hey, its the reason i bought it.
i've had since april of '06 and i haven't bought a game since.

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I experience rampant piracy seemingly everywhere - and most people try to shield it as high-minded 'homebrew', as if their rights to piracy are being put down by 'the man'.

I keep my firmware up to date, and buy all of my games. The fact that most PSP games are crap means I should be more careful about purchases ... not that I should pirate!

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I am totaly against piracy on the PSP , though I admit , that Sony and some other publishers ( read EA , Ubi , Capcom etc. ) schould drop the game prices down in some regions , some people cant aford those :?

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this article makes me sad..I hope the PSP doesn't follow the downfall of Dreamcast where no hacking knowledge needed to pirate its games. If you guys really love your PSP you'll support it by buying their games legally.

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@anorexia
At least your honest, I got mine when it was first launched in japan and I've only bought three games for it. They were bought before there was a way to even rip the games from the UMD. Since then I haven't bought any games either and I have almost 150 isos. Even though your are honest be ready for the upcoming comments that say you and I are ruining the PSP and we are the reason that the PSP game sales are so low. The reason the games sales for the PSP aren't good is that most of the games are not that great. I know that if I spent $40 on some of the games I have downloaded I would be mad. I think I have only played about 6 of them through to the end the rest I played for about an hour and then copied them to a dvd and deleted them from my chip. I don't know about everyone but $40 is too much for a game that only interest me for an hour. Maybe if Sony released some better games then the sales would increase, although not from me as I will never buy a PSP game again ISOs FTW HA HA

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Not a big surprise that there's rampant piracy in China or HK... It's true for every system, always has been that way. I doubt the PSP piracy scene is any more pronounced there than GBA, PS2, etc.

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pixelator: yah piracy galore for every platform, but PSP is easier because the MS Duo is a pretty straightforward storage device.

(ironically, despite all the UMD bitching, you can argue that the PSP is the LEAST proprietary handheld platform, with the possible exception of the N-Gage)

I've pretty much accepted that piracy is everywhere, not that I'm completely out of it yet (although I've bought all my non-free software since university), but it still pisses me off that people would be so blatant about it.

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The PSP's biggest problem is piracy right now. I wrote about it over at Aeropause. Unfortunately, blogs that report homebrew and indirectly promoting piracy on the system.

As I've said before, if it's easier to download games than buy them, people are going to download them. I refuse to do it but dumb kids who don't give a damn about the industry still do.

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Right on, Pixelator. The far east is like piracy haven!

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Like I said:

'Devhook and firmware downgrades drive piracy.'

People gave me tons of crap, but there is just no denying it. This article is exactly what I was talking about.

-Colin

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I have bought all 10 games I own on the PSP 100% legitamately, but honestly, the only reason don't rip pirated games is because I haven't figured out how to exactly. The fear of viruses and bricking my system are at the forefront of my concerns with doing it, too.

I would like to think that it wouldn't hurt the "industry" if I did, but I do understand that its when so many people do, it adds up.

The truth is, as a musician, I wouldn't mind if people burned copies of my music. I would want more people to hear it and listen and chances are, they would not have done so otherwise, but I can see how that doesn't necessarily correlate with the gaming industry; however, one thing to ponder is if the psp would be selling even less if they didn't have the homebrew capabilities...

Just a thought.

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As long as people are able to, they will steal. That's human nature. It is justified by, I'm too poor or it's easy or Sony is rich, etc.... but it happens, is anticipated by the manufacturer and is built into the prices of the games. I personally don't steal cause I am lucky enough to make a decent salary and can afford any games I need. I also work in the software industry and support buying software as a means of paying salaries of me and my friends. Same way I feel about music as I've been in many bands and understand how broke musicians are -- even one's on a record label.

Love my psp, though. But I use it almost more as a music and video source at work. Now that Sony in it's latest firmware update added RSS support for video downloading from sites like Grouper, I dig putting fun videos temporarily on my PsP to amuse my coworkers.

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"People gave me tons of crap, but there is just no denying it. This article is exactly what I was talking about."

What people (me) gave you 'tons' of crap about was accusing PSP Fanboy of advocating piracy by mentioning the 3.01 emulator. You deserved the response you got.

Nobody is denying that circumventing Sony's firmwares CAN lead to piracy or that piracy exists at all. The issue here is whether the PSP has more piracy than other platforms (debatable) and whether bloggers 'promote' it by linking to or even mentioning homebrew apps like devhook.

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o yea, i forgot, Most people in China are pretty poor, compared to other countries, say America. (the average person) I live in China and i know this. This is a major reason why many people don't buy games. Gctually, nobody buys a "real" game if there is a "pirated" game out there. Unless of course there is some kind of reason or something .(collection, sense that only real is good enough,etc)

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I completely agree with the comment made above. There is piracy for EVERY CONSOLE every made. (not yet including the next-gen ones) Since this "benefits" consumers (free games) I don't really see it as a problem. (only to consumers, of course i know that this is a huge problem to businesses) Game piracy isn't the biggest piracy problem out there. The ones that send chills down businesses are movie and music piracy. Almost everyone i know has downloaded "free" music at least once,either directly or indirectly. movies are aompletely another topic.

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To > :
Yah there's a lot of poor people in China, but most of those are the people who couldn't afford a PSP in the first place. PSP consumers are the same the world over: spoiled middle class kids who bought it with their parents' money.

To Brett:
You ever buy gasoline without paying for it? Because I assure you that oil companies are way more evil than Sony, and you'd be doing cosmic karma a way bigger favour by stealing petroleum products than PSP games.

I'm not sure if the PSP is a loss leader, but if so, I'd say buying a PSP and then using it solely as an emulator would, yes, hurt Sony's bottom line.

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I can tell you right now that people are more engrossed in PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 piracy. Out of the handhelds, however, the PSP is becoming quite the piracy-friendly toy, but this is nothing compared to the amount of piracy going on with the home consoles. Where you have one customer asking for a downgraded PSP and some bonus discs, you have at least twenty nuts wanting PS2 shite. Quite frankly, I couldn't care at this point; this has been the reality since Nintendo Famicom days, and actually reached peak with the PSone, which made it one hell of a powerful seller in Asia.

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I sincerely hope that Sony eventually just halts all game production and support for the PSP. Just kill the PSP outright. what's the point of making games if nobody will buy them, and instead just steal them?

then Homebrewers can have the Overpriced Nintendo Emulator that they've always wanted.

and this comes from someone who loves his PSP.

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Sigh...something just dont change. People who pirate complain its their right and that most of the games there getting suck anway and are not worth full price. Maybe im just that much of an old timer, but back in my day of nintendo and sega cartrige games we rented. You see, it was awful hard to be mom and dad to cough up 60 to 80 bucks (games would cost that much so dont complain about $40 now) we would get them to go down to local video store and have a night of awsome gaming for a cheap price on a game worth one play through. Whats that you say, we cant rent them at our local video stores? Well last time i heard gamefly.com would let you rent most any new game for most any new console. You pay a couple bucks play it through and ship it back, you dont even get off your ass. The game worth no more than a hour or two gets just that, and the people who made or a great game perhaps get money down the line for it. Ow but wait, im thinking about how to be responisble and fair to those who PROVIDE games for us to play.

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