# Did Piracy kill the PSP?



## funnystory (Jan 28, 2016)

I only bought one because of the cfw and I started hearing rumours piracy killed it,does anyone here know what happened?


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

No. The opposite happened actually. The ease of piracy boosted sales of the system which in turn gained alot of developers. The psp has one of the largest and best catalog of games of any handheld system. Better then vita as a matter of fact.


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## crono999 (Jan 28, 2016)

If piracy killed the psp, what killed the vita?


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## nxwing (Jan 28, 2016)

Lack of interesting games and some third/first party support. When Vita finally has its own CFW, I have many reasons to believe that its sales will oost up


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## spinal_cord (Jan 28, 2016)

crono999 said:


> If piracy killed the psp, what killed the vita?


Bad games and overgimicing. Had Vita in my head for some reason.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

crono999 said:


> If piracy killed the psp, what killed the vita?


The flood of stupid weeb dating sims


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## funnystory (Jan 28, 2016)

crono999 said:


> If piracy killed the psp, what killed the vita?



vita has no good games,but I would be sure to buy one once cfw comes out.


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## crono999 (Jan 28, 2016)

Lol, indeed most of the answers above killed the ps vita, but no cfw or piracy!

I think piracy/cfw would save the ps vita if it happened sooner!


It did made de psp great.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

crono999 said:


> Lol, indeed most of the answers above killed the ps vita, but no cfw or piracy!
> 
> I think piracy/cfw would save the ps vita if it happened sooner!
> 
> ...


I don't think there's any saving of the vita. Psp had some good games and features to begin with. The vita had maybe two. I played Killzone and some dungeon crawler. Everthing else I downloaded/bought pissed me off. I was half expecting the vita version of minecraft to have a weeaboo schoolgirl touch minigame. I gave my vita away last year.


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## wawnord (Jan 28, 2016)

Sony killed the PSP , cause there are only a handfull of good games. My PSP has a CFW too, but i'm using it only for Homebrew and Nintendo Emulators


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

wawnord said:


> Sony killed the PSP , cause there are only a handfull of good games. My PSP has a CFW too, but i'm using it only for Homebrew and Nintendo Emulators


Troll much?


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## wawnord (Jan 28, 2016)

No trolling, just my opinion.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

wawnord said:


> No trolling, just my opinion.


The last software developed for the psp as well as the latest fw update was last year. Far into the life of vita. I'd say that's closer to immortality then death.


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## nxwing (Jan 28, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> The last software developed for the psp as well as the latest fw update was last year. Far into the life of vita. I'd say that's closer to immortality then death.


Yup. The West will also be receiving new titles for the PSP.


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## retrofan_k (Jan 28, 2016)

crono999 said:


> If piracy killed the psp, what killed the vita?



Sony themselves.


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## Clydefrosch (Jan 28, 2016)

christ, it did and it didnt.

cfw ofcourse lead to system sales. and that might have attracted a bunch of producers.

but companies make money with sold games.

if you buy just the console/memory card and pirate the games, you're costing sony and everyone else money. it varies from console to console, but when a new one is released, most companies only break even after you bought like 2-3 games.

now granted, there are still more people who do what they're supposed to do and not pirate, to the point where the companies still make enough money. but under the assumption that a pirate reeally wants to play at least a few games and couldn't otherwise access them, he'd have to redirect money towards sony to do so. clearly, he'd never buy all the 300 games he looked into as a pirate. but he'd still make them a few bucks of profit. which is more than none bucks of profit (or a net loss).

in conclusion, no, piracy has yet to really kill any console. it has to be so freely available, be so easy and safe to use and around so early and knowledge about it so widely spread that no one would want to buy games for real to ever get to that point.

but it absolutely loses companies money, no ifs or buts about it.

people that want to pirate, do it, but at least have the decency to feel bad about it once in a while. and dont try to find justifications that make it look like you did something good (like boosting sales through supposed advertising to your friends or other bullshit like that)


