http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/01/the-most-pirated-pc-360-and-wii-games-of-2011/

Top 5 Pirated Xbox 360 Games

1. Gears of War 3 (890,000) (September 2011)

2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (830,000) (November 2011)

3. Battlefield 3 (760,000) (October 2011)

4. Forza Motorsport 4 (720,000) (October 2011)

5. Kinect Sports: Season Two (690,000) (October 2011)

The above is an old link. It shows numbers of the most pirated games in 2011. Id imagine we should get a 2012 list soon.

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2012/Global/

This link which shows the number of software sold for each console for 2012.

Now this is about retail only sales and thats perfectly fine. But some people use this as a method of gauging the current size of the 360 and PS3 gaming instal base. Thats where I feel this issue needs to come to light as millions of 360 gamers will never show up on these stats because they get their games through less legal means.

PS3 hasn't been hacked to successfully pirate games while 360 has been for years. So when you see a PS3 game sales, you know thats the number that bought it. For 360, retail numbers tell a similar story, but at the same time do not represent the actual number of gamers playing them. The above link shows an extra 890 000 players playing Gears of War 3, and 720 000 people playing Forza 4 that will never show up on Vgchartz. People downplaying the install base of Gears of War and Forza are certainly unaware of this. People claiming the 360/PS3 gap of COD sales are shrinking? Retail sure, but actual gamers are playing at least 830 000 copies that can't be counted.

I personally am VERY curious to see the 2012 list, because I would like to see how many times people pirated Halo 4 to see how many people are actually playing it, ontop of legal retail sales.

see the issue is that CoD hacked probably costs about 1 buck, and those people would have never payed for it if they didnt hack the console. we can also say that being hacked helped those 360 sales. what im also trying to say is that you cant really compare those numbers to actual sales and players, since they cant play on xbox live as well or they will be banned

Just saying they are part of the install base. Offcourse they can't be factored into real software sales but they are still gamers playing the game. Not saying we should count them with vgchartz, but merely count them as part of the instal base.

EDIT: I dotn see how going online has much to do with counting them, as millions of legitimate 360s and PS3s never connect to the internet, and many of these have a extensive offline campaign.

true, but its so hard to count, we can never be sure of those numbers they might be higher or lower. 

Which means using total software sales to indicate installed user base is impossible which is what sales is getting at.  Its clear that there is more software being bought on the 360 online combined with more consoles that people aren't buying software for (pirates) that the figure is meaningless in the context some people are trying to use it for.

How many who pirated it would of bought it?

I'd like to hear peoples answers... because I honestly don't know. I hear this as justification for pirating as well, but maybe that's for another topic.

I think the point is that some Sony fans have recently tried using total software sales to indicate that the Ps3 is bearing down on the 360 installed user base.  When you take into account the number of people who don't buy software for their 360 it would indicate that may not be the case.  Of course he didn't consider there are a lot of PS3's used primarily as Bluray players that aren't purchasing software too.

Another thing that gets overlooked, is Microsoft not releasing SW Shipments.

Anyway... Here is some 2009 data for you

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/6352/most-pirated-games-of-2009-pc-360-and-wii/

That may have been true in PS3s first few years, but its highly impractical now to buy a PS3 for the bluray only.

I would imagine the number of hardware sales that can be tied to out of use consoles - whether that be broken, used only for media functionality or just forgotten about by their owners far outway the hardware sales tied to piracy. In which case it's not really a big enough concern.

Total software sales should only really be used to talk about active userbase or something, never total numbers. Especially with digital sales on the up too.