Sony planning new clampdown on PSP piracy

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Jun 19th 2008 at 8:00PM }

Speaking at Sony's Devstation developer conference in London last week, SCEE president David Reeves affirmed that admitting a problem can be the first step in solving it. "There is a piracy problem on PSP," Reeves told an undoubtedly shocked MCV. "We know about it, we know how it's done." Ah, so they have internet access then.

It's not all bad news, however, as Reeves pointed out that piracy "sometimes fuels the growth of hardware sales," even if, "on balance," it makes Sony unhappy. PSP sales have given the manufacturer a lot to smile about, especially in Japan, but piracy takes its greatest toll on software, an equally important source of income. According to Reeves, new plans are already afoot to clamp down on digital swashbucklers, though given how quickly said plans are usually foiled, we imagine new strategies (and firmware updates) are constantly required.

Tags: David-Reeves, Piracy, PSP, SCEE

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Chase @ Jun 19th 2008 8:07PM

I tittered at the picture. It is the perfect lampoon.

"National Lampoon Q: Ludwig's Afrika"

ANTCEP @ Jun 19th 2008 8:09PM

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!...
I mean Yessssss good on them.

Chigurh @ Jun 19th 2008 8:15PM

I think the homebrew community accounts for a good portion of the PSPs sales.

I mean, I never thought the little bugger would sell as well as it has. There are only a handful of games that are worth the $40, so people need something else to use the thing for.

Speaking oh homebrew, why are the geeks slacking on cracking the PS3?

Gun Barrier (=Gamer Tag) SSBB: 3952-6696-7009 @ Jun 19th 2008 8:26PM

yea, and sony doesnt want people to pirate those rare games.

Slayer @ Jun 19th 2008 8:27PM

Honestly, I wouldn't hack my ps3 even if I could. I wouldn't want a 400 dollar brick.

x silence x @ Jun 19th 2008 9:45PM

It's $100 brick these days.

I think this is called...

Too little, Too late.

KeenCommander @ Jun 20th 2008 12:07AM

I only bought my PSP for the homebrew, and that's all that I play it for - along with Lumines. And I don't think any of the games are worth $40, all the ones I've bought were marked down to $10-20.

Hashbrown Hunter @ Jun 19th 2008 8:22PM

Somehow I knew you were going to use that picture again.

It's simply perfect.

Ridgecity @ Jun 19th 2008 8:58PM

Joystiq and pirates go hand in hand... pirates with swords I meant, not pirates with chips...

Knoxximus @ Jun 19th 2008 8:38PM

Wow Sony.....good luck with that. I'll send Dark_aleX your regards....

Conor @ Jun 19th 2008 8:41PM

My psp would be completely useless if it wasn't running a custom firmware.

Sony should add some good features instead of an internet radio player,I'm sure we all jumped for joy when that bad boy was announced....

Chris @ Jun 19th 2008 8:42PM

That's a good idea- the biggest reason people are still purchasing (and using) the PSP and you're going to try to stop it. Brilliant.

Kodros @ Jun 19th 2008 9:16PM

Yeah, so how is that making Sony any money?

Chris @ Jun 19th 2008 9:19PM

It's making them money because people actually want to purchase the handheld... I wonder what the sales would look like if homebrew wasn't as big? I mean, they do have all that money from UMD. Oh wait...

Kodros @ Jun 19th 2008 9:25PM

Ok, but all the good money is in the software. Anybody know how much they make per handheld sold?

Chris @ Jun 19th 2008 9:32PM

No you're right, and I am trivializing the situation. My point is yes, Sony (prob) makes the majority of their money on software, but in a lot of ways the PSP is a bust. They should see to it that people aren't ripping the games they put out, but to say "we're going to attack pirating on the PSP" is to say "we're going to take away one of our system's biggest selling points."

F1 @ Jun 19th 2008 8:49PM

Don't worry. Well stop Sony at Shipwreck cove.

Ridgecity @ Jun 19th 2008 8:56PM

something tells me this has to do with God Of War for PSP bombing at retail...

They were ok with it with third parties not selling but now they felt the burn and speak out...

