I disagree.  I think it greatly inflates PSP sales... as I've said.  Just about everyone I know who has a PSP bought it soley for the fact that they could hack it to get games for free and to use it as a portable emulator to play their pirated roms on.

 The guy just said it doesn't affect the PSP sales as in it doesn't make the hardware sales low. He's talking about the fact that it makes software sales low as am I.

there is basiclly 2 types of pirating

1 someone downloads the file for free and uses it
2 Someone does one and turns around and sells it

2 is by far the most harmfull

A big part of 1 is stuff people would not get if they had to pay, so the impact is very low.

I'll put it this way. Look at credible studies on media piracy. (aka not ones that are just... they downloaded 10 copies that means we lost 600 dollars!)

You'll see that the results show their isn't a statistcal differnece from zero. In other words, piracy doesn't really effect media sales. While it lowers some peoples purchases who buy games... it also gets people who wouldn't buy games to buy hardware. It Also gets people who wouldn't buy games to buy hardware, get enthused about a medium they weren't as familiar with before and start buying the real product.

One Microsoft employee's model is "Don't pirate, but if you do pirate... pirate us." because they know if they aren't going to make a sale anyway it benfits them to have the pirates be used to their software.

While I'm saying it doesnt... and it just makes the software sales low because it inflates the hardware sales higher making the attach rate low.

In otherwords... if the PSP didn't have piracy. I'd expect software to sell about the same... and hardware sales to drop off considerably.

As for the microsoft guy, i bothered to track down an exact mention.

I happen to work at a Retail store and most people I've talked to (who bought a PSP) bought it for music feature. (yes, more so than the game feature itself)

Yes, they will probably discover the CF after a while, but to say people automatically know about the pirated rom is like saying how everyone who bought a Wii is going to get Wiikey the very next day.

 Look, forget the hardware for a minute Kasz, I'm talking STRICTLY about software and pirating. People complain about the PSP sales being so low, but they ignore the fact of just how much games are pirated. I'm talking about why software sales are low, not about the hardware sales. I'm giving a reason to people about why the software sales are low. 

And I'm saying I don't thing software sales are low. I think they are about exactly where they should be. If you removed piracy from the equation there wouldn't be a statistically significant change... those people who aren't buying PSP games still wouldn't be buying PSP games.  The same goes for DS, Wii, and just about any other users.

That doesn't make what they do "right" or anything though.  So don't think i'm condoning piracy. 

 The thing is think people buy the PSP to pirate initially. I didn't know about homebrew and piracy on the PSP until like a year after I got mine. I'm sure there are people that know about it before they buy a PSP, but I'm think that a majority people who pirate find out about it AFTER they buy a PSP. I'm sure people intend to buy the games with their own money initially.