Sony Says Piracy is PSP's Biggest Problem

[admin]

Sony says the biggest problem for their portable PSP console is piracy. Sony's senior vice president of publisher relations, Rob Dyer, says piracy is preventing the PSP from being profitable. "That's been the biggest problem, no question about it. It's become a very difficult proposition to be profitable, given the piracy right now. And the fact that the category shrunk inside of retail."

However, those following our NPD US Video Games Sales analysis will know that US PSP sales have been dropping steadily, while the Nintendo DS is outselling its only rival by more than a 6 to 1 margin at times. But Nintendo DS piracy is in fact worse than PSP, with flash carts that make playing downloaded pirated games extremely easy, to the ire of Nintendo. So one does question whether piracy is the cause of the PSP's relative failure (sales were down 44% compared to the same time last year in April).

Others will say that the DS's, and Nintendo's, more inclusive gaming strategy may be the key, where Nintendo are marketing the DS and Wii to non traditional gamers, whereas Sony's marketing efforts have all been towards to the traditional, young male gaming demographic.

More:

http://www.examiner.com/x-28759-Atlanta-Video-Game-News-Examiner~y2010m5d22-Sony-pegs-piracy-as-the-PSPs-biggest-problem

[drfsupercenter]

Didn't the CEO straight-up say they're making money off piracy thanks to people buying PSP hardware just to hack it?

I don't buy this. At all.

[admin]

I've referred to that before, but I can't seem to find a source for it (it's probably somewhere in this forum).

But if you look at the fact that the DS, Wii, Xbox 360 are all easier to play pirated games on than the PSP or PS3, and then you look at the combined sales of these consoles, and the picture is quite clear - maybe you can't say that piracy helps hardware sales, but you *definitely* can't say that piracy hinders hardware sales.

There are tons of things Sony should be doing for the PSP before they can go out and blame piracy, things such as better online support/content, better pricing, better games, and less reliance on proprietary formats.

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah...

Though I thought the Xbox 360 was pretty hard to hack? The other two, though, I agree with.

[admin]

The Xbox 360 was hacked a long time ago. I'm not sure of the current status in respect to new firmware/hardware (I think it's become hard/impossible after a June 2009 update), but in the past it wasn't too hard, although you can get banned quite easily if you connect to Xbox Live. The Wii may be of a similar situation. The PSP has been hacked before, not sure about the current status, but Sony has been very focused on securing the console, much more so than say Nintendo (until recently, that is).

In any case, the point was that all of the other consoles had been hacked sometime in the past, whereas the PS3 has not, while the PSP's direct competitor, the DS, is probably the most easily hacked console of all (at least the earlier models), and sales seems to favour all the more easily hacked consoles. Of course, this is just playing with stats, since the better sales on the Wii/Xbox 360/DS in the US probably has nothing to do with hacking, and all to do with what these consoles offer that the PS3/PSP do not (lower prices, better online features, more inclusive games).

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah, and I think Sony needs to stop whining about piracy... I have a PS3 and use Linux on it, and therefore I refuse to update.

These consoles are obviously selling lots of units, and it really bugs me to see how companies keep complaining about piracy/hackers/whatever when they're making loads of money.

[Budreaux]

The XBox360 is a very simple machine to hack, so long as you know how to build interface connections to allow your computer to talk to it. Simple firmware flashes allow copied games and even LIVE play w/o bans. My personal opinion is that while MS will ban you if they catch you, they are not trying to make it too difficult either. They know why their sales are holding up against a better machine.
Sure, their 8955 firmware update disabled the e-fuse set to prevent jtagging a box, it did nothing to prevent DVD drive firmware rewrites, which is the most common way of hacking the box.
The jtag boxes, my preference, are becoming more rare, but they are such a treasure and you can do so much with them, it is jsut rediculous.