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

Clydefrosch said:


> christ, it did and it didnt.
> 
> cfw ofcourse lead to system sales. and that might have attracted a bunch of producers.
> 
> ...


https://gbatemp.net/threads/ill-let-you-guys-in-on-a-secret-about-pirates.410644/


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## funnystory (Jan 28, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> https://gbatemp.net/threads/ill-let-you-guys-in-on-a-secret-about-pirates.410644/



that might just be you


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## mediabob (Jan 28, 2016)

To a point, most pirates would never have bought what they pirated. There definitely are some people that pirate what they could or would buy, but there are far fewer than the people that pirate because they can. Hell some pirates don't even play what they pirate. They just think they sound cool telling people they have a 2TB HDD full if Wii games.

I personally don't pirate anything, but every system I own, than can be, is modded because it adds convince. I have a physical copy of every single game on my HDD but it's easier to use a USB loader than to hunt through discs. And especially portables, It's easier to have the games on the systems than to carry games around.

I did pirate when I was younger, but I never would have bought what I prated because I was a broke ass college kid and had no money. I didn't go crazy downloading 200 games but I definitely did pirate some I wanted to play and couldn't afford at the time. So in my case, at the time, the software company lost nothing from me because I would not have bought it anyway.

Now that I have a job I don't do it, but I could just as easy buy nothing and pirate it all.

And let's not forget them casual pirates that buy used games 

I know some so cost they companies money but I thing there are way more that don't than ones that do, and I think way more people buy games than pirate. Otherwise the whole damn game industry would have tanked along time ago.

I don't think piracy killed the PSP as much as Sony would have you believe, I think Sony was just done with it. It was aging hardware.


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## leonmagnus99 (Jan 28, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> I don't think there's any saving of the vita. Psp had some good games and features to begin with. The vita had maybe two. I played Killzone and some dungeon crawler. Everthing else I downloaded/bought pissed me off. I was half expecting the vita version of minecraft to have a weeaboo schoolgirl touch minigame. I gave my vita away last year.



same here man, the vita was wack as f*** , psp man i had 3 to 4 psp's sold and bought again cause psp was and is awesome thanks to the CFW.
you could do alot with a hacked psp, i had a phat black psp , a silver slim, red slim and a psp go. i was playing on them for years.

i had a vita for 1.5 year and then like you i gave it away ,gifted away i only played p4g on it.

and Tales of Innocence R , most of the vita games were kind of awful weeaboish fanservicei'sh dont know if i can say fanservice'ish as english is not my native language but heck the Vita is wack.
most boring handheld i have had, 3ds destroys it in every aspect except graphically BUT there are very neat looking games on 3ds as well.

3ds/psp>vita


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## Clydefrosch (Jan 28, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> https://gbatemp.net/threads/ill-let-you-guys-in-on-a-secret-about-pirates.410644/


you're not a pirate, you're just hacking your hardware.
piracy specifically implies that you pirate your games.
pirating games means not paying for things you get.


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## The Real Jdbye (Jan 28, 2016)

crono999 said:


> If piracy killed the psp, what killed the vita?


I heard a pretty good theory about that. Among other things, the specs killed the vita, making the console expensive and making development costs high, it was marketed as a handheld with console quality games, but due to the lower price of handheld games vs console games, and the high cost of the console that meant there were fewer owners, there was not enough profit in making high quality games for it.

So because of that, early on it ended up with not enough 3rd party support, and devs not willing to invest money to make high quality games for it, and Sony continued to neglect it in areas where it could actually generate a lot of profit (for example backwards compatibility PS1/PSP games)

For these reasons and others, it was doomed from the beginning. it's possible Sony could have turned the tides if they had invested enough in it early on, but they failed to do so, and once it had gone on for a while while being neglected, it was too late to do anything about it.

I wish I could find the video that explained these things, as it did a very good job of explaining the reasoning, but I can't seem to find it now. It was linked here on GBAtemp a while ago.


