UMD is the key!!!!!

I disagree.  In theory, it's easier for the average person to pirate on the DS than the PSP because you do nothing more than put the R4 card in and you're donee, but in reality that's not really how it works out.  The problem with the DS scenario is that your average demographic that purchases DS games or the average demographic that purchases DS games for their kids don't know about piracy on the console.  The other issue is that R4 cards are only purchased through select online retailers or places like Ebay.

With the PSP, most people are already going to have or get a memory stick because it's required to even save games.  If you're one of those people, as you're stating, who bought a PSP just to pirate, then you can buy a memory stick at any retail store that sells video game products.  As long as your PSP was hackable, then it's nothing more than following a simple set of steps.  

The picture I even posted about the number of illegal downloads at the time they did the study shows pirated copies of popular games at the time.  Two high profile Nintendo games compared to Dissidia Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star Portable 2.

 Then you state the PSP software didn't sell worse because of piracy?

GTA Liberty City Stories was released in 2005, selling 7.48m, but compare this to Vice City Stories which only sold 4.38m.  One could argue that with the PS2 release of LCS that a lot of people didn't want to purchase the PSP version in hopes that VCS also received a PS2 release, which it did, but three million sales, especially when it's well known that PSPs had CFW and people found out how to rip UMDs and pirate them by that time.

Here are a few early released titles and their sales and then late release titles for comparison.  Obviously just going by VGChartz data, and if you want to argue the sales are way off and undertracked, blame VGChartz, but doesn't VGChartz just track them themselves randomly and then update NPD numbers?  If that's the case, the numbers won't be too undertracked because it's always the first month sales that matter most.

Crisis Core(2007) sells 3.07 million and Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep(2010) sells 1.89m.  Birth By Sleep also had some heavy DRM that wouldn't work on CFW PSPs until months after release, so that right there is possibly why it has as many sales as it does.  Dissidia(2008) sells 2.16m.  Duodecim(2010) sells .78m.  Final Fantasy 4 DS sells 1.15m while Complete Collection(2010) sells .46m, and argue as you might, it includes a two hour prologue, all the GBA dungeons, and the After Years.  God of War Chains of Olympus(2008) sells 3.09 compared to Ghost of Sparta(2010) selling .83m. 

If you don't just blindly think that the PSP didn't actually sell games and do a little bit of research, it's clear that the sales started declining the more prevailant the piracy became.  As I said before, initial PSP2000s could use CFW but then Sony patched it and the PSP2000s were locked down quite some time, well beyond the release of the PSP3000.

From Wiki.

"The PSP scene is well known for its homebrew community. The homebrew community were initially unable to hack the later PSP-2000s and the PSP-3000 because it had a new CPU (motherboards revealed to be TA-088v3 (for PSP Slim) and TA-090v2 (for PSP-3000)) which does not support the PRE IPL Exploit used in hacking the previous versions. This is due to the motherboard having its own PRE IPL where it checks the firmware thoroughly; if passed, the PRE IPL is cut off entirely to prevent unwanted modifications to the system.

In November 2008, Datel announced a "Lite Blue Tool" battery which allows the PSP-3000 to boot into service mode. This battery is not able to start homebrew as the new PRE-IPL has yet to be cracked. The Lite Blue Tool was deterred from distribution due to legal action by Sony. Some time later, Datel changed the name from Lite Blue Tool to Max Power Digital and changed the description.

MaTiAz, a known hacker in the PSP hacking community, found an exploit which is done with a US copy of GripShift and a HEN save game exploit. However, this was only temporary. After the release of this initial hack, a sizable increase in sales of the game was experienced. Many eBay sellers inflated their prices to cash in on the sudden demand. A revised version of the PSP firmware (v5.03) was released shortly after to patch the exploit. Malloxis found a TIFF crash which is proven to work on 5.02 and 5.03 firmwares for PSP-3000; further crafted and engineered by MaTiAz, the TIFF crash became a TIFF exploit capable of loading an h.bin from the root memorystick. Davee, another hacker, further engineered this exploit with a privilege escalation exploit and created a Homebrew Enabler (HEN) which would allow the execution of unsigned code by users. In firmware revision 5.50, the TIFF vulnerability was removed, preventing any further firmwares being affected by the exploit. The HEN for the TIFF exploit, which was called "ChickHEN", was released on May 5, 2009.

On June 5, 2009, custom firmware version 5.03GEN-A for HEN was released, which is compatible with both PSP-2000 v3 and PSP-3000. It allows users to play game backups (ISO/CSO), PS1 games, and includes access to PSN, VSH, and recovery mode. This marked a major step forward in ending Sony's PSP-3000 piracy protection. Two days later, on June 7, 2009, a duo of hackers (Xenogears and Becus25) released custom firmware support software based on a modified work of the released 5.03GEN-A for the formerly unhackable handheld called "Custom Firmware Enabler 3.01" in which PSP-3000 users can install custom firmware and load those firmware's files onto the PSP's RAM with the direct usage of "ChickHEN".

