The state of piracy on PSP

[sammiesosa#1]

I've had my psp since 2005, when they first came out. 56 games today. Most game are horrible and cost between 25-45 dollars (On many money not well spent). The UMD casing brakes true garbage (42 for me) yet another waste.
Most people are forgetting how badly constructed and easily scratch or unplayable they can become.
To me talk is talk. For those how wish to buy the game, buy at your own risk. And for those who wish to pirate, 50 lashing on the Long Horn. :rofl:

[Snigel]

This is hilarious. The same retarded discussion as always.
Retail price X The amount of downloaded games = Developers lost money. Not true!

Firstly many people download just because they can, regardless of whether they will play the game or not. Other people don't have the money to buy the games, thus they haven't bought it otherwise anyway.
Secondly, the fraction of money the developer gets per game is not the retail price, not even close.

Now, think of it for a while, what do a user get who download the games, except the better price?
They get faster loading times, a more quiet console and better battery times. Some of you might refer to the online stores, but no, they don't have the games at release all the time, and they certainly doesn't got all the games.

This is the same problem as with movies. As long as nobody is interested in distribute the product as customers want it, some of them will get it their favorite way illegal instead. I mean, the few services selling movies is crippled, in many ways, and the same goes to the online stores for the PSP.

Surely piracy is sad when people pay for it but as long as nobody want to put up a legal alternative that can be as good as the illegal ones, don't complain.

[Spyzius]

I'm living in lithuania and games for us cost about 150 punds , thats why nobody buy that games

[kyyubidx]

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

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

This numbers are not dollars... But numbers of copies sold...

[bah]

Snigel: Perhaps if it was not possible to pirate games then kids would bother to get a job to buy the games they want rather than just downloading them and claiming 'I can't afford it'.

People saying they cannot afford the games is ridiculous, you could afford the console and knew the price of games when you bought it. If you parents bought it for you then save your pocket money if you get any or get a part time job.
I delivered junk mail from about 10, the local paper at 12 or so, sold papers by the roadside at 14 and worked in a burger place from 15.
Kids could do with learning the value of a dollar rather than how to avoid paying for things they want.


'as long as nobody want to put up a legal alternative that can be as good as the illegal ones, don't complain.'

Its hard to beat free, and impossible when the product costs you millions to make and you want to stay in business to make another game.


I think the most retarded thing is when people use the 'Retail price X The amount of downloaded games != the amount of loss to the developer' argument, which is valid, to try to somehow legitimise piracy.

On the PSP it is rampant and while non realised profits do not equal losses, the developers and publishers are still making less for their work than they expected and it is due in large part to the ease of pirating it.
If your pirating the game you obviously want it in some way, and would like there to be more games made for the system in future.


If people like a game then they should pay for it or go without. If you want the faster loading times etc then buy the game and dump an ISO yourself.
All of the benefits (except cost) and non of the moral issues.

[hodgy47]

If the cost of making a umd is so high then why not sell the psp games online for download at a cheaper price, I for one would buy them, I have 3 kids all with psp's and it would save me a small fortune. However when i do buy a new game i do dump the umd to iso so my other kids can play the same game , cos i am certainly not buying 3 copies of it (financial suicide). On the main topic though piracy has always been around DVD, PC, PS2, PS1 etc and the console giants continue to keep rolling out new consoles, So even though they are making a genuine loss beause of piracy they cant be making to much of a loss or they would just stop completely.

[devdj]

the psp game price problem resides in none simple fact... the UMD format... Its expensive to produce and that is the simple fact that makes game prices so high... What strikes me as odd is this: if £1 is $1 and 1€ is about $0.60 why the hell do european gamers have to pay 40-50€ when american gamers only pay $40... that SO unfair!

€1 is not $0.60, €1 is equal to $1.53 as of today but it is unfair that we Europeans have to pay huge amounts of extra tax on things like psp games especially if you live in Ireland where we will soon see a recession in the country and inflation is so high that a normal bar of chocolate will soon cost us a about €2

[Milleniumas]

I'm living in lithuania and games for us cost about 150 punds , thats why nobody buy that games

Great to see another Lithuanian Yea.. piracy is a big issue in our country as well. I might even say that's even bigger if we compare with other countries. Problem is that games cost way too much. In addition I would like to say that average person gets about ~1.4k Litas ant the game costs 200 Litas, so we prefer not to buy, but to download. I must say that I haven't bought most of my games that i have in computer's hdd. I feel a bit disappointed, but what the hell can I do?

[bykfiend42]

I own every game I've been interested in on the PSP. I use homebrew for emulation and only play games that I own. This really isn't on purpose, I just happen to own most games that I like. If they found a way to block custom firmware I would just get rid of my PSP.

[bah]

If the games are so expensive that they cannot be afforded, how are people affording to buy the console (much more expensive) in the first place and why do they not spend what little money they have on more important things than having the latest generation of video games?

The Sega Master System was popular in Brazil well after it was superseded elsewhere (I would assume) because it was cheap enough to be affordable to the people there. That makes sense.

'I cant afford lots of games so I'll pirate them' isn't a good rationalisation. 'I cant afford lots of games so I will save up till I can afford one I really desire or else I will find something different to do' is.

To me it sounds similar to when people here in Australia take out huge loans, buy a big house and a 4 wheel drive, big LCD TVs etc then complain when interest rates go up, they cannot afford repayments, they loose it all to the bank and then complain about how hard done by they were.
Previous generations had a much better understanding of managing what you have and spending where it is really needed first.

They cannot sell the games at the equivalent % of the average working wage in 'poorer' countries that they do in 'richer' counties because people elsewhere would import them for next to nothing and it would kill off their markets in the rest of the world (where most of the cost-recouping and profit making is done). That's why region locking came about in the first place.
So long as they can still maintain large margins in 'richer' markets then they don't mind selling for razor thin margins in 'poorer' ones. If they feel that selling to those lower margin markets may impact their sales in the higher margin ones then they will either drop the low margin market or charge inappropriate prices there.

It's true that its a double standard seeings as companies offshore production to the cheapest market then ship the goods to more expensive ones to make nice profits but object to consumers doing the same by importing from the cheapest place.
It's a reflection of the way the worldwide consumer goods market is geared towards allowing the 'richer' nations to become even more materially wealthy (making goods more affordable here) while maintaining profit margins by paying people less for their work than its real value.

That's modern international capitalism, we could try communism but it doesn't have the best track record in egalitarianism either.