[zak_mc_kracken]

It's a bit puzzling to hear this coming from Nintendo since it's pretty clear that piracy hurts the Windows platform infinitely more than the console industry.

Very, very few console owners run unlocked consoles, so they don't even have the option of running cracked games.

On the other hand, every PC owner can run cracked copies, and it only takes a few minutes of reading for even the most non tech savvy Windows user to find out about bittorrent and how to procure cracked games.

[joosters]

Very, very few console owners run unlocked consoles

If that were true, these console developers wouldn't need to worry about their games being cracked. And yet, as the article discusses, there really is a piracy problem.

[emodendroket]

I assume he means in comparison to PCs, where 100% of users already have a "jailbroken" platform.

[sosborn]

> It's a bit puzzling to hear this coming from Nintendo

Those R4 carts were all over the place. I was living in Japan at the time and everyone and their mother had one. There is no doubt it cost them a lot of money.

[gambiting]

Every single person I knew who had a PSP ran only pirated games. My cousin had a single legit copy and even then he would run a downloadad ISO because it was faster to load than the UMD. Apparently PSP sold really really well, but no games matched those sales, which suggests that PSP piracy was fairly widespread too.

[logfromblammo]

I had an Evo, and I must admit that it had more ROMs loaded onto it than those matching the cartridges I actually owned. But about 20% of those dozens of cartridges that I did still buy were for games that I might not have even tried otherwise. There were plenty that were played 0 or 1 times, then deleted forever.

I bought the device primarily so that I would have full access to my complete library without having to tote around physical security tokens everywhere.

And that is the same reason I have hard drives and alternative loaders for my PS2 and Wii. I can play any game that I buy without getting off the couch to switch discs. And with the Wii, there is the added benefit that I probably won't have to open it up and replace the optical disc drive for a third time. This has the unfortunate (for them) side effect that it is dead simple for me to pirate games on those platforms if I had the inclination.

So in my particular case, it would seem that the most effective anti-piracy measure would be to remove the requirement that paying customers have to continually juggle physical tokens to enjoy the content that they paid for.

If I have to break the security features in order to add the convenience features that I want most, the psychological barrier for piracy is lowered. If everything that I want is already on this side of the fence, I am far less inclined to jump over it.

It just so happens that Steam provides the feature I like, which is easy access to a whole library. As a result, I have on a few occasions preferred to re-license a game I already own on disc through Steam, just so I won't have to dig up the physical disc, configure a DOSBox or WinXP VM, install drivers, make tweaks, download the official and unofficial patches, and such.

I already have more games than I have time to play games. If I go to pirate something, it won't be because I don't want to pay, but because I don't want to be hassled every time I want to play.

So the number one anti-piracy measure from my perspective is DON'T WASTE YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS' TIME. That applies equally to unskippable DVD scenes, physical disc checks, and connection-always-required schemes. Don't waste my time, and I won't go looking for ways to stop you from wasting my time. It is impossible for you to irritate me into giving you more of my money.

[emodendroket]

On the other hand, if you download a console game and play it on your console you don't have to worry that it's bundled with keyloggers or enrolling you in a botnet or whatever.