sigh..

CESA, short for Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association, has been tracking illegal downloads of top selling handheld games. Out of all the titles - DS and PSP - Dissidia: Final Fantasy was downloaded the most.



According to their data, the PSP game was downloaded 5,281,223 times. CESA estimates a loss of 30,631,093,400 yen ($335 million) in sales. The dollar amount is questionable due to used game sales, price drops, and people who would never have purchased Dissidia anyway. In spite of those factors that number is still staggering.



These are some of the other top pirated PSP games developed in Japan.



Phantasy Star Portable 2 -
4,665,510 downloads worth 22,394 million yen ($245 million)

Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce -
2,072,942 downloads worth 9,950 million yen ($109 million)

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite -
1,820,282 downloads worth 8,322 million yen ($91 million)

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII -
1,223,881 downloads worth 7,098 million yen ($77 million)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam Next Plus -
1,1187,341 downloads worth 7,100 million yen ($77 million)

Tales of the World Radiant Mythology 2 -
1,131,319 downloads worth 5,603 million yen ($61 million)



Not all top selling PSP games were heavily pirated. Konami's Power Pros Portable 3 is the 12th best selling game and it was only downloaded 4,358 times. SD Gundam G Generation Portable, the 20th title in Japan, also had a comparatively low piracy rate with only 65,112 downloads.



It appears PSP piracy increased greatly when you compare Phantasy Star Portable and Phantasy Star Portable 2. Phantasy Star Portable, released in 2008, only has 665,320 downloads, a fraction of the 4.6 million downloads of the 2009 sequel.



CESA's figures the top 20 selling games in Japan were downloaded 23,249,418 and cost the industry 118 billion in damages.

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/06/09/dissidia-final-fantasy-downloaded-illegally-over-5-million-times/

How do they count downloads, and how do they get these figures in dollars from download numbers? In other words, what're their sources and methodology?

Pfft. That's nothing, RIAA is sueing LimeWire for 1.5 Trillions.

i'm all against piracy and all but I wish when they compiled numbers like these they used some reasonable assumptions.  saying 1 download = 1 full price sale is ridiculous and everyone knows it.  if they said something like a ceiling of $118 Billion with an estimated impact of $10 Billion it would give these estimates a hell of a lot more credibility.

Misleading as always, each download does not equal a lost sale. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that if it were impossible to download, or significantly risky, that those 4.6 million PSP2 downloads wouldn't have accounted for at least 1 million more sales. Or maybe just 500,000 or maybe 2 million, we don't know. That's the problem with estimating the loses from piracy, there's really no way to tell with accuracy. 

Don't get me wrong, I still think piracy is bad and I don't like the justifications pirates come up with, but there's NO way that the industry missed out on 118 billion dollars from piracy. 

well it's just the top 20 most downloaded japanese games.. so it likely goes beyond that in damage

That dissidia figure is SHOCKING.

5 MILLION!!!!

Read the post above yours.

In addition to it, I believe there are folks who download games multiple times. Since it is so easy, there's really no reason not to. As Matt said, the sales lost to piracy could be as low as  1/10th of the number of downloads and the revenue lost even lower.

even then, 1/10 is 11.8 Billion dollars... and cut that in half and it's still nearly 6 billion dollars of losses..

Its unlikely people will download such games more than once.....why would they? and the files are big so its annoying too.

Leo-J FTW!