To publishers and developers, piracy is a vicious hydra hanging over the games industry. Companies are tearing their hair out trying to find a way to stop it. While some gamers believe the problem isn’t as bad as they make it out to be, the Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association (CESA) has conducted a study, which puts a spotlight on some pretty staggering figures.
CESA, which also organizes the annual Tokyo Game Show event, today released the results of their investigation in portable video game piracy. The results show ¥3.816 trillion ($41.5 billion) was lost worldwide due to piracy on the DS and PSP platforms between 2004 and 2009. In Japan alone, the figure reached ¥954 billion.
To reach these numbers, researchers checked downloads at the top 114 piracy sites for the Japanese releases of Top 20 titles from 2004 to 2009. They then received the total Japanese figure by multiplying those figures by the ratio of sales between the top 20 titles and the rest of the market and the price of the games themselves. The resulting number was multiplied by four to get the worldwide figure, with the assumption that Japan is 25% of the world’s software market.
P2P sharing methods like Winny and Bittorrent were not included in the research. Without these numbers, CESA says the actual losses could be much higher.
There was also a breakdown by region. The country with the most servers hosting piracy sites was America, followed by China. Together both countries accounted for 60% of all piracy servers. For users accessing the sites in question, America still took the top spot, with Japan as number two, and China as number three.
[Thanks Andriasang]
2 Comments
June 8, 2010
This is the same basic untested assumption that's always been used in discussions about piracy... every time a file is downloaded it would have been a full retail price sale if piracy was not possible. Not even mentioning the other assumptions listed (like Japan is 25% of the world market for all titles), it's no wonder you get figures that seem astounding. These figures mean nothing; they merely represent an attempt to justify whatever anti-piracy measures publishers or manufacturers choose to implement.
Time and money spent looking for the Holy Grail of anti-piracy technology is better spent figuring out business models where piracy doesn't matter, or even helps... such as free-to-play games.
June 8, 2010
I think the best way to help prevent piracy is to release a quality game. I download any game before I make a purchase considering there are barely any demo's created. I buy good games. Another way is to have a focus for multiplayer. There are very very few games that you can play online when a copy has been pirated since servers check the registered CD key, tho there are some hacked servers hosted by a random person, if your game is like CoD where its huge for MP, their game wont get pirated as much hence their huge sale figures. 360, PSP and PC are incredibly easy to pirate, most 360 games are upload 2 or even 3 weeks before it goes retail but PS3 is a different story, much harder for their bluray games.