| Lord N said:
Like I've said before, the PSP has low software sales simply because people aren't buying it to play games, not because of how easy it is to play isos. This kind of thing went on like crazy with the PS2 and Xbox(there's even a book entitled Hacking The Xbox, and you can mod a slim PS2 with tape and kleenex or play-doh), and yet neither of them had such dissapointing software sales. As someone who's been modding/hacking consoles for over ten years, I can honestly say that it's easier(and cheaper) to do this with the DS than it is with the PSP, it's just that people who do this will prefer the PSP because it has more capabilities when it's hacked. The PSP was simply marketed as an all-in-one multimedia device first and a gaming system second, and that's what people are buying it for. The people who are buying it because they can hack it probably wouldn't have bought it if it weren't hackable, so while an unhackable PSP would have a higher attach rate, it would still have about the same amount of software sold. If this kind of thing were truly responsible for lower sales, then all of the record labels and movie studios should have long ago filed for chapter 11 considering that an artist's entire discography and/or a bunch of movies can be downloaded within mere hours. The Dreamcast had low software because people simply lost interest in it as it was killed by the announcement of the PS2, not because of people playing burned games on it. In 1998-2000, nearly all computers shipped with just a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive, and 4x/8x CD writers still cost about $350. Also, the vast majority of people with internet access were still on dial-up, and P2P services like Kazaa, Morpheus, Emule, and Bittorent did not yet exist, so not only were DC isos a lot harder to find, they took for bloody ever to download.
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That business about the DC is most certainly not true. I can't tell you how many people I know bought a DC just because the games were free. I feel guilty about it now, but I was one of those. CD burners at that time most certainly didn't cost $350. I was delivering pizza and was able to afford them. Also, DSL was becoming widely available, and cable modems even more so. P2P, while not as popular and widespread as it is now, was most definitely around. This is evidenced by the fact that around that time the record labels started to throw a shit fit about piracy, and Metallica were all up in arms over Napster.
When you mention that it's also possible to hack the PS2 and that it's sales weren't hurt by that, you conveniently fail to remember that in order to hack a PS2 and play pirated games required opening your PS2 and soldering chips onto the motherboard. This most definitely had an impact on the number of people who were able to pirate PS2 games. This is in sharp contrast to the DC and PSP, both of which require(d) no more than downloading and copying data.