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## 3DSPoet (Jan 28, 2016)

I traded my Vita and o3DS for my n3DS XL Hyrule edition to GameStop   Given that I hadn't used my Vita since it updated and killed my PSP CFW on it, it was an even swap   The Vita had a lot of hype and cool features, but it was kind of like the DreamCast in that, it had all those possibilities, but no one knew how to actually use them. 

As far as the PSP....From Wikipedia...

The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004,[9] in North America on March 24, 2005,[10] and in the PAL region on September 1, 2005.[11]

Nothing killed the PSP, it's just dying of old age!


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

Clydefrosch said:


> you're not a pirate, you're just hacking your hardware.
> piracy specifically implies that you pirate your games.
> pirating games means not paying for things you get.


I have 2 64g sds with cias. A terabyte full of games for my wii. Another terabyte with movies, music and such. A modded ps3. Still have an original xbox running xbmc with a 100g internal hdd, over a hundred xb games and a several emulators with complete rom collections. every game on my pc and android is cracked. Is that good enough?


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## tbb043 (Jan 28, 2016)

If it did, then please explain why it didn't kill the DS, where it was MUCH more rampant.


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## funnystory (Jan 28, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> I have 2 64g sds with cias. A terabyte full of games for my wii. Another terabyte with movies, music and such. A modded ps3. Still have an original xbox running xbmc with a 100g internal hdd, over a hundred xb games and a several emulators with complete rom collections. every game on my pc and android is cracked. Is that good enough?



you dont have 100 xbox games on a 100gb drive. I have all those consoles u named besides android modded/hacked,I bet you just download for fun.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

funnystory said:


> you dont have 100 xbox games on a 100gb drive. I have all those consoles u named besides android modded/hacked,I bet you just download for fun.


I didn't always have the hdd in it. It took forever to figure out how to format and lock the drive with the mobo key with a softmod. Most of the games are burned to disc. The hdd is primarily for the dashboard and emulators. Then I use samba for video streaming from my home lan.


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## Rinnen (Jan 28, 2016)

For the PSP,I kinda think it was the opposite.

But for the Vita,sadly it's really dead right now.Even if it gets CFW and Piracy someday,there's not even much stuff worth it.
Unless you like weeb stuff,there's lots of it.
Really liked Gravity Rush and waited for the sequel,but Sony fucked up again(Remastering for PS4 and no GR2 for Vita).


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## Viri (Jan 28, 2016)

What killed the Vita for me, was Sony dumb decision to use Vita cards instead of SD cards.


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## blindseer (Jan 28, 2016)

What killed the vita was that sony made the hardware to expensive to create games for... atleast that is what I heard, Also sony killed the psp not piracy by not supporting the damn thing at all, during the first half of its life including cfw it had tons of games but sony just dropped all support for it. Yeah it might have just gotten an update last year, which was for brandish only.. and due to how cracked it is, it was bypassed in 10 seconds.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

blindseer said:


> What killed the vita was that sony made the hardware to expensive to create games for... atleast that is what I heard, Also sony killed the psp not piracy by not supporting the damn thing at all, during the first half of its life including cfw it had tons of games but sony just dropped all support for it. Yeah it might have just gotten an update last year, which was for brandish only.. and due to how cracked it is, it was bypassed in 10 seconds.


The homebrew devs supported that system. I remember before we got the Pandora battery, when we were still going through the update/exploit war, any new features devs came out with Sony put in the next update. Like zinga of endless paradigm created tools for making themes when we were all bricking our psps trying to format icon images custom wavs, then the next official fw had themes. Shit like that.


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## funnystory (Jan 28, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> The homebrew devs supported that system. I remember before we got the Pandora battery, when we were still going through the update/exploit war, any new features devs came out with Sony put in the next update. Like zinga of endless paradigm created tools for making themes when we were all bricking our psps trying to format icon images custom wavs, then the next official fw had themes. Shit like that.



