Sony: PSP Piracy Problem Improving

Sony's PSP hardware sells reasonably well from month to month, but on the software side of the business it's a different story. PSP games rarely make it into The NPD Group's monthly top 10 software charts. One reason for the sluggish software sales Sony has claimed in the past is the prevalence of piracy on the platform. It's also possible that consumers are buying the PSP more for its other multimedia functionality than its game offerings.

Regardless, Sony told MTV Multiplayer that it's observed the piracy situation improving for PSP in recent months. One area that should help to curb piracy on PSP is the recent introduction of direct downloads from the PlayStation Store.

"We've made really no secret [that there] certainly has been some piracy on the PSP," said John Koller, Sony Computer Entertainment America's head of hardware marketing. "We've seen that as a significant issue — it's trending down right now, we've seen the piracy not be as such prevalent in the last month to two months. But it has been a problem for us."

Koller also noted that Sony does actually pay attention to discussions on PSP piracy on various video game message boards. "We've noticed there's kind of a 'good vs. evil' battle that we track on many of the forums and many of the pirated web sites," he commented. "There's certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP. And then there's certainly the other side that believes that they can take as warranted. It's kind of been nice to see other consumers going and help and fight the battle for us."