While it's *highly* unlikely that a pirate would have purchased all 20 games he may DL illegally, realistically, if he doesn't give himself access to the stole games, he will likely:

1) Rent 5-6 of them to try them out.

2) Scrounge up the money to buy 2-3.

But once he's made it easy for himself to steal games, a pirate will steal them whenever possible. So is he stealing 20 games that he would have purchased? No. it  he stealing *some*? Yes, almost certainly.

I'm probably not doing the shops/government/developers any favours either.

I've long since abandoned the idea of buying games, but I don't pirate. Instead I just rent games from a generic renting company that has no late fee for a nominal fee.

Play the game for a few weeks, then send it back and rent another! In a year I can then clock up to around 25-30 games completed.

The only games I have bought recently are Fifa 09 and LBP :o
Two other games I intend to buy this year are FFXIII & Killzone 2 (& presumably GT5)

Only because I play/envisage playing these for an extended duration of time!

Didn't read through this very long thread so forgive me if I'm repeating but...

I personally don't think piracy has anywhere's near as much to do with PSPs poor sales as the internet thinks it does. DS is just as easy to pirate and has tons of sales. Yes, I know, PSP's user base is more tech savvy and therefore likely to do so but then still DS sales still should be a lot lower if piracy is SUCH a big problem as PSP sales suggest.

I think PSPs major problem is two fold (three fold but piracy aside).

One - It's a multimedia player. Yes that's right. The very fact that it plays music and movies deminishes game sales. Why? Cause a lot of people use it to watch movies or music on the go as well as or instead of games. Therefore they buy less games. Therefore developers don't get as good sales as they would on the game centric DS. Therefore they make fewer PSP games, which leads to lower sales....

Two - DS is great of short, quick games (Brain Age, Puzzle Quest, New Super Mario Bros.) as well as epic RPGs, etc. This is perfect for a portable system which - for most people - only gets used for short bursts of time when they are traveling. PSP basically plays downgraded PS2 titles which don't really fit a quick play session or are just better played on a console like they were really designed for. So less games are bought.

I think priracy inpact 360 games sales less than 10%, if you saw tie ratio you will see software per console 360 is the best. Why?

1. Very hard to mod it.
2. 360 has many good customer especially american people.
3. Good game title.

Damn, is that why my roommate's computer is all full up of Petz isos?  Must have been sitting there, noticed a link, and clicked it just because he could!  Seriously, dude, I have access to a number of pirated games and yet you'd more likely find me playing a legit one.  I prefer legit copies of games.  Everyone does.  The question is whether or not it is feasible to buy so many.

piracy is fine, deal with it

I know your banned but you better not have one Emulator/rom,mp3 or movie/tv show/porn on your HD. For you to go off like that.

Meh, always blaming piracy... I'm pretty sure the DS is the easiest current gen system to pirate, I don't hear people bitch about it nearly as much.

As expected, this blew up into another generic piracy thread. Just wanted to point out, when someone pirates games (or any copied media), the effect on the market isn't the same as normal theft. I can download the entire PSP, Wii, DS, 360 library right now if I wanted to, with no intention of playing them. Something tells me that doesn't equate to the market losing thousands of dollars. If it did, I'd be able to single-handedly (well, almost) bring down the entire industry by myself! I just need a really good internet connection

I don't doubt there are countries that are poor with people who can't afford to buy games. However this shouldn't be a problem for sales in the USA, Japan and most European countries.

Actually man thats really lame you pirate and same goes to anyone in here that think thats cool or proud of it. That means money doesn't go to developers and look at all the companies going under right now. Keep pirating all you want i guess but don't start bitching when games stop coming out as often as you would like. The fact is everyone would love for games to be free but if you aren't willing to pay for them, developers won't be willing to pay to make them.