PSP Piracy Levels Are “Sickening”

[Evil Avatar]

Edge Online has posted a few choice quotes (http://www.edge-online.com/news/sony-psp-piracy-levels-are-%E2%80%9Csickening%E2%80%9D) from SCEA Sr. VP Peter Dille, who blames piracy for the failure of the PSP platform (rather than the logical choice of crappy games).

"I'm convinced and we're convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP," Peter Dille, SCEA’s senior VP of marketing, told Gamasutra.

"It's not good for us, but it's not good for the development community. We can look at data from BitTorrent sites from the day Resistance: Retribution goes on sale and see how many copies are being downloaded illegally, and it's frankly sickening. We are spending a lot of time talking about how we can deal with that problem," he added.

According to the platform holder, up to 50 million potentially compromised PSPs are in the market.

[Major Scud]

while piracy is a problem on psp, lets be honest, ds piracy is pretty darn bad too. The difference is that the people that do buy games have so much more to pick from on ds. Dont get me wrong, I have an un-modded psp with lots of games for it, but if I'm going on a trip lugging the psp is more of a pain than taking my ds and I have more games to play on the ds.

[Wyrm]

^What he said^

If there were better games, I would still own a PSP.

It doesn't help that it's extremely easy to pirate PSP games and get them running on a PSP, but that's not our fault.

And, the DS faces this exact kind of piracy, and there are a hundred million more of those in circulation. Obviously, they aren't being effected too heavily by it.

[Evil Avatar]

I think there are some good games on the PSP, but they are a lot further and fewer between than good games on the DS (and that is coming from someone who isn't even a fan of the DS).

Rather than worry about what people are stealing, he should be worried about what people are buying. Post the release of the new GTA and there isn't even a new GTA game for the PSP! That says something right there.

[Exodus]

And let's be honest, the psp resistance game sucks fucking ass. The games are mediocre(I mean let's look at final fantasy crysis core, over rated, you can kill everything with the melee attack and hell the 'transition' to battle mode and out of battle mode is IRRITATING AS FUCK!*#@$_)

[Wyrm]

I agree there are great games on the PSP. I had lots of fun with mine. Then I realized that I owned a system essentially to play about four games, whereas my DS library approaches the thirty mark.

I have always been skeptical of Nintendo's platform, and I had believed for a long time that Sony would be able to compete. I'm not so sure now. It's like the PS3. They're not committed to offering a comparable software library, just a better feature list on the side of the box. I'm not sure why people at the top haven't realized this yet.

[Verruckt]

Wait, PSP is a failure? When did that happen?

[Major Scud]

verruckt its not so much a failure as it is not as successful as the competition by a very large margin and developers aren't really supporting it too much anymore. I mean name some major 3rd party games that are coming soon for the PSP, there just arent that many (at least that americans will go gaga over).

The real problem with psp in my opinion are that its still too big even with pspslim and it feels a lot more fragile then ds does. The games also seem more fragile. I would buy my youngest nephew a DS and not blink about it, but not a psp, it would be broken too fast. Battery life is also an issue. In a portable system people want something small, rugged, with good battery life and games they cannot find on a home console.

[Verruckt]

I'd say near 50 million so far against the handheld mainstay which is selling faster than Nintendo's other handhelds have sold is a decent success. People who were expecting it to really compete were fooling themselves.

As for the games I can't speak to that, I don't own a PSP, have no desire to own one, and if I were to own a handheld it'd be a DS anyway. I just think "failure" is way too strong a word.

[TeeCakes]

^What he said.

When all's said and done, the DS is on track to be the most successful video game machine in history. Better than the Gameboy, better than the Wii, and most certainly better than the PSP. Piracy has little to do with PSP's slower marketplace presence, it's more a case of David being pitted up against Goliath without his slingshot (system-selling games).

[Sensei-X]

up to 50 million potentially compromised PSPs are in the market.

So if you bought a PSP you're probably a crook? Nice way to make people who bought your shit feel good. :mad:

[Anenome]

People who were expecting it to really compete were fooling themselves.
- You mean like, oh, say, Sony?

