Post: Sony Calls PSP Piracy Rates "Sickening"
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04-22-2009, 07:26 PM
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Smells Like Teen Spirit
Originally posted by another user
The PlayStation Portable looks to be rebounding in a big way in 2009, featuring as it does titles like Dissidia Final Fantasy and Rock Band Unplugged. But speaking with Gamasutra, senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille said that there have been more challenges facing the platform than the fact that third-party developers were "ready to the jump off the cliff" eighteen months ago. Challenges like piracy.
"I'm convinced and we're convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP," Dille said. "It's been a problem that the industry has to address together; it's one that I think the industry takes very seriously, but we need to do something to address this because it's criminal what's going on, quite frankly."
"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."
In response to the suggestion that there are "50 million potentially compromised units" (i.e. hacked PSPs) there already, Dille replied, "Those numbers are correct. There's a lot of hardware out there; toothpaste is out of the tube. We're not going to get that hardware back into the toothpaste container."
"But hopefully we can have a multi-pronged approach -- it's going to require legal; it's going to require education. I think gamers, if they understood if this meant that a platform would go away, can we convince gamers to pay for their content?"
To this point, Sony has done its best to convince gamers to pay for their content with aggressive anti-piracy measures on the PSP, at one point making the 3000 model "hack-proof." As a result, the Nintendo DS has been a far juicier target for pirates to this point, as it was a simple matter of downloading titles to flash carts up until the release of the DSi. Doing the same for the PSP doesn't require the same investment, but it does require a bit more technical legwork, which is generally enough to scare off casual hackers.
But as the PSP returns to prominence, it's only going to be a bigger target for those hackers who are willing to tackle the technical side of things. And in that regard, Sony is in good company with pretty much every media company today.
"I'm convinced and we're convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP," Dille said. "It's been a problem that the industry has to address together; it's one that I think the industry takes very seriously, but we need to do something to address this because it's criminal what's going on, quite frankly."
"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."
In response to the suggestion that there are "50 million potentially compromised units" (i.e. hacked PSPs) there already, Dille replied, "Those numbers are correct. There's a lot of hardware out there; toothpaste is out of the tube. We're not going to get that hardware back into the toothpaste container."
"But hopefully we can have a multi-pronged approach -- it's going to require legal; it's going to require education. I think gamers, if they understood if this meant that a platform would go away, can we convince gamers to pay for their content?"
To this point, Sony has done its best to convince gamers to pay for their content with aggressive anti-piracy measures on the PSP, at one point making the 3000 model "hack-proof." As a result, the Nintendo DS has been a far juicier target for pirates to this point, as it was a simple matter of downloading titles to flash carts up until the release of the DSi. Doing the same for the PSP doesn't require the same investment, but it does require a bit more technical legwork, which is generally enough to scare off casual hackers.
But as the PSP returns to prominence, it's only going to be a bigger target for those hackers who are willing to tackle the technical side of things. And in that regard, Sony is in good company with pretty much every media company today.
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