It's not my opinion.  It's current economic theory.  As in the theory favored by experts.

As for the sociopath comment.  Most people would rather pay a free price for something rather then get it for free against the person who made its will.

It would ne foolish if you people don't think Piracy doesn't hurt sales. The reason people pirate on PSP is that it is so damn easy to do. Yes the DS isn't that hard itself but the casual crowd isn't going to be a tech swavy as hardcore crowd in which Sony themselves say they cater to.

I do think UMD games should be more in the range of DS games though and that is the only other factor than piracy that I see hurting the PSP. If you told me the only way possible to watch movies was buying them then I would have hundreds of DVDs. Since downloading is easy I only buy great movies and download movies I have seen in the past or theater (Sorry I need to eat, live and buy games). Crappy movies are also worth downloading but not buying to me anyways.

One thing I can say is that I have never pirated any game that is out on current or last gen systems. I do download roms for older games to play on my computer but if there is a remake I tend to buy the games I downloaded.

I would have to say that it comes down to what you believe in. Each person must decide how they feel about each company and decide if they will support them or not.

I love games. Even though I would easily be able to pirate any Microsoft software my position is no pirated 360 games. Still, I would rather slit my own throat than pay for xbox live.

I bought a brand new PSP 3000 even though I knew that I could pirate with the PSP 2000 sitting on the shelf there next to it.

I have never pirated a game. Sales of these games are what keep this industry alive!

Movies have the theater;

Music has concerts...

Fair game.

Who the fuck is going to pay the developers to keep making great games for me if everyone is too cheap to pay for them?

If the PS3 was hacked when it first came out and Sony was losing $200.00 on each console sold and because of this it sold twice as many...

I am a big Sony fan!

Choose your guns and stick with them, but don't shoot yourself in the foot!

I think it's a very safe bet to say that complete Digital Distribution is looking quite favorable to SONY for a future handheld.

Resistance is selling pretty well if you look at the numbers and MLB.
Also without hacks the PSP wouldn't have sold as well as it did.
DS sells greatly in Hardware despite how easy it is to get flash carts/fake DS carts? So how is Sony to use the excuse? *shrugs*

I also think Sony is going to go the way of Digitial Distribution on their next PSP, but the question is how many people will buy into it? And I'm sure once a title is downloaded *someone* will figure out the code and get the full files on the internet for people to download. IMHO there is no real way around piracy.

I think we have established that piracy moves consoles. This only really benefits nintendo though because they are the only ones who make money off of each console. Not to mention Nintendo has a wide demographic many of which believe piracy is wrong or oblivious to its existance. So software can still do well despite it. Sony loses money off of each purchase so piracy wouldn't help it.

The DS may be easier to hack but the PSP has become more associated with it. My friends haven't bought a PSP game in a long time. Yet they are fully enjoying games on it. Now they at least have the decency to buy the american version of Dissidia when it comes out, but I am sure there are tons of games that they have that they will probably never buy. I am sure there are many games that if they couldn't download they still wouldn't buy, but I am also sure that there would be some games that they would fork over money for.

It is sad to hear about people using flashcarts and storing games on SD cards. I know there are people that wouldn't buy the games anyway. However, there are people that would but when they find a free version, they would rather have that.

The video game industry doesn't have concerts or movies to make money off of like the other industries. They rely solely on property sales.

Losses may be exaggerated but the losses are still there.

I am never going to buy a dodge viper. So I should just go to a dealership and hot wire one. I am not taking anything from them because I had no intention of purchasing in the first place. I know intellectual property is different but that is what is seems like at times.

I think digital distribution is the answer. Unless they can come up with a working cloud model and 3g. Not so sure that will happen for a long time though. It would definitely fix the storage and medium issue IMO.

<__< ya, there r at least 10 more important reasons but this is the most important factor(piracy=luck=charm=sale no.1) coz ps1 & 2 was totally showing off the power of piracy will bring in luck & when the luck come it'll charm all the customers(including more than 80%% of people who don't buy/can't burned pirated software) & it can then attract many other console fanboys & it'll then forced the 3rd party game developer to join in the population & therefore, the piracy sale will also bring up the non-piracy sale & go all the way up to no. 1(i know it look confusing, retarded, strange, unbelievable but it is the fact just like i can't believe pokemon/wii sport is always no.1 in sale after don't know how many BS weeks/months)...

I have personally never seen a system with a piracy problem as out of control as the PSP except for the Dreamcast after the boot disc was released. Well actually the PC is as well but it has a much larger base of potential customers to save it from the same situation the PSP is now in.

I think Sony's problem is they are trying to fit the PSP hardware into a toothpaste container.