I just think "failure" is way too strong a word.
- Failure can have several meanings. The PSP may be a failure in the marketplace, much as the Dreamcast was. Yet the Dreamcast is not a failure judged as a system, it was in fact quite a brilliant system tumbled by forces outside the company. The PSP is not really a success as a system, in that sense. It's not spawning classics. It spawned a lot of PSX ripoffs and never captured the imagination of the marketplace.

[Anenome]

^What he said.

When all's said and done, the DS is on track to be the most successful video game machine in history. Better than the Gameboy, better than the Wii, and most certainly better than the PSP. Piracy has little to do with PSP's slower marketplace presence, it's more a case of David being pitted up against Goliath without his slingshot (system-selling games).
- That's rather disingenuous. The DS (and GB in general) has shown that there's a market, a quite sizable market, for portable game playing. Had the PSP been what those gamers were looking for then they could've just as easily ditched the DS and moved to PSP. They didn't because the machine is not what the market is looking for in a portable console. Saying "DS is so good that it's okay that the PSP failed" is really a cop-out. The DS is good. And the PSP could've been competitive, but it wasn't. Sony miscalculated, again, despite widespread predictions years ago of Sony's handheld 'wonder' taking over the market.

Your analysis amounts to little more than Kutaragi-esque spin of the facts. Not really surprising, considering the source. The market is certainly big enough to support two consoles. The PSP simply sucked too badly to become self-sustaining. It's success a bit like the Ipod, capturing the perfect blend of features at the perfect price point and crowding out all others. But even before the Ipod came along there were tons of portable music players that weren't very popular. We could imagine the PSP would have experienced the same level of 'success' even if it had never had to compete with the DS at all.

[TeeCakes]

- That's rather disingenuous. The DS (and GB in general) has shown that there's a market, a quite sizable market, for portable game playing. Had the PSP been what those gamers were looking for then they could've just as easily ditched the DS and moved to PSP. They didn't because the machine is not what the market is looking for in a portable console. Saying "DS is so good that it's okay that the PSP failed" is really a cop-out. The DS is good. And the PSP could've been competitive, but it wasn't. Sony miscalculated, again, despite widespread predictions years ago of Sony's handheld 'wonder' taking over the market.

Your analysis amounts to little more than Kutaragi-esque spin of the facts. Not really surprising, considering the source. The market is certainly big enough to support two consoles. The PSP simply sucked too badly to become self-sustaining. It's success a bit like the Ipod, capturing the perfect blend of features at the perfect price point and crowding out all others. But even before the Ipod came along there were tons of portable music players that weren't very popular. We could imagine the PSP would have experienced the same level of 'success' even if it had never had to compete with the DS at all.

You should really work on your reading comprehension. I said that the PSP (and I quote) lacked "system-selling games".

[Metal Jesus]

I happen to have purchased 27 PSP games over the years that I consider "keepers". Stuff I wouldn't trade away... and that to me seems pretty good for a console. It's a nice mix of original stuff, ports & classics remade.

[Azriel77]

I am sick of hearing all these piracy is to blame stories everywhere. Since the piratebay verdict, every two bit entertainment industry is blaming it for there lack luckster sales, but of course it just COULDN'T BE that the economy is in the crapper, or there are not that many good games our for the PSP, or the fact that the psp is kind of pricey and many people do not even own one (me for example). Stop blaming everyone but yourselves for your products crappy sales.

[Demo_Boy]

Whenever I pick up a PSP i feel like "sidetalkin'

[Anenome]

You should really work on your reading comprehension. I said that the PSP (and I quote) lacked "system-selling games".

You tried to blame the PSPs failure on the DS's success :|

[Anenome]

I am sick of hearing all these piracy is to blame stories everywhere. Since the piratebay verdict, every two bit entertainment industry is blaming it for there lack luckster sales, but of course it just COULDN'T BE that the economy is in the crapper, or there are not that many good games our for the PSP, or the fact that the psp is kind of pricey and many people do not even own one (me for example). Stop blaming everyone but yourselves for your products crappy sales.

- I agree, it is the latest whipping boy for failing Devs to shift blame. There's certainly something to it, but some people are still making money and doing well. Recessions do tend to weed out the weak (companies), however. And maybe in the long-run that's a good thing for everyone.

