Lord N on 13 January 2008
After putting two and two together, I'd say the effect is de minimus.
"Piracy" doesn't have anywhere near the effect that companies want the public to believe. Look at music and movies, for example. An artists' entire discography as well as near-perfect quality DVD-rips can be downloaded within mere hours, so if this were so harmful, then all of the major record labels and movie studios should have long ago gone out of business.
Even in the video game industry, look at Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console. Pretty much everyone knows about roms and emulators at this point in time, so no one should be buying anything from either of those services.
Are there people who were going to buy games, downloaded them, and then didn't buy them because they, in effect, already had them? Hell yes, and the same can be said for music and movies, but the effect is grossly exaggerated and is based on pure speculation.
Consoles owned: Saturn, Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, PSP, DS, PS3
