Meh,
I don't think piracy has near the effect in terms of lost sales that we are often lead to believe. How many potential PS3 software pirates would actually purchase the software if it wasn't available to them for free? How many who are accustomed to purchasing software are going to stop purchasing software and start stealing it? As I've mentioned before, I'm much more concerned by the potential for the PS3 to be locked out of BluRay playback due to its inability to be a secure platform.
And I still believe that the best way to combat media theft is to incentivize legitimate purchases instead of trying to prevent/punish theft. Sony should pursue this angle as vigorously as they pursue new security measures.
If they make it easy to do then I disagree. The thing here is that a lot of people these days are about saving money and if you can save money, but still get the latest games and can do it very easily without bricking or modifying your console and just by sticking in a CD/DVD/USB thumb drive.
Games these days are $60 (plus sales taxes or VAT taxes) that is just for ONE game and ONE game only and there are many games that are coming out that are extremely high quality and some even high quality multiplatform games which are smaller in size to download) you could also rent these games and copy them so you don't have to download them if you don't want.
It's not going to happen right now, it will take a while for the word to start spreading (as well as loaders to be built and other software) like it did on the PSP and once there are FAQs and once it is as easy as just downloading something without fear of bricking then it is a real threat.
One way or another this is a game changer for Sony and Sony fans. This isn't just about piracy, it's a direction changer and a "game changer" for the entire Sony platform division.
oh, and Piracy just doesn't affect Sony, but third parties as well and even the other consoles such as wii and the 360, because people that might have bought a game such as modern warfare might pirate it on the PS3, instead of buying it on the other platforms.
So, by Christmas 2011 game sales might suffer by then.
This bad economy is a push for easy piracy for consumers and lost revenue for Sony and third parties and this is why I think Sony will go the route of ONLINE only next generation.
If you charge for online play and your console is completely online (games can be downloaded and stored on a massive hard drive) and if anything gets hacked, the cloud can be updated and security issue avoided. Steam is already available now and Sony can just team up with them. The future of the console is the cloud. Saving of your games can be done in the cloud using web services.
This stops piracy, used games for sale, renting games, borrowing games and increases your profits by quite a bit. Of course the downsides are that not everyone has an Internet connection for gaming or a fast Internet connection and in some cases dial-up is only available and of course some people want to hold the media that they have.
However, the good outweighs the bad and this is where things are headed anyway.
