In your world maybe but in reality:

Pirates are the video game industry's "largest customers"

It has become a common occurrence across all the major entertainment industries to blame loss of sales on pirates. Of course, why wouldn't they blame it on the law-breakers who are known to snag the game for free, rather than actually buying it legally. But, recently, some major studies are being developed that aren't supporting this statement, and are actually proposing quite the opposite.

After a study done on Dutch file-sharers, Prof. Nico van Eijk of the University of Amsterdam concludes, "These figures show that there is no sharp divide between file sharers and others in their buying behaviour. On the contrary, when it comes to attending concerts, and expenses on DVDs and games, file sharers are the industry's largest customers... There does not appear to be a clear relationship between the decline in sales and file sharing."

It seems, that rather than these file-sharers stealing more and buying less, they are buying more games than the average consumer - quite to the contrary of popular belief. See below:

Yeah, and PSP game is not killed by pirates, just go and check the torrent state for any PSP iso and compare them with the real sales at the moment, u'll be surprise

PSP wasn't killed by Pirates.  The PSP was SAVED by pirates.

It's piratability is what caused it's sales.  I mean look at the failure the PSP Go is.

The big lure the PSP has is Piracy and being able to use it for other things... like as a music player, for probably pirated music or as a portable SNES emulator.

Even if I do love my unmodded "pure" PSP.  I can see why mostly only pirates buy it.

Intresting that there was a study involving games.  Tons of music studies and book studies... not many game ones out there.

What I find more interesting is how often these studies contradict some of the things pirates usually post around.

One of the others arguments we usually hear is that one of the reason people pirate is the lack of economic power and that they would not be able to afford to purchase the game they pirate anyway and then this study comes and says that pirating is not a money issue..........

They can go right on ahead and try. They are already trying to do so with the most retarded forms of DRM. The only way they will be able to do so is if they lower their price or raise the quality of their products.

I have bought 2 legal copies for it for the PC and 1 for the Wii. So I have bought it 3 times more than a regular legal customer.

It is a money issue. It's how much a developer asks for their game. The reason pirates buy less is also because pirates have a better grasp of the quality of a given game than non-pirates. So if a pirate plays a game that is ok and costs only about $10, then there's a much higher chance he will buy it than a non-pirate.

Back at the start of 2008 I had 0 Steam games. Currently I'm at 112, and a bunch of retail ones. I'd like you to show me how many high and mighty non-pirates on these forums have even come close to supporting the game industry as much as this lowly morally corrupt pirate.

In otherwords... the study totally owned your arguement and your trying to deflect.

The answer is pretty obvious though... it's being done in The Netherlands... not like, Africa, China or Eastern Europe.

Lets see, I spent about 1600$ on gaming last year ( had to replace a PS3).

I spend about 1000$ on new games every year ( new, not used or rentals).

Edit : I forgot to add about 300-400$ on MMO/year, I used to play Wow but stopped but my wife plays LOTR and SWG and has multiple accounts...