From this point on, everything but Go was hackable.  It wasn't until too long afterwards that it became easier than ever to hack the PSP. 

On January 2, 2011, Mathieulh announced the discovery of the PSP's master keys, allowing homebrew to run on the PSP without any firmware modifications.

This includes CFW applications which can now be loaded and installed without doing anything special.

*edit*

Edited something that VGChartz listed as 2004 releases, but the PSP came out December 2004 in Japan, 2005 in the west.

I saw the graph... it just doesn't show what you think it does... except that people who owned PSP's were more interested in pirating games then buying them.

Which again... is why the PSP was bought.... piracy.

The PSP games just didn't have the same value to cost ratio.  Hence piracy rates are higher.

As for sales post 2009... why are they so low?   Well, everybody knew the PSP was no DS already.  Consumers moved on from it.

Look at Gamecube

Batman rise of SIn Tzu sold worse then Batman Vegnece for example.

Burnout 2 sold worse then Burnout 1.

When your console isn't that popular sales tend to drop as time go on rather then increase.  (Outside single market games like sports games).

It's just classic "loser" declining sales numbers.  The people who wanted to buy PSP games (aka the ones who bought it at launch) just stopped playing PSP games.

Most console users don't use their consoles for the whole liftime.

It's not like PSP is the only videogame system to have super easy piracy afterall.  None of them had such a low tie ratio.

Dreamcast had twice the tie ratio, was only bought by "the hardcore" and all one needed to do to pirate dreamcast games was... burn a cd.

Piracy on Dreamcast was RIDICULIOUSLY easy if people thought the game was worth it.

It's just the majority of people are programmed to WANT to buy a product at a fair price.  Piracy largely only results when the cost to benefit ratio reaches a critical mass level.

Yeah.  The PSP was bought so people could pirate games on the console.  That's why in 2005, seven million people bought GTA Liberty City Stories, the reason four million people bought Vice City Stories, the reason why three million people bought Chains of Olympus, etc, etc, etc.  Why is it that in the year 2005 and 2006, the PSP has 16 titles that have sold more than one million copies.  Compare that to the 3DS which right now has 13 titles that have sold more than one million copies.  Which in this case I'm even giving the 3DS an unfair advantage, when two of the 3DS titles that are higher than one million were released in 2013.  PSP was released in March 2005, 3DS in March 2011, so the end of 2006/2012 would be the same time frame for both. 

I mean are you trying to avoid fact that's right there in front of your face?  It really seems like you are.  The numbers of the games and their sequels being far lower when piracy was more prevalilant tells you something, and there are those of you that don't care to look at the facts presented right in front of your faces. 

People that buy a console just to pirate, doesn't make one series that sells three million titles reduce to a sequel that sells less than a million.  Because those three million titles means that the people owned the game before they knew about CFW, before they knew you could pirate the sequel.  Otherwise, those people wouldn't have bothered purchasing the first game.  Coinsidering that people thought Chains of Olympus was a great game and how much it's praised that Ghost of Sparta is an even better game, there's no other reason than piracy for this game to have two million LESS sales than the original release. But just ignore factual information that's right in front of your face.

Them R4 cards were so mean.

Everyone had 1.

Considering there's actual data to support piracy of the PSP with Dissidia being pirated five million times, Phantasy Star Portable 2 being pirated over four million times at that time, gives me more on the opinion that people pirated more games than your "can or could," theory.

The PSP is a portable device that is in no way close to the graphical capabilities of the PS3.  Anti Vita consumerists use the Vita being a portable PS3 as why the system doesn't sell, so you're now going to say this is the reason the PSP didn't sell?  How is it that it's sold for such a long period of time before hand?  Don't you think sales of the PSP would have stopped after Uncharted which was released in 2007 rather than wait until God of War 3?  Your theory on why the PSP sales slowed down is full of holes.

While your post is an unproven theory, my posts is backed with factual information that shows numbers of how many downloads of specific games in that period of time.  Downloads that exceed the title in question multiple times over.  Time frames that correlate decrease in sales to when all PSPs aside from the Go were opened up and allowed piracy.

The 3DS has a lot of shovelware? Is this a joke? Apart from some of the games released in 2011. I completely disagree, there aren't many shovelware titles on the 3DS. The DS completely, but the 3DS not really. Honestly, if you think the Vita has a better library of games, I guess that's your opinion, but like most.. I completely disagree. I mean, the 3DS library is so great and the games are all worth playing besides the few crappy ones.

Lol good joke topic..

Oh wait, is this serious?

Wow....

Shovelware does not sell consoles, good games sell consoles...