And don't forget that in some regions, price of games are simply ridiculous. If a game costs 25% of a working adult's salary... Will one ever be justified to by an original game? It is kinda irresponsible to do so when you live in places with very low income.

simply,not everyone can or will to afford the game costs with their low incom.So piracy in China is freaking horrible,and i know many foreigners here are used to piracy.

I pirate all the time. Only old Xbox 1 games though, so I have no worries about dev paydays. I'd rather spend my money on new games that benefit the industry rather than used games that only benefit rip off merchants.

I do know at least half a dozen people with R4 carts though.

When I was a kid(25ish years ago) I had boxes full of C90s with loads of games on each of them, but always paid for a lot as well. It was common to let your mates copy your games while you copied theirs.

People need to stop preaching. Am I on VGChartz or in church?

uhm, ok? i almost only play SP games. I give a rats ass about online play and achievements.. so you say that theres no point in me playing my games?

There are quite a few. 

In-game advertisements for third parties, free games with optional microtransactions for cheap PC gamers, selling peripherals and consoles for profit for first parties, etc. 

In the Information Age, people are used to being able to copy anything. Copyright starts to lose its meaning. Our avatars are copyrighted, the youtube videos we watch are copyrighted, the quotations we use are copyrighted, and the screenshots we make are copyrighted.

But why does it matter? In the past, when copying was a big industry, it was very important to have the exclusive right to make copies. But why now? Companies might keep their IPs, and make money from them in other ways, but in the age of ctrl+c and ctrl+v , asking money for COPIES of digital content is becoming meaningless.

Piracy as an excuse for bad sales is just old lame way of ingoring actual faults about a game. Developers crying out loud that piracy kills teh industry! are loosers who can't even analyze and understand their own mistakes with the game design.

Look at PS3, no piracy there, yet games are crap, and can't sell even on the same scale as competition does. Shouldn't it be vice versa, that competition should be 99% dead because of the piracy and your OP?

I pirate out of convenience. All the time. I see it as a competing outlet to acquire games. I feel no guilt. It's not even illegal in many countries to download for personal use. I also probably own more games legally than than 99% of people preaching about supporting the games industry.

Couple things, song writers (you know those people that write mostly all the pop music you hear (not rock, the band's usually write their own stuff)) get all their money from sales. Before the big P2P blitz, song-writers had little trouble making a living through the music they wrote. Nowadays, it's a different story. People buying individual songs instead of albums may not hurt the band/artist themselves, but songwriters get hit VERY hard. Add in piracy, and most of them can't even make a living anymore. So to those that think "well, downloading music only hurts the labels, bands can still make money from touring, merchandise, etc." is a little short-sighted.

As to the 'Studies show those who download music often buy the most too', I think that's a case of misinformation. As in, people who take the studies may admit to downloading but also overestimate how much they spend on music to justify it to themselves.People lie in those studies all the time, which is what makes it hard to take them seriously.

As to games, the gaming industry is the largest entertainment industry. Music and movies don't even come close, so I'm sure they're not in nearly as much trouble over piracy.

I do agree with MDMAniac though. Blaming poor sales (in games)on piracy is just denial. This in general, for 'big' games that get pirated, their sales are taking a hit from piracy, maybe not as much of one as they'd like to admit though. Maybe.

I could agree with until you said that PS3 games are Crap. The Plataform has 90% of it's titles shared with both x360 and PC, many times with both, so even if the exclusives were bad the good multiplats should save it ( latelly, many multiplats are performing better in the PS3, mind you). And the PS3 games are good, but the tastes of it's users are much diverse. The 360 and Wii have both 9+ mln sellers not just because the game are good, but because they are a focal point for the custumers. You buy a x360 you buy Halo or Gears or both. And a Wii is nothing without at least Mario Kart( if you like Nintendo you'll also get Galaxy and now NSMB. There's also Wiifit, the reason for many Wii purchases. So go back to piracy is an excuse theory, because bashing a console library for it's lack of focal point isn't fun. Also, wait for God of War and GT5(mandatory Ps3 fanboy argument)