mai said:
Quoting myself (important part bolded): "There's a common believe that piracy is source of the problem. I believe it's not, not entirely. Piracy is an effect of a bigger problem, not a cause. Usually people are reffering to PSP demography, when speaking about it's piracy. According to John Koller's interview he gave to Wired this year, 40% of PSP demography are teens 13-17 y.o. (he didn't specify the details, but I suppose those're likely males), that's basicaly all info on PSP audience to date from Sony themselves afaik. Some people say this demography is likely to pirate since they have ability and knowledge to pirate and aren't fully independent financially, thus explaining relatively low PSP attach rate btw. That's a reasonable argument (but again some claim at the same time that "hardcore" buy more software - I'm confused)... but if PSP piracy is due to it's demography, therefore this rule also should work with other platforms, but it's not. According to last year's Nielsen research X360 dominant age group are male teens 12-17 y.o. (>30% time spent playing among all age groups), in other words pretty close to what Koller said about PSP demography. And despite being heavily pirated, X360 is an impressive software seller, it's attach rate is considerably higher than PS3 attach rate (and we all know the latter platform has no piracy at all). The problem with PSP is in something else than just demography that's "likely to pirate", X360 is doing well having the same people on board. What're those problems? I don't know. I assume overcrowded console market. Nowadays developers and customers have a wide range of platforms to choose from, like Wii, DS, X360, PS3 etc. PSP is literally like a fifth wheel, last choice of a developer to put a game on it, and last choice of a customer to buy something for it (not the case with Japan, since the most relevant consoles in there are DS and PSP). Other consoles are eating up PSP potential software sales, to be more precise, I reckon, those're X360 and PS3, since their dominant audiences intersect with PSP demography heavily. People are likely to spend their free money on X360/PS3 rather than PSP, while DS, yet another great software seller, unlike PSP, has an ability to differentiate oneself from home consoles with it's best-sellers aimed at wide range of ages and both sexes, unlike PSP once again." |
I do not agree with this. You cannot compare the 360 to the PSP, one is an dedicated online gaming console, the other a portable handheld. Even people likely to pirate will buy a legit 360 copy of any game because more than likely they want to play online without getting their 360 banned. Not even remotely close to the case of the PSP.
I still believe piracy stopped the PSP from having a 40% market share this gen. We all know software sells systems, and if devs are afraid to develop too much on the PSP, then it's understandable why it won't sell on the levels of the DS
