Still, my point on this is PSP software sales aren't what they could because of the pirating issue. I wouldn't be so concerned if it was small...but these are huge numbers. Tons of people are pirating games on the PSP. This is really downplaying it's software sales.

Your point is economically unsound. You are working by the largely false notion that people who are buying a PSP solely to play pirated games would still have purchased their PSP if they could not pirate them. This is simply not the case for the majority of the pirates out there. There are very, very few true-blue pirates who will never agree to pay for any game ever.  But just the same, the pirates who are otherwise pirating will not pay the prices being asked for PSP games right now.

>It's not that i think Best Buy would be out to get pirates. It's that I'd expect individual people to do so. I know plenty of people who'd be willing to screw someone over by reporting them if they knew they were going to pirate and if they pissed the guy off. Not that i imagine anything would come of it.

LOL.. yeah, 'cause people will go and call the Police: "Yeah, this jerk guy who came to our store today. I have a feeling he pirated games."

;)

When did I ever say people that solely bought a PSP to pirate? Just like kingofwale, I didn't find out about homebrew and piracy on the PSP until like a year or so into my PSP ownership. I think that's who a majority of the pirates are, people that found out about it after they purchased the PSP. Can't be positive though.

 I've known people who've done similar things.  Not to the police... but there are websites and phone numbers you can call to report piracy.

Either way, the Area/Zip code thing I'm pretty sure has to do with tax laws.  It happens in a few stores of different chains in my area... everytime you go in.

Either way since they already had my info i just took the extra second to get that silly Best Buy rewards card.  5 dollars after spending some obscene amount... but hey it's better then nothing I guess... I got to use my first 5 dollar coupon to buy a friends gift to get it under the "Maxiumium price" buying limit.

What can i say, i like to bend the rules. 

 If you re-read Skyrender's first post you'll see why your conclusion is likely a false one.

As noted, the majority of consumers are trained to pay for what they want, at a price that they feel is fair. Even if some of the pirates are Johnny-come-latelies (which I doubt most are, given how well-known it is now that the PSP is a pirate's dream handheld), they still would only engage in piracy either if they felt that PSP games were too expensive, or if they were so lacking in consumer training that they could break free of the concept of paying for goods and services entirely and become a "true" pirate.

Thanks for putting this way better then I could have by the way. It really bugs me when people just point to numbers of pirated copies and say "See!" without a greater understanding of the complexity of the matter.

People using numbers without having the knowledge to know what those numbers actually mean in the correct context is one of the few things that breaks my usually mellow attitude. 

True. I just don't see how this doesn't affect PSP software sales at all. Y'all seem to be saying the sales would be exactly the same even without piracy. This should be affecting PSP software at least somewhat.

They really should make Microeconomics a required course. There's a lot of things that go into how things sell or don't sell, and a great deal of it seems like common sense to those of us who get economic theory, but I know that most people don't get it. This lack of knowledge is often preyed upon by corporations, upsetting economic balance in their favor and defeating the market mechanism's purpose of giving consumers and suppliers both a say in how the market adapts. Were microeconomics a mandatory course as early as high school, arguments such as "piracy is killing the music/game/movie industry" would never hold water with the majority.