DS piracy is most likely bigger than PSP piracy in terms of volume of piracy (it really is a very serious problem). But the DS audience has a lot of children (who have parents to buy the games for them or give them allowance money to do so) and non-traditional adult gamers (who can't be arsed to learn how to softmod a Wii and how to obtain Wii ISOs. Especially when it's very easy to brick a Wii when you don't know what you are doing). And these type of gamers are a lot less likely to pirate than teenagers and traditional adult gamers (the PSP's main audience). It's the teens and the traditional adult gamers (who are much more tech savvy and are more motivated to put in the effort to get free stuff) that tend to be doing the piracy on the DS.
Look at it like this.
The DS sold 127,255,831 units
The PSP sold 56,798,930 units
Now let's say the hypothetical piracy rate was 25% on the DS but 50% on the PSP (making PSP users twice as likely to be pirates)
That would mean 31.8m DS flash cards are used to play roms while 28.4m PSPs are modded with CFW to play PSP ISOs.
That would mean that yes, DS piracy is bigger than PSP piracy in volume. But piracy would be a bigger problem proportionately on the PSP still. Since the percentage of PSP users who pirate is double the percentage of DS users who pirate.
Btw you remember all that talk about House of the Dead Overkill's "poor" sales (600k worldwide) being a sign that there's no core audience on the Wii? Think Again. HoTD Overkill was downloaded over 800k times on torrents in 2009. It was in the top 5 of most pirated Wii games for 2009. And while Punch-Out! (another core game) sold decently on the Wii (1m+), it was downloaded like 900k+ times. I bet that No More Heroes, Muramasa, etc. were downloaded more than they were bought. I am telling you, the core gamers are there. It's just that a lot of them are pirating the games. It's the same with the DS. You should have checked out all the buzz within the scene leading up to Ace Attorney Investigations' release. I bet that game has a huge piracy rate. The game sold less than 40k in NA in two weeks. But I bet you it was downloaded by 100k+ DS owners. Easy. And that might be a conservative estimate. I really do believe that game was pirated to hell and back given all the buzz. All the attention seems to be on the PSP's woes and 360 piracy (MW2 and Borderlands banhammers) but there is definitely a shitload of piracy activity on the DS and Wii. NSMB Wii was the most pirated console game (on torrents) in 2009 as well.