Darkalex was on point back in the day,i wonder what happened to him. Now we have clowns running the show on the new consoles.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

funnystory said:


> Darkalex was on point back in the day,i wonder what happened to him. Now we have clowns running the show on the new consoles.


He was a great hacker. That's for sure. Now everything is about who's epeen is bigger and pushing personal morals.


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## spotanjo3 (Jan 28, 2016)

The best portable out there before 3DS released is:

PSP>3DS>PSVITA.


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## VinsCool (Jan 28, 2016)

Easy piracy and the fact the console was hackable day one gave a sale boost, it's a known fact.

Also, the PSP is very affordable, that helps a lot.


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## blindseer (Jan 28, 2016)

Yeah, D_A was the man, the psp would have been a much lesser of a system without him, his cfw and pandora where amazing to behold, I remember modding my 1000 and 2000 back then... Those were golden times imho for the hacking scene.


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## Rinnen (Jan 28, 2016)

Really miss the "old" PSP scene sometimes.


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## blindseer (Jan 28, 2016)

Rinnen said:


> Really miss the "old" PSP scene sometimes.


I miss the old psp scene all the time, so much less drama.


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## WeedZ (Jan 28, 2016)

I miss the old dashHacks community


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## cvskid (Jan 28, 2016)

PSP the best handheld system of all time. Good system to collect for if you care about physical games since it is region free.


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## Cortador (Jan 28, 2016)

It did and it didn't. People might argue that other consoles have piracy and still sold a lot of games (ex: playstation2, ds) the psp was a lot t easier to pirate games. I know people who never had pirated games before and started with the psp. They always bought their games, but found it easier to just download it and put it in the memory  stick.

This was all before PlayStation network even came online. Also, developers invested heavily on this due to hype that PlayStation had attached to its name around that time. Though they realized around 2-3 years later that over 50% of the psp user base never buys any games.

Typed from phone, so forgive the bad formatting and badly edited text


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## osaka35 (Jan 28, 2016)

I buy used, which is the equivalent of pirating as far as the developers are concerned. I'll also be buying a used vita if I ever get one, which does not add to units sold.

I have a used PSTV, which is a vita without the controls/screen/touch. Only picked up cheapo used games, and use it as a nice emulation box. I contribute nothing to sony's books, even with all my legal purchases.


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## funnystory (Jan 29, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> He was a great hacker. That's for sure. Now everything is about who's epeen is bigger and pushing personal morals.



Thats fine to show of Epeen,but they need to actually deliver. We have people that promise things and never deliver now a days.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



VinsCool said:


> Easy piracy and the fact the console was hackable day one gave a sale boost, it's a known fact.
> 
> Also, the PSP is very affordable, that helps a lot.



It used to be expensive when it came out 11 years ago lol. Affordability had nothing to do with it.


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## Muffins (Jan 29, 2016)

Let's see...

A ten year lifespan, unit sales exceeding 75 million units... games like Peace Walker, Trails in the Sky and the inclusion of PS1 classics...

Yes, Sony did finally pull the plug at the end, but it was not piracy that "killed" the system- it was the end of its run, a long and healthy lifespan.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/af...psp-what-s-your-favorite-memory/1100-6420050/


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## Clydefrosch (Jan 29, 2016)

WeedZ said:


> I have 2 64g sds with cias. A terabyte full of games for my wii. Another terabyte with movies, music and such. A modded ps3. Still have an original xbox running xbmc with a 100g internal hdd, over a hundred xb games and a several emulators with complete rom collections. every game on my pc and android is cracked. Is that good enough?



in that case, you're "pirates support blablabla" post was misleading and intentionally so. you gave them pocket change when you owed them papers to make yourself feel better and try to make piracy look positive. but you still took stuff for free which you had no right to have or experience.
you also most likely only 'support' selectively. how do you support your android developers? and which of them? do you equally buy random movies from all companies and songs from all artists? or only from a bunch you really like? what about the rest?

