14 DAY TRIAL // It's impossible to pirate videogames on the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft has recently made it rather risky for players to try and mod the Xbox 360 home gaming console to use pirated content. But when it comes to the Sony made PlayStation Portable and to the Nintendo created DS line of products, piracy is rampant, even leading some videogame developers to abandon the platforms because of low sales. And with the popularity the handhelds have in Asia, that is where the frontline of the battle lays.
Yoichi Wada, who is the Chief Executive Officer and the president of Square Enix,, told Edge Online that “Piracy does a lot of damage, but within the Asian region the majority of damage comes from outside of Japan – not including the Nintendo DS. The R4 continues to inflict tremendous damage to our business. So in tandem with Nintendo, we have brought the issue to court. And we have been able to reach a certain degree of success from the court rulings.”
Where Nintendo tried the litigation route, Sony actually made piracy much tougher on the new PlayStation Portable Go, which does not have a removable battery and gets all its content from the PSN. But the strictness seems to have backfired with limited sales of the new device in Japan.
Wada believes that creating better videogaming experiences is another answer to the problem of piracy but the problem will probably never be eliminated as there will always be a segment of players interested in getting as much content as possible without paying.
In the same interview, Wada addressed the issues of selling Japanese-style videogames on Western markets, saying that “Well, actually, I’ve found the person that is prejudiced is actually the retailer and not the actual players. The retailers have a prejudice against overseas titles, and they won’t procure them.”