Gonna chime in on the piracy part. People tend to think that it's a non-issue and that in some cases piracy even "helps" sales. There's _sometimes_ a grain of truth but it's not all of the time or all of the cases.
We've had projects canned and titles cancelled during development for the PC simply because the piracy rate has become so problematic that you might have most people _playing_ your game on the PC, but you've got the most people that have _bought_ your game on the consoles. As a result the publishers simply pull the plug on the PC version entirely.
It doesn't lose the publisher much revenue but for the developer they can have just lost an entire platforms profits and royalties. Of course the PC version can often have a much longer shelf life vs consoles so now you've also got to rely entirely on making your profits and royalties on the launch week of your game... so hopefully there's nothing like Gran Tourismo or something launching at the same time or you'll get literally NOTHING.
So, I think Sony were a bit crap when they removed the OtherOS option, especially as it still listed it on the boxes when the machines were on sale! Removing functionality that people have bought your hardware to use is dishonest I think.
However this does enable piracy, it will mean that it happens more now, and I have been personally affected by piracy in the past. In fact I'm redundant at the moment due to the games industry going through a lot of strife right now so I'm not keen on that side of things.
Dunno where I'm going with all this
just bored and hungover on Jan 1st I guess!
Happy New Year everyone!
Andy