[Greeble]

I think I have like 13-17 psp games. (This is after I traded a few I didn't like on goozex.) I think I probably have 10 DS games, though its hard to tell since I have lost a few. (Stupid cartridges are too easy to lose.) I tend to prefer my psp2000 to my dsi since I find it more comfortable to hold with better buttons and nicer screen. (Also like having 6-8 of my games on hand via 8gb memory stick) I realize I could kinda do the same thing with the DS but via a R4 card, but I don't really like having to visit piracy sites to download the roms, I prefer making images of my own games.

Just recently bought 2 games for a recent trip, Locoroco 2 for the psp and Kirby Super Star for the DS. Locoroco 2 is great and Kirby SSU sucks ass, which is too bad since I liked Squeak Squad. (I was trying to buy games that my wife might want to play, otherwise I would gotten GTA instead of Kirby)

My point is I think the psp has plenty of good games if you go back through the back catalog. (MGS portable ops, Dracula X, 2 Mega Man remakes, better versions of N+ and Puzzle Quest, Jeanne D' arc, Final Fantasy Tactics, 2 GTAs, Hot Shots Golf, Monster Hunter, Lumines, Wipeout Pulse or pure and sports games out the ass if you like that kind of thing)

And sure the DS has more quality games, but my god they look like ass for the most part.

[lockwoodx]

The PSP took almost 2 years before it had any good games. The format is even worse.

[sonysyndicate]

I will be honest I have a modded psp. I do not pirate psp games though; the only reason I modded it so I could use the emulators to play SNES and Genesis roms. If the modding community was unable to crack bios in the PSP I would not have purchased mine.

[bjornbarspingvinen]

All you morons that protect the stupid moron having Pirate bay, shut up, shut up.

Here´s the deal, this should be the scenario: You don´t pay you don´t get the product, if you pay, you do get to experience the product.
Right now pirates get all products and experience it without paying, they could buy it, but let´s face it , they don´t. Right now , the software is hostage where the consumer sets the "value" after he experienced the product. No way in hell does that scenario ever work.

[bjornbarspingvinen]

The PSP took almost 2 years before it had any good games. The format is even worse.

Always funny when people protect their cheapness and stealing with :"it´s no good games".
But still, they play the games, even complete some. If the games are so bad, people wouldn´t play them. So it´s mostly BS.
Damn, I hate cheap people... but it´s not just in downloads, the more they download the more cheap they are in general. That rule never fails.

[Syl]

I still have no idea why i haven't bought a PSP yet, the amount of titles for it that i'm interested in has easily surpassed the 20+ title number...

[alienchild]

The PSP only have two games that I've played from start to finish; Silent Hill Origins and God of War. Both fantastic games. On the wtb-list I have MGS Portable Ops, but since no store are carrying more than the 5 PSP games they've had since the PSP came out and haven't been able to sell, I can find the damn game anywhere. And no, it's not that important for me to go online and buy it. Other then that, it's a big letdown. I still remember what I was dreaming about when the PSP was announced;

* The option to hook it up to a TV and either play the games there, or watch movies/pictures/listen to music. No it doesn't defeat the whole "portable" feature, because it means I actually have a portable PS2(ish) that also works without a TV.
* Store games on memory cards. A heck of a lot easier to carry with you then the old GB cartidges (although the GBA ones were quite small), and I was really hoping I could cram lots of games on one cartridge once they got larger.
* New games in my favorite series;
- Resident Evil
- Final Fantasy (in FF7/8/9 style)
- Silent Hill
- Dino Crisis
+ lots of cool new survival horror games
* Tons of ported PS1/PS2 classics.
* I envisioned that DVD movies released by Sony would also come with a free PSP movie in the dvd case (talk about market penetration).

Well what happened what a big fuck you from Sony where the only two good things coming my way (that I was hoping for) was Silent Hill Origins and the surprisingly good quality of the screen.

Since release I've modded my PSP with a custom BIOS and have all my old PSX games available on it. I can stream movies over my network. I can read pdf files on it. I have a huuuge selection of homebrew utilities and games. Heck I can use my PSP as a remote control for all my appliances.

If anything, PSP modding have sold more consoles. As for the actual games sold, there are no fucking games!

[alienchild]

Always funny when people protect their cheapness and stealing with :"it´s no good games".

Go jump off a bridge you retarded monkeyfucker. I haven't pirated a single PSP game, and I would buy any game that I found interesting. But there are none. There is a Silent Hill Memories game coming out sometime in the future, together with a Parasite Eve game. That's all this console got going for it, in my book.

