Peter Dille Says PSP Piracy "Sickening"

[Andy Chalk]

Peter Dille Says PSP Piracy "Sickening"

Peter Dille, vice president president of marketing at PSP [http://www.us.playstation.com/] is "sickening" and that the company is continuing to work on ways to address the problem.

The PSP has been a popular platform for ongoing problem [http://www.sony.com]. Dille said Sony is "very concerned" about piracy on the PSP, which he believes has cut significantly into the system's software sales.

"It's not good for us, but it's not good for the development community," Dille told Resistance: Retribution [http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23301] 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."

Dille admitted that the potentially huge number of cracked PSPs on the market has left the platform particularly vulnerable to piracy in the future but said he hoped that a "multi-pronged approached" would help alleviate the problem. "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?" he said.

"I'm not naive, but I do think that most people are inherently honest. We learned a lot from the music business, and it became so easy and so common to download illegal music - everyone was doing it," he continued. "It's almost like people lost sight with the fact that, well, 'If everyone's doing it, then it can't be that bad.' But, it actually is bad; it's bad for the platform. Again, I'm not saying that that's a magic wand; I think that we have to make sure from a technological perspective that it's not as easy as it is to do that."



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[fix-the-spade]

How about fitting every 1000th PSP with a quantity of semtex set to detonate if a user attempts to load any firmware not written by Sony.
It's not like it's any less practical than most anti piracy measures, would probably be a great deal more effective too.

It's a shame people seem to pirate the handhelds so much. There's the potential to do lot's of funand creative things with homebrew but everyone and there dog seems determined to pirate the proper games instead.

 

[cainx10a]

#1 Reason to buy a PSP - Homebrew
---- Sony, still clueless as to what the people need.

Note: I don't have a modded PSP. Because the 3 PSPs I bought, were not moddable. And I would give a limb to have a modded PSP to enjoy 80% of the hidden PSP potentials. Most of the PSP games I have, requires way more time that I have available to really put into them on even lengthy bus/train rides, as to what, say, some emulators may be able to provide.

- Damn you MH and you never-ending boss fights- =D

 

[Frizzle]

I kind of agree with Sony on this one. Pirating legit games is bad. Especially since they don't come with DRM and all that other crap. On the other hand, I hear that cracking a PSP unlocks LOADS of wonderful things that Sony doesn't provide for a price, anyway.

I think that there should be a way to have a cracked PSP work with legit games, using some sort of DRM. I'd hate to take away all the homebrew stuff, because that's people doing things on their own, not stealing any money or sales. Copying legit games though, I do kinda have a problem with.

On a final point about Resistance: Retribution... Maybe if they kept the cost lower, instead of barely cheaper than a PS3 game, people would be inclined to pirate them less? I know that the age demographic is usually MUCH lower for handhelds, than base systems. Just my thoughts.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Sony would be sickened by a profit loss...

Not that they aren't entitled to make money though, but calling it "sickening" isn't going to fix the problem.

 

[megapenguinx]

On a final point about Resistance: Retribution... Maybe if they kept the cost lower, instead of barely cheaper than a PS3 game, people would be inclined to pirate them less? I know that the age demographic is usually MUCH lower for handhelds, than base systems. Just my thoughts.

I don't support the piracy of games. But a hand held game should not cost the same as a console one. I think that was one of my biggest problems with the PSP, was that it was either $40 for a game on there or $40 for one on my PS2.

 

[Doug]

And so it begins. I bet those developers who abandoned the PC 'because of all the pirates' are going to start regretting it in the very near future.

 

[shMerker]

It doesn't really inspire confidence when the best that he can say is basically "piracy is a problem, and we intend to do something about it." I think that in the past decade or so of dealing with widespread piracy they maybe should have come up with some strategies for dealing with it and maybe let the president of marketing in on it so that he could something that wasn't trite when he gets called by Gamasutra.

 

[Zer_]

Okay, Sony can go sodomize themselves with a cactus over this one. Screw them I say. I like using my PSP as a second monitor [http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v358/SuperFriendBFG/?action=view&current=DSC00099.jpg] and I'll be damned if some suit wearing wang is going to stop me.

 

[Pimppeter2]

Ohh sony

I rally like how you put everyone in one group

"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?"

Because yo know ALL gamers pirate, we can't possibly understand that its bad

 

[FallToYourDeath]

I may or may not have pirated 52 psp games to this day.

Also Movies =D

 

[Skrapt]

I like how he tried to act like he'd learnt from the music companies, then went on to say that he'd basically use the same tactics that has alienated their user base and expect it to work for his.

Piracy may harm a platform, publishers ***** slapping honest consumers with DRM/invasive copy protection for what pirates are doing with DRM free copies harms it more.

 

[scotth266]

My friend cracked his PSP and then played Nintendo games on it. They were all ones he had already bought though, so I didn't yell at him for it.

 

[Kojiro ftt]

Again, the typical mistake that everyone makes is assuming that a pirated game is a lost sale. I would say in my experience that 90% of pirated games would not have been bought if the pirate option was taken away. Pirates pirate because they are cheap (unemployed students, all the grocery money goes to beer) and obsessive collectors. Take away the option to pirate, and they would just find something else to steal instead. You won't gain any sales.

 

[ryai458]

people are lazy people are cheap unless sony can replace everyone with robots they are going to have a problem then again who would buy there games then?

 

[antipunt]

Ohh sony

I rally like how you put everyone in one group

"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?"

Because yo know ALL gamers pirate, we can't possibly understand that its bad

I was thinking this

 

[Baneat]

I'm so sickened by this expensive brick. Measures to prevent it? good luck with that. Sony's PSP has already been checkmated.

 

[Jumplion]

I can't believe what I'm reading, so most of you are all saying that it's perfectly fine for PSP games to be pirated?

It seems that every other person I meet who has a PSP, it's modded and has homebrew on it. Now, I'm not bagging on the people who do that, you can do what you want with your product, but it so stupid to say that it's perfectly fine for people to illegal download actual games to the PSP regardless whether or not it actually makes Sony lose any money.

So apparently it's not alright for most people to pirate on PCs, regardless on if it does anything or not, because most people are against it. Alot of people do it, sure, but that doesn't mean that you can legitimize piracy. Yet, on a PSP, Sony should;

Okay, Sony can go sodomize themselves with a cactus over this one. Screw them I say. I like using my PSP as a second monitor [http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v358/SuperFriendBFG/?action=view&current=DSC00099.jpg] and I'll be damned if some suit wearing wang is going to stop me.

because they can do whatever the hell they want with it and Sony shouldn't care at all?

What the hell kind of logic is that? Oh yeah, anti-Sony logic, but I'm being pretentious there. Any piracy is bad piracy, but I will agree that it's not as big of a problem as developers make it out to be.