Piracy doesn't cause "billions of dollars in losses" as big execs lead you to believe.  I more or less believe it's a marketting ploy to explain why shitty games/movies don't sell well.  I mean for instance the movie industry, if they were truly loosing billions of dollars in piracy every year, then why are sales up for them?  Why are they profitting billions of dollars?  Start complaining when you actually lose money.

And the industry likes to operate under the presumption that somehow they can charge whatever they like, and if they can just prevent people from getting copies of the games, EVERYONE who has a copy will end up buying it.  It is very likely the impact would be marginal, and there are people who just aren't that interested in the game to pay the full price.  Some will end up always picking free of course, but others won't pay $60 for it.

They stop piracy, they will go after the used market.  After that, they will go after the rental market.  Then, they will want to force you to never own anything but keep paying money to play, and then raise prices (if possible) to where you pay 50 cents to play one session.  They will also go after lower budget games to, and free games, if they can (like Angry Birds).  Like what is normally happening, the industry will do what the market will bear.

The videogame industry doesn't have box office as a revenue stream (they used to have arcades as a source of revenue but that dried up).  So, end result is that they whine like crazy about any lost dollar they don't get, presuming that they can get what they want, as opposed to what people will pay.

It's called Arcade that died a decade ago.

Just because the movie industry made, say for example $30bn profit, that dosen't mean it could not have been $50bn or more without priracy.

Same with games, music and whatever else is pirated.

Personally I think games are too expensive and will probably sell more and help decrease priracy if priced cheaper. Some will argue but from talking to sales assistants in gaming stores, almost as many copies of a game like Halo or COD are sold second hand as those sold brand new.

In other words as many millions that pick them up in the first week, just as many pick them up second hand a couple months after at a much cheaper price, but these sales are obviously not recorded.

This doesn't mean that everyone sells a game when they are finish with it but as many second hand copies end up in the stores as originally purchased.

There certainly are people that don't buy games that would if they couldn't pirate them. But its not as bad as the industry says, because some people pirate and still buys games and some people wouldn't buy any at all unless they could pirate.

That doesn't mean what they're doing isn't illegal and unethical. So pirates get no sympathy from me. Used game sales at least help subsidise the stores that sell legitimate games and help to employ people who then inject their pay back into the economy and are taxed.

And how did I actually disagree with that?

You need better proof than "I believe". I've actually talked to people who pirate stuff, and it's the power trip for them more than price.

That's silly, you want to have a debate of anicdotes?  Alright, a buddy of mine pirates on the PC and the PSP because he can and it's easy, but buys every game he plays on the PS3 because he can't pirate as easily.  Therefore if the PSP and PC were more difficult to pirate he would have bought some of those games he truly wanted.  The idea that people only pirate things they don't want that much is far too black and white, of course how easy it is to pirate is a part of the equation as well.

In reality there is a spectrum of pirates just like anything else: some pirate solely for the power trip and others pirate because it's easy and they can save some money, and to get any reasonable idea how many of those people would buy the games they pirate if pirating was impossible would be a survey.  To just say "you can't just say I believe" and then talk about how you know 6 or 7 people that prove your point about pirates as a whole is ludicrous.