i dont go to the supermarket and take two apples but only pay for one, while patting myself on the back for still supporting the apple industry.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Muffins said:


> Let's see...
> 
> A ten year lifespan, unit sales exceeding 75 million units... games like Peace Walker, Trails in the Sky and the inclusion of PS1 classics...
> 
> ...



well, with 75 million units sold, it still is a shame that even the best selling games never were paid for by more than 12% of psp owners (assuming that a single customer averagely owned 2 psps)


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## mediabob (Jan 29, 2016)

Cortador said:


> It did and it didn't. People might argue that other consoles have piracy and still sold a lot of games (ex: playstation2, ds) the psp was a lot t easier to pirate games. I know people who never had pirated games before and started with the psp. They always bought their games, but found it easier to just download it and put it in the memory  stick.
> 
> This was all before PlayStation network even came online. Also, developers invested heavily on this due to hype that PlayStation had attached to its name around that time. Though they realized around 2-3 years later that over 50% of the psp user base never buys any games.
> 
> Typed from phone, so forgive the bad formatting and badly edited text



The DS is hands down the easiest system to pirate for, no questions ask. You literally have to do nothing but buy a flash card, put games on an SD card, and pop it in. You don't even have to be technically inclined.

Also DS Roms were far easier to obtain than PSP ISOs back during the systems heyday.

The original playstation was even easier, but your average consumer was much less technically inclined back the and the Internet wasn't what it is today.


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## Muffins (Jan 29, 2016)

Absolutely, Bob.

The entire concept that an early to mid 2000s system was having people downloading 1+ gigabyte ISOs left and right by all 75 million is just unrealistic, and to use it as a "this killed the system" when DS games merely required a flashcard and a fraction of the space is also unrealistic.


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## TeamScriptKiddies (Jan 29, 2016)

mediabob said:


> The DS is hands down the easiest system to pirate for, no questions ask. You literally have to do nothing but buy a flash card, put games on an SD card, and pop it in. You don't even have to be technically inclined.
> 
> Also DS Roms were far easier to obtain than PSP ISOs back during the systems heyday.
> 
> The original playstation was even easier, but your average consumer was much less technically inclined back the and the Internet wasn't what it is today.


I'd have to say the ps2 is tied with the Ds (in its later days anyways). Just buy an hdloader disc, network adapter and a cheap idea HDD, no modding required (except for certain problem games). Easy peasy lemon squeezy lol


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## Cortador (Jan 29, 2016)

mediabob said:


> The DS is hands down the easiest system to pirate for, no questions ask. You literally have to do nothing but buy a flash card, put games on an SD card, and pop it in. You don't even have to be technically inclined.
> 
> Also DS Roms were far easier to obtain than PSP ISOs back during the systems heyday.
> 
> The original playstation was even easier, but your average consumer was much less technically inclined back the and the Internet wasn't what it is today.



What do you mean DS roms were easier to obtain? People with PSPs could make their own dumps without having to have extra accessories. That Iso site only showed up in the map because of the Psp lol.

The psp also had the advantage of not having to shell out money to be able to pirate.

Everyone I knew had their PSPs hacked either by then or friends who were tech savy. I couldn't say the same about the DS. Only when I went to Brazil did I see people using an "R4".

Personally that was my own experience. 

I remember reading a few years ago about a game company giving an interview explaining how 90% of the people who were playing an online game of theirs were pirates. Granted, not every pirate is a purchase, but 90% is absurd.

If you go back and check NPD stats, you will see data of its popular games (Kingdom hearts, FF7, GTA and etc...) all marginally low while its system base was huge (30m+).

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Muffins said:


> Absolutely, Bob.
> 
> The entire concept that an early to mid 2000s system was having people downloading 1+ gigabyte ISOs left and right by all 75 million is just unrealistic, and to use it as a "this killed the system" when DS games merely required a flashcard and a fraction of the space is also unrealistic.



