surely the fact that the PS3 is selling just as well, if not better than the 360 means a lot to this arguement. People have always said the hacked machines will always sell more, and in this case its utterly incorrect. Game sales for the 360 are also very strtong.
The wii was also selling just as well as it is now before it was hacked.

Good point.  It seems that there will always be core audience who will not pirate stuff.  When it comes to piracy buyers can be classified into:

1. People who never buy pirated games

2. People who sometimes buy pirated games

3. People who always pirate when it is possible

The point is winning over #2 and a portion of #3 to buy legit.  Since I have already argued that the presence of pirated content for a system may convince the crowd from #2 and #3 to actually purchase the system.  Folks from #2 (and some from #3) only want to buy games that they think are worth buying, that's why they never go all legit.  They don't want to spend good money to buy crap, how can companies win them over?  Sell really cheap partial games, on discs or for download.  These games would not be demos, they would actually be playable and would represent about 20-40% of the actual game.  The teaser factor will always bait them in if it's good, and the company also stands to profit from people who would never have paid for their games.

The way I see it, people always want to do what they think is right.  When they see products are unreasonably priced they would pirate it because to them it's not really stealing.  But if you present a reasonable alternative they will prefer something that will silence the inner naggings of their conscience.  Point in case the Apple Music Store's customers, I bet those guys would probably be downloading those songs illegally if Apple did not open their store.

I dunno. Are crimes good things?