only person in greece who actually buy the original game, after having finished the downloaded... if i can find it at greek shops... (Usually I don't...)