Psp games were not that size in the beginning of its life spam. Most games ranged around 100MB-200MB, some even smaller.


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## Muffins (Jan 29, 2016)

And at the "beginning of its lifespan", the PSP didn't have piracy either. That didn't ramp up until late in the game.

So thbbb.


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## Disco (Jan 29, 2016)

Muffins said:


> And at the "beginning of its lifespan", the PSP didn't have piracy either. That didn't ramp up until late in the game.
> 
> So thbbb.



Huh what?
Mine EUR launch day PSP came with FW 2.0 and the exploitable one was 1.5.
If I remember correctly, after only a month or less they hacked FW 2.0.
So it was besides Wii, one of the fastest ''piracy enabled'' consoles.


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## XDel (Jan 29, 2016)

Piracy doesn't kill anything. It's already been shown over and over again that the habits of the modern consumer have not stopped, but rather people become digital pack rats but still buy their favorite product because they like to have something to hold, etc. 

Besides, if piracy could kill one system, it would kill them all.


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## Muffins (Jan 29, 2016)

XDel said:


> Piracy doesn't kill anything. It's already been shown over and over again that the habits of the modern consumer have not stopped, but rather people become digital pack rats but still buy their favorite product because they like to have something to hold, etc.
> 
> Besides, if piracy could kill one system, it would kill them all.



Don't expect rational arguments from the "PIRACY DOOMZ US ALL" crowd. I know I learned that lesson.


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## funnystory (Jan 30, 2016)

No one is saying PSP sales were killed by piracy,but statistics do show that piracy fucked game sales. The company makes money of games not the hardware(except for nintendthieves)


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## VmprHntrD (Feb 9, 2016)

Piracy had a hand in the PSP if you agree with the comments years ago from various developers.  Mind you they'll embellish stuff about total downloads versus how many would have actually bought it.  YOu can't say well 1M copies were downloaded and 100K were bought, they screwed us and not back it up.  A good many will either just steal and never buy, can't afford it and may get it in discount or second hand(no $ to maker anyway), borrow it, or whatever the case may be.  Konami made a huge shit about MGS Peacewalker how they somehow contacted various torrent etc sites for anon-data about downloads of that game and some up with some 7 figure mess then pointed out how they sold a couple hundred thousand copies only or whatever it was and claimed they didn't make a profit or one it should have and terminated future development.  Various other developers whined the same, but weren't Konami or as mouthy as them and releases dried up big time, eventually PSP kind of converted into this JRPG and JRPG (TRPG/SRPG) type box so you either like it or leave it.  I had a PSP but after Peacewalker I ditched it because things I was going to buy got terminated, and other than an Ys game known I saw nothing I'd care for.

Now the Vita that's Sony's fault.  I know a few things, and above it's mentioned in part as public rumor.  It's not easy nor cheap to develop for, since they went PS3-esque with it, you get the costs involved.  The system itself isn't exactly cheap either when it came out, and games when it was newer were nearly console priced too like $10 over your average 3DS game.  Also it was just a portable console, and it has a lot of console conversions and less really unique stuff for a stretch.  Also Sony played the stupid arrogance card (my brother is a producer for a third party game maker) where they just assumed since it was known to be Sony, known to be a portable Playstation, they didn't need to advertise, court, or suck up to anyone to make games for it a bit after its launch.  This left developers either discouraged to make games, or nervous if it was going to get pulled because of slower sales.  Eventually Sony wised up but the damage was done and we've seen the slow trickle of games it gets especially in physical format.  That's the fate of it which is sad, I had a PSP and for a year or something had Vita but ditched it around the time of Gravity Rush as nothing was coming I'd buy (don't want console ports, fed up with third person console titles too.)  I'd buy a Vita again sometime, but it would have to be a real cherry deal as it has enough now I'd dig into other than the 5 (4 I liked) games I had with it.


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