SCEA: PSP piracy is "trending down"
- Posted November 25th, 2008 at 05:15 EDT by
- 1,773 views
- 8 Comments
Piracy has exerted a drag on the PlayStation Portable's software sales since day one, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, right? Wrong. Or so Sony Computer Entertainment America's Head of Hardware Marketing, John Koller, would have you believe.
“We’ve made really no secret [that there] certainly has been some piracy on the PSP,” Koller told MTV. “We’ve seen that as a significant issue — it’s trending down right now, we’ve seen the piracy not be as such prevalent in the last month to two months. But it has been a problem for us."
We're not sure Sony's out of the woods yet, if recent NPD figures are anything to go by. PSP continues to be a solid hardware performer, often trumping both its overweight younger sister the PS3 and Microsoft's crash-prone jack-in-the-box, but when was the last time you saw PSP software hit the top ten?
“We’ve noticed there’s kind of a ‘good vs. evil’ battle that we track on many of the forums and many of the pirated web sites,” Koller went on with a laugh. “There’s certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP.
"And then there’s certainly the other side that believes that they can take as warranted. It’s kind of been nice to see other consumers going and help and fight the battle for us.”
If you want our opinion (you're going to get it regardless), a sound way to beat piracy might be to offer legitimate users of PSP software additional value, rather than punishing the illegitimate. Carrot rather than stick, in short. For example: Sony might release free downloadable levels or character skins, unlocked by inputting a one-time-use code printed on the UMD itself.
That's our two cents - let us know what you think in the comments thread.
Comments
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UnasFortuna |
Unas_Fortuna- 5:40am GMT - November 25th, 2008
- 3
Alyx, what crawled up your behind? Your eloquent thoughts I am sure will be received well by all. An obvious pirate maybe? Anyways... back on track... That is a great idea about the onetime code. However, even better; why couldn't that one time code be needed to activate the game on your PSP and say maybe two others since I have three in my household. That would allow it to be played by the other PSP's in my household. I am not a fan of restrictions on software that I have purchased; however, I am well aware of the problems faced by the developers with people stealing their software because they have no moral basis. I am sympathetic to the developers that are losing money to pirates and am willing to deal with the security measures.
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InfernoReaper |
GrimDarkling- 10:59am GMT - November 25th, 2008
- 6
Thank you for your random outburst of stupidity alyxvance. We all feel smarter next to you.
I have no problem buying a new PSP so I can put mods on my old one. I just have a hard time justifying the UMD part. Because of the proprietary disc, no one wants to pay for a UMD movie, and thankfully the digital copies are coming with Blu-rays. The only PSP game I bought full price was GoW CoO. I don't like paying $40 for a new game when I can get a much longer and better looking game on my PS3.
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