Kodros @ Jun 19th 2008 9:13PM

"We sold over 2.3 millions copies of Daxter and are on track to beat that with Chains of Olympus so we're pretty happy with our sales,"
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/11/ready-at-dawn-talks-abandoning-the-psp-piracy-and-being-origin/

I wouldn't call that "bombing".

Ridgecity @ Jun 19th 2008 11:20PM

considering this is a mayor title of this hardware generation and that the PSP has sold about 40,000,000 consoles, that's a bomb. The even dropped the developments a couple weeks ago. If that's not a sign something is wrong, I don't know what else... oh right, SCEE president David Reeves is saying that piracy is big problem in this very same article.

Kodros @ Jun 20th 2008 12:59PM

I'm not saying piracy isn't an issue, because it is. What I am saying is that God of War, by PSP standards, didn't bomb.

Also..."The even dropped the developments a couple weeks ago. If that's not a sign something is wrong, I don't know what else"

That's discussed by Ready at Dawn in the article that I linked up. They left because they want to try something new.

joe @ Jun 19th 2008 9:59PM

Sony trying to fight piracy gives me nightmares of rootkits. They should concentrate their efforts on giving people a real reason to dust off their PSP's instead.

Sam406 @ Jun 19th 2008 10:13PM

First of all, I'd like to point out I want a PSP to play SNES, N64 and PS1 games on the go, without homebrew I wouldn't care that much about it.

And second:

Reeves:"There is a piracy problem on PSP," "We know about it, we know how it's done."

Ludwig:"Ah, so they have internet access then."

That's my Ludwig!

kataztrophy @ Jun 19th 2008 10:20PM

Even if Sony tries to do something, people will find away around the "fix". They should be proud of what they have done. The PSP is the most popular homebrew powered handheld out(GP32 being another good one.)

kataztrophy @ Jun 19th 2008 10:23PM

BPM [MKWii: 2578 3585 8392] @ Jun 19th 2008 10:34PM

"Ah, so they have internet access then."

Hehe.

I don't blame Sony for wanting to TRY and stop piracy (key word here is: TRY). But, it's an endless, futile struggle.

t_m @ Jun 19th 2008 10:46PM

Piracy drives sales. simple as that. The PSP would probably still be stagnating at the bottom of the pile if it didn't have piracy and homebrew to drive it's sales.

DO you think half these people would be investing in $1000 pcs and $500 graphics cards if it wasn't for the free games?

Would half the world know about photoshop if it wasn't for the fact everyone had a pirate copy at uni?

Heck, we'd all be using OSX/OS2 right now if microsoft hadn't made MSDOS/WIndows/win95 so easy to copy.

John @ Jun 20th 2008 4:29AM

Sony should just release software to allow the ripping of PS1 games you own straight to Memory stick, that's the only reason I was thinking about putting custom firmware on my PSP.

But then I don't want to spend extra $ to make a battery I'm going to make worthless for anything other than unbricking.

breachless @ Jun 20th 2008 8:54AM

I think it's ironic that 9 times out of 10 I use my PSP to play games made by Nintendo 15 years ago. And when I am not playing those, I am playing old PS1 games.

This speaks volumes about how badly Sony has handled the PSP. Pirating is SO easy to do on PSP, and yet, I choose old, dated games with old, dated graphics to play over actual PSP games with better graphics almost EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Piracy isn't to blame for poor software sales. Poor software is to blame for poor software sales. If they handled the thing a little bit better at the beginning and pumped out some really great ORIGINAL games, most people would have just sidestepped the homebrew thing like they did with the original Xbox for the fear of not being able to play online.

Instead, you have a launch that promises all these great sounding games (seriously: WTF happened to Gran Turismo Mobile, which was advertised on the back of the box of my original launch PSP?) so everyone goes and buys one because this PSP will no doubt rule... and eventually, you have a bunch of people that have a PSP but nothing decent to play on it aside from shoddy PS2 ports so they figure "why not? if I brick it, I don't really play it anyway..."

And THAT my friends, is the REAL problem. There are certainly some great games now for it, but it's too damn late. Besides, Sony should know by now that they don't stand a chance against the homebrew community... You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now...