I think the multimedia reason of poor game sales for psp is way exaggerated, many people have phones and ipod type devices that do all of those multimedia functions PSP does.

Also PSP is a pretty big device if you compare it to a cell or ipod, people are not carrying PSP everywhere they go just to hear music or see movies while their smaller cell or ipod does the same thing but smaller. The multimedia functions are a plus for PSP but there are way better things out there for those functions, people just pirate the hell out of PSP.

360 is just harder to mod, LIVE ban possibility and the RROD.

It's funny how clueless most people here are about x360 modding. If you don't know, don't pretend you know. That is all.

id say LIVE and that if it RRODs u gotta pay a premium to fix it.

About the piracy, the excuse that "i wouldn't have bought it anyway" is pretty lame IMO, since why did you pirate it in the first place and you propably would have bought something else instead.

I had thousands of NES, SNES and Megadrive ROMs on my PC around five years ago. I played three of those games a couple of times. I haven't had the ROMs in years anymore for, as pretty obvious, it just didn't make any sense to have them.

The only thing i have pirated in the last few years is music. I'm not paying 10-20€ for a record that has one good song and i'm not purchasing them digitally since i need them on CD to be able to play them in my car and it's just as illegal to burn legitemately purchased music to CD as it is to burn pirated music.

It's not a problem in any of those countries or any where else.  The amont of money "lost" due to piracy is statistically insignificant.  Not one company would be significantly better off if piracy didn't exist.  Some might get more money, others would have less (say, cause their hardware didn't sell or the IP didn't gain a following), but overall it'd mean almost no difference to the industry unless those pirated copies could be replaced with legitimate copies.  The only way that happens is if they drop the price of games significantly, say to $10 for a new release.  Something where anyone in the world can afford the price.

Including the piracy.

Perhaps I missed it in the 8 pages, but did anyone actually mention Intellectual Property?

Software is intellectual property. If you are playing a game (again, intellectual property) and you didn't pay the publisher/developer/owner of said property to license and use it (note you don't ever own it -- you acquire a license to use it), you have stolen property. Period. The law is clear. Just ask all those kids and parents that were sued (sucessfully) by the Music Recording Industry for downloading pirated music... Many of those kids tried the same angle of, " I didn't have the money, I simply couldn't possible afford it, and wouldn't have paid for it in the first place." That didn't fly.

Bottom line is that it doesn't matter if you can't afford it, is unavailable in your country, or whatever your "issue" is. If you DL it and play it, you have stolen it. Period.

I don't buy that you can't prove pirates would never have spent the money in the first place. That's bullshit. They bought the console and have some money. If the only way to play was through legitimate channels, they would do it -- OR DO WITHOUT. Many won't choose to do without and will cough up the cash. Will all? certainly not. Will some? Without question. I would be willing to bet that there ARE actual studies that can illustrate consumption patters for IP when a consumer has easy, difficult, and no access to pirated content...

My roommate owns only 2 PSP games, one a gift from me.  It's not modded, either.  What does he use it for? Multimedia.  He is the average PSP owner, 2 games + multimedia.  He doesn't have an iPod (and it's ridiculous that you assume everyone does), but his phone plays mp3s and has way more memory and yet he still uses his PSP for a multimedia player.  That's why it exists.

@ChichiriMyuo: The issue may not be that much that the pirated software had lost sales, but other software. You spend your time playing the game that you "wouldn't have bought anyway" instead of buying the game you would buy, unless you didn't have the pirated game. I believe that's the biggest piracy issue on PSP, people play SNES ROMs on emulator instead of buying PSP games.

Right, and many retailers would have even in a better postion if it weren't for thieves. I can't count how much money was lost even at places like KMart due to theft. If the store lost even $500,000 before markup a year thats a good amount of jobs that could have been created but weren't thanks to thieves.

Also, I think the developers would not agree with that. Crysis anyone?

"November's Crysis sold 1 million copies worldwide as of February this year, but Crytek is nevertheless struck by how many illegitimate copies are circulating.

Crytek engine business manager Harald Seeley said that he could not reveal specific internal figures pertaining to piracy of Crysis, but he added, "I can say the level of piracy was the highest of any I’ve experienced on a project."

This week, Crytek president Cevat Yerli said that piracy was so bad on the PC-exclusive Crysis, that the studio would no longer be making PC-exclusive titles."