Sony Asia president discusses repercussions of piracy

by David Hinkle on Sep 19th 2009 6:00AM

During GC Asia's Sony keynote, SCE Asia president Tetsuhiko Yasuda delivered a keynote on piracy and how it's affecting his region. Piracy has always been a big deal in Asia, but Yasuda says it's getting to the point where it's deterring the gradual development of the Asian games industry.

Yasuda said that the loss of sales due to software piracy has affected employees at almost every level of development, from the producer who hasn't been able to receive royalties to the youth that dream of being a game developer. For producers, Yasuda says these royalties contribute "to the healthy development of the software business," but warned that, in the long run, students aspiring to be developers will "suffer the most" when they eventually release their first game and feel the pain of lost sales.

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Tags: asia, babypirates, gc-asia, sce, sce-asia, sony-computer-entertainment-asia, tetsuhiko-yasuda

Reader Comments (54)

Most people who pirate games probably wouldn't have bought the game anyway. And if they would have, they want the next closest thing to free: used games. So if you think about it like this, pirates aren't taking profit away from developers, publishers, or retail stores. They're taking it away from used game resellers.

Good point.

While I don't always buy the "they wouldn't have bought it anyway" argument in the west, it definitely applies to asia.

Other than Japan (which doesn't have the piracy problem), (and possibly S.Korea) the economies and salaries simply aren't good enough for most people to buy games. If they are buying the consoles then the hardware devs should be grateful... but they sure wouldn't do it if they had to pay for the games too.

Interestingly, when i was in a branch of the biggest supermarket chain in S.Korea (a legit, huge international corporation) they were selling a PC version of Mario Kart, with screenshots that seemed to come from the n64, gamecube and arcade versions. Wish i'd bought it... always wondered if it could be legit in any way....

How is he actually getting his numbers here? This loss of sales, how do they work this out?

In my experience companies tend to freak out about the 'P' word and just start claiming numbers.

I'd like to see some actual research into how much they're REALLY losing. That includes removing people who would never have afforded purchasing the game at retail as well from the equation.

It's high time somebody got some accurate and non-biased figures on piracy out.

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