[Pnikosis]

The only two reasons I didn't bought a PSP were on the UMD and its crappy battery life. And I think that there was the original problem: Expensive + battery-life + crappy-new-proprietary-media-expecting-you-to-buy-your-movies-again-for-it = poor launch sales and not-to-good-games.

[sonysyndicate]

Always funny when people protect their cheapness and stealing with :"it´s no good games".
But still, they play the games, even complete some. If the games are so bad, people wouldn´t play them. So it´s mostly BS.
Damn, I hate cheap people... but it´s not just in downloads, the more they download the more cheap they are in general. That rule never fails.

Damn straight. Big corporations need our help. If they fail the world fails and we will never get out of this economic mess. They should also get tax breaks because people are stealing their products. And in order to pay for these large corporations goods and services we should give huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people so they when they spend their extra money they will hire the middle and lower classes so we can clean their large mansions and backyards.

[grognard66]

Sony seems to be making a concerted effort to blame everyone but themselves for their precipitous drop in market share the past few years in the gaming space. Every platform suffers from piracy and PSP no more so than any other (PC is the worst and developers still support that platform).

This is typical Dille-speak and gaming "journalists" should call him on it. How can there possibly be "potentially 50 million compromised PSP's" when LTD sales are actually a bit under 50 million and obviously not everyone is a pirate (mine has never been pirated).

There are plenty of honest consumers (like myself) who have never pirated games/music/movies and reward companies for delivering a desireable product. That's Sony's problem - they over-promise and under-deliver.

The PSP should have LAUNCHED with a built in download store and media manager software bundled for free with every unit. Instead, Sony let their obsession with creating new media formats hamper an otherwise elegant device with a slow-loading, battery draining unnecessary format. Exacerbating the situation was the fact that Sony completely abandoned the format last year sending the message to third-parties that it wasn't worth their time either to release games on the system.

[Zander]

I know this.

My stack of great DS games is much larger than my stack of great PSP games. At the end of the day I tend to buy more games for my DS than my PSP. Haven't actually bought a PSP game since Crisis Core though, ~9 months, I don't see anything out there that grabs me as a must-play.

Love both systems to death though.

[see colon]

Whenever I pick up a PSP i feel like "sidetalkin'

BURN!


I sold my PSP because I couldn't find any games I wanted to play for it at the time. I owned one at launch, and had it for about a year, then sold it with the intention of picking another up when the platform matured. I was tempted when they added TV out, but the lack of titles I was interested in held me back.

[modeps]

Whenever I pick up a PSP i feel like "sidetalkin'

I submitted a picture of myself sidetalkin' a Vectrex to sidetalkin.com, but they never posted it. boo.

[Sammael]

I gave away my PSP 3 years ago or so...
It was the first handheld I had ever bought, so I was excited to purchase it on launch day. I waited in line, bought it with Lumines and RidgeRacer, and off I went.
I played the shit out of Lumines. Awesome game. RidgeRacer was so-so.

Then the emulators came out... That was my turning point.
My PSP became a Mike Tyson's Punchout emulator.
That was all I played on that thing for MONTHS!
I bought GTA Liberty City Stories when it came out, but it was too much of a pain to play on there. I never quite trusted the sleep mode when I was on the go.
Fast foward to the next Christmas... I gave my PSP and all of my games to my brother-in-law since he was going overseas with the Navy. I was done with it, and figured he could use a shiny new toy.

He still uses it to this day, still purchases games for it.
It just wasn't for me. My thoughts are that there are alot of people that felt the same way as me. Just nothing compelling enough to purchase... I didn't even check out God of War...

[[Jez]]

Yep its all pirates fault... they went and made the games load faster, quieter and use less power and for some odd reason people found that interesting. But all is not lost, Sony haven't given up and have been releasing hit games like... emm... Disgaea (Oct30/07) these alone with their helpful and intelligent marketing mean alliwantforxmasisapsp :|

[Dag-Sabot]

I feel I've been "pirated" into buying into their shitty ass umd player and promises of Gran Turismo for it. Hows that for "piracy"?

