[babypuncher]

Well when I look at a sales breakdown by region, the lions share of PS2s were sold in North America (54m), Europe (55m), and Japan (23m). That leaves 27m units divided amongst the rest of the world, notably including South America [1].

I have no doubt that viable piracy improves hardware sales in less fortunate economies, I just don't think it's enough of an effect to have the dramatic impact on global sales that was implied above.

If you want a console whose global sales I think were driven in large part by piracy, look no further than the PSP.

1: https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php...

[speeder]

Also I doubt the charts include the most popular way of buying a console in Brazil:

Buying one from USA.

Sometimes even flying to USA, buying the console and flying back is cheaper than buying local.

And during the PS2 era, everyone I knew that owned a PS2, bought it from a shop that sold modchipped PS2 that they bought from smugglers that got it from USA.

Currently I see that with the Switch, of the people I know that own a game console, most of the time is a Switch, and most of the time is a pre-modded Switch imported from USA, usually an old hardware version with Atmosphere installed, because modchipped Switches are buggy.

[uerobert]

Every single PS2 I ever saw growing up was bought in the US (I grew up in a third world country). Consoles in big box stores here were outrageously expensive, like 3 to 4 times the price in the US. It was cheaper to fly to the US to buy one I kid you not, so that was what a lot of people did.

edit: Also all of them were modchipped, you could take any console to any random electronics repair shop to get it modded.

[worg]

a nitpick, North America includes Mexico in those charts and as a mexican I can attest a lot of piracy went on in the PS2 / Xbox consoles back in the day

[sudosysgen]

Almost all of the consoles in the third world country I was in were originally bought from Europe.