Why piracy on the nintendo ds is overblown.

With the recent amount of controversy surrounding pokemon black and white being region locked, even though the game has already been pirated, I figured it was a good time to talk piracy statistics.  I decided to look at various piracy data, along with sales data, to determine if piracy is a problem on the nintendo ds compared to other consoles.
 
Now before I go ahead and share my findings I would like to point out that these are very rough estimates. The method of which these estimates were found doesn't equate to the total amount of potential pirates for a console. What I did is that I looked at the numbers for the most pirated game on a console and compared that to the total number of consoles sold via VGchartz.com. There's a large number of holes for using this method to gather data on piracy, but my point isn't to be acurate it's to give rough estimates. 
 
So let's start with the

With the recent amount of controversy surrounding pokemon black and white being region locked, even though the game has already been pirated, I figured it was a good time to talk piracy statistics.  I decided to look at various piracy data, along with sales data, to determine if piracy is a problem on the nintendo ds compared to other consoles.
 
Now before I go ahead and share my findings I would like to point out that these are very rough estimates. The method of which these estimates were found doesn't equate to the total amount of potential pirates for a console. What I did is that I looked at the numbers for the most pirated game on a console and compared that to the total number of consoles sold via VGchartz.com. There's a large number of holes for using this method to gather data on piracy, but my point isn't to be acurate it's to give rough estimates. 
 
So let's start with the

I really find it hard to believe that more people pirate on the 360 than on the ds, consider the facts, DL discs are expensive, bandwith for games are expensive, a DL burner can be expensive, jtagging or flashing your 360 can be expensive even moreso if you buy your 360 already flashed.
 
Compared to the DS ? Buying a flash cart...yeah. For the amount you spend on pirating 360 games you can buy just as many original games.
 
And whats the figures for the pc ? I would imagine thats even worse than the psp figures.

PSP piracy is nuts.  My friend is on a private tracker and I saw that 1.5 million pirated Dissidia.  That's more than the sales.  :| 
 
GT Mobile was worse....and let's not even bring up Peace Walker.

" I really find it hard to believe that more people pirate on the 360 than on the ds, consider the facts, DL discs are expensive, bandwith for games are expensive, a DL burner can be expensive, jtagging or flashing your 360 can be expensive even moreso if you buy your 360 already flashed.  Compared to the DS ? Buying a flash cart...yeah. For the amount you spend on pirating 360 games you can buy just as many original games.  And whats the figures for the pc ? I would imagine thats even worse than the psp figures. "

More people are pirating games on the ds, however more people have a nintendo ds than they do an xbox 360.  What I'm saying is that there's a higher RATE of piracy on the 360 than on the DS.    Also PC figures are still less than psp figures. In the blog I pointed out that the most pirated pc game of last year had 4.1 million downloads while the psp had 5.28.

it's not overblown if i can literally just google "nintendo DS rom" and go download whatever I want. (computer emulation obviously, but were they just looking at torrent numbers? I dunno that number seems way too low)
 
as for PSP piracy, there isn't an emulator that works well at all for PSP (I know I've looked), so...

Then explain why the majority of my friends with DSes pirate their games, while I don't know a single person who pirates 360 games.

Hang on here.  You're comparing (Pokemon Platinum units pirated / DS units sold) to (Modern Warfare units pirated / Xbox360 units sold) to (Dissidia units pirated / Dissidia units sold)? Wouldn't it be fairer to compare units pirated / units sold across all platforms and titles (you know, comparing apples to oranges and all that jazz)?  
Also, I could've sworn that a percentage is a relative term, in other words, 1% of 1000 will, in sheer numbers, be more than 4% of 100. Because 8% is only 8 times as much as 1% if and only if the numbers are the same.  
Also, doesn't the CESA only track games developed in Japan? I can remember quite a spat about Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars' sales being crippled by the rampant piracy issues on both the DS and PSP. Where's that in the numbers? 
Also, Modern Warfare 2 as the indicator of PC piracy? Really (or SRSLY, as you kids are want to call it). I would say that the Sims Series (main titles only, disregarding the addons) would be the most pirated PFC game of perhaps all time. Source:  http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/ . Take note: Sims 2 was released in 2004! This list is 2008!

" it's not overblown if i can literally just google "nintendo DS rom" and go download whatever I want. "

" @Laketown said:

" it's not overblown if i can literally just google "nintendo DS rom" and go download whatever I want. "

Of course you're going to be able to "download whatever [you] want". What kinds of results do you expect from such a search? I could perform a search for Xbox 360 ISOs and get results fro that too. It doesn't really prove anything though, exact for the fact that it exists. "

" Then explain why the majority of my friends with DSes pirate their games, while I don't know a single person who pirates 360 games. "

I rather leave pirating alone. This whole thing is blown way out of proportion. I believe the best way to downsize pirates is to ignore them and stop talking to the media about what kind of DRM your featuring in your console and game. When you have a publisher or console developer boasting about how many units they sell and how they're cracking down on pirates, the pirates will retaliate. They will literally do what they can to crack it. It's like giving them a challenge. 
 
I'll give a couple of examples. Microsoft retaliated against modded console with a console ban. Literally banning over 1 million consoles. Do you know how they fought back? They brought out an update for flashed DVD drives. That makes it nearly impossible to detect that you have a modded console. Ubisoft mentioned that in order to play Assassin's Creed II you will have to be connected to the internet the whole time. Well, eventually the pirates found a way to crack that. 
 
Keep putting up different DRM's and the pirates will crack it.

I have to agree with the majority here. All the data you've collected is pretty bad.  
  
Also, are you just trying to make yourself feel better about piracy?

" @thwak said:

More people are pirating games on the ds, however more people have a nintendo ds than they do an xbox 360.  What I'm saying is that there's a higher RATE of piracy on the 360 than on the DS.    Also PC figures are still less than psp figures. In the blog I pointed out that the most pirated pc game of last year had 4.1 million downloads while the psp had 5.28.

The way you're figuring these numbers is a load of nonsense.  You're taking unreliable piracy data for singular games and factoring it against the total installed base.  You don't even have figures for PC...  A slightly more reliable way of calculating this data is comparing your pirated copy data against know sales data.  That's far more important to the business world.  Some guy who uses a word processor on his PC in Pakistan isn't part of the PC gaming installed base. "

" I have to agree with the majority here. All the data you've collected is pretty bad.    Also, are you just trying to make yourself feel better about piracy? "

" I rather leave pirating alone. This whole thing is blown way out of proportion. I believe the best way to downsize pirates is to ignore them and stop talking to the media about what kind of DRM your featuring in your console and game. When you have a publisher or console developer boasting about how many units they sell and how they're cracking down on pirates, the pirates will retaliate. They will literally do what they can to crack it. It's like giving them a challenge. 
 
I'll give a couple of examples. Microsoft retaliated against modded console with a console ban. Literally banning over 1 million consoles. Do you know how they fought back? They brought out an update for flashed DVD drives. That makes it nearly impossible to detect that you have a modded console. Ubisoft mentioned that in order to play Assassin's Creed II you will have to be connected to the internet the whole time. Well, eventually the pirates found a way to crack that.  Keep putting up different DRM's and the pirates will crack it. "