[lockwoodx]

Always funny when people protect their cheapness and stealing with :"it´s no good games".
But still, they play the games, even complete some. If the games are so bad, people wouldn´t play them. So it´s mostly BS.
Damn, I hate cheap people... but it´s not just in downloads, the more they download the more cheap they are in general. That rule never fails.

Meh I don't even own one. Just reinforcing the fact if you develop crap, nobody will want to pay for it.

[lockwoodx]

I will be honest I have a modded psp. I do not pirate psp games though; the only reason I modded it so I could use the emulators to play SNES and Genesis roms. If the modding community was unable to crack bios in the PSP I would not have purchased mine.


So you pirate SNES and Genesis games, but not sony games because that's who your fanboy allegiance is twords.

/facepalm

[silv]

I sold my PSP, after a year of it sitting on my shelf and doing nothing.

Of course he only wanted it because it had old firmware and he could then hack it.

[Franjo]

Why is Sony so confused?

DS > PSP.

Sony should try making good games before crying like bitches

[vherub]

I find the playstation network store confusing and difficult to navigate.
Is there a link that shows all downloadable games for the psp, with prices? Both ps1 games and psp games?

[Agnostic]

I like my PSP.

[shpankey]

And let's be honest, the psp resistance game sucks fucking ass. The games are mediocre(I mean let's look at final fantasy crysis core, over rated, you can kill everything with the melee attack and hell the 'transition' to battle mode and out of battle mode is IRRITATING AS FUCK!*#@$_)

I'm fairly new to PSP (got one last Christmas) but so far I've had a ton of fun with the game's I've bought. All of them are from the PSP Store so it's all digital download (I will never buy a disk for PSP, I need portability). Anyhow...

Jeanne D'Ark
Killzone Liberation
Castlevania: SoTN
Loco Roco
Hot Shots Golf
Puzzle Quest
Destruction Derby
Crash Bandicoot
7 Wonders of the Ancient World

...are all good to great. The top 2 on my list are absolutely fabulous.

[oldjadedgamer]

Don't forget that Sony did state that the PSP would have a 10 year life cycle... will it be the first Sony system to break this? Will it be the first system to prove that the market decides how long a product lasts and not the maker of the machine?

[KeeBaud]

The games were fine, I just didn't feel comfortable playing them on the PSP. It is not a nice thing to hold, and the thumbstick is poor to say the least.
I tried a few after-market bits to make it easier to play but couldn't live with it for long. Kept putting it down because my hands were hurting.

[MadHiro]

So you pirate SNES and Genesis games, but not sony games because that's who your fanboy allegiance is twords.

/facepalm

Assuming that the use of a rom is piracy is about as clever as assuming that anyone who says," The video game industries reaction to piracy" is a pirate. Maybe he owns the cartridges, but wants to be able to play Rock 'n Roll racing on the go (best game Blizzard ever made right there. Troof.)? Maybe he keeps that copy of Chrono Trigger with maxed out characters locked in a zip lock bag inside of a tupperware container inside of a bank vault? Plenty of valid and legally defensible reasons to use a rom instead of a plastic cartridge.

Even better, how can you honestly call something piracy when a company has discontinued all support for a platform for a solid decade? An oft ignored cornerstone of intellectual property is that there is intended to be a cap on the duration of protection; at a certain point, -everything- is meant to enter the public domain.

The fact that big media companies consistently get the duration of this protection bumped up doesn't change the intent of the law; once you stop using your clever idea, you can't lock it away so that no one else gets to use it.

Let's not even get into how retarded it is to equate the potentially non-damaging infringement on the over protected property rights of multinational corporations with a group that murdered, enslaved and raped actual people.

[Grumsh]

I own 2 DS's and 35ish games, I own 1 launch PSP and 7 games for it. Piracy isnt killing the PSP, Sonys inability to make worthwhile, wanted software partially killed the PSP. The other nails in the coffin were an Analog nub that is lousy, the lack of a second analog controller, and a battery life that was atrocious in comparison to the competition.

I wanted the PSP to win the portable war. I wanted to be playing all these great RPG's and console ports on a portable ps 1.75. It never happened and now I think Sonys nightmare has to happen, the PSP needs a succesor a PSP2 one that is made with lessons learned. No not a PSP1.5, an actual PSP2.

I swear I still to this day load up DS games into the cartridge slot and think, wow if only this game came out on the PSP, because the DS graphics are just painful on that little screen.