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Study Claims $41.5 Billion In Portable Game Piracy Losses Over Five Years

Posted by Soulskill on from the fair-and-balanced dept.

Gamasutra reports that Japan's Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association conducted a study to estimate the total amount of money lost to piracy on portable game consoles. The figure they arrived at? $41.5 billion from 2004 to 2009. Quoting: "CESA checked the download counts for the top 20 Japanese games at what it considers the top 114 piracy sites, recording those figures from 2004 to 2009. After calculating the total for handheld piracy in Japan with that method, the groups multiplied that number by four to reach the worldwide amount, presuming that Japan makes up 25 percent of the world's software market. CESA and Baba Lab did not take into account other popular distribution methods for pirated games like peer-to-peer sharing, so the groups admit that the actual figures for DS and PSP software piracy could be much higher than the ¥3.816 trillion amount the study found."

4 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. $45 BILLION?!? by IBBoard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, that must be accurate, because I'm sure they factored in things like:

    1) People downloading way more than they could ever afford to buy
    2) Multiple downloads by one person
    3) Downloads of games that were already legitimately purchased by the individual but unusable for some reason

  2. Why, oh why do they do these studies by Engeekneer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is once again one of those numbers that will be thrown around by IP holders to get attention from the politicians. And yet the study does the same idiotic assumption as all the other ones.

    Saying one download is one lost sale is idiotic. It has never been true and never will be. It's probably off by at least a factor of 10. And haven't many studies already shown (well, at least with music) that the people who pirate are also the people who buy the most?

  3. It's a zero sum game. by the_raptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No money is lost to the economy due to copyright infringement as some MAFIA groups try to argue. It is just not given to publishers for those movies/songs/games that are pirated. But it is spent on other products. This is the broken window fallacy, that a child who throws a rock through a window is stimulating the economy.

    I download movies and tv shows because I don't like watching broadcast TV. Any that deserve a repeat viewing get bought on DVD (which is probably about 80%). If they shutdown illegal downloads they wouldn't get more money from me because I have little to spare, they are more likely to get less as I would just shift to other forms of entertainment or free to access media (I have started watching local legal tv streaming sites, which has dropped the amount I illegally download and later purchase).

    This isn't the 1990's where the big publishers had little competition. There is so much free or cheap content out there that I don't buy before I try.

    --

    ========
    CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
  4. Re:Losses? by michaelhood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    According to Wikipedia there's 129M DS units sold, and 60M PSP units sold.. that's $220 worth of pirated games for every handheld in the world. Keeping in mind that a lot of people bought multiple revisions of the DS, replacement units, units that aren't in use, and so on, it's probably more like $300-400 per handheld owner.

    Sorry, but that number is completely ridiculous and not credible in any way whatsoever to anyone owning a calculator.