So through Kotaku I found an article on Gamasutra where SCEA Vice President Peter Dille talks about the lack of development for the PSP.  He cites the number of Resistance: Retribution torrents as being "Frankly sickening" and honestly, as a PSP owner, I'm sickened as well.  I'm sickened that as smart as the people at Sony are, they're being worked by the pirates who have cracked their system wide open and they haven't taken the steps required to protect their handheld from the ridiculous amount of piracy that's made it so that Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is still the best selling game on the platform.  Yeah, the game that in combination with Lumines makes it so you can throw old firmware on it without using Pandora.  Go figure.

There are ways around it.  I have two PSP 1000 models, neither run M33 or DarkAleX, they're both buzzing along with 5.05 soon to be 5.50 because I want to keep playing Suikoden and I don't want to jeapordize my legally owned copy of it.  The Playstation Store's a joke though, especially when compared with the Japanese store.  No Xenogears, no Biohazard/Resident Evil games, no Intelligent Qube, the only things that pique my interest are JRPGs and my selection was Suikoden and Wild Arms. 

You want to put pirates in their place, try this Sony.  When you release LBP for the PSP, have a firmware update ready for the game.  Have something in that firmware update that the game checks.  Put it on the UMD, make it part of the digital download if you're going that way after Loco Roco 2.  If the system doesn't have that official firmware or a version higher, install it automatically.  Make this practice with EVERY game that comes out from this point forward.  Bury that code deep, make the hackers reverse engineer it if they want it that bad, but don't let people torrent it day one and find that you just lost $4M on 100,000 torrents of Resistance: Retribution. 

You want to be really vicious, and if someone cost me $4,000,000, I'd be viscious, I'd check for the files which allow people to jigkick my games off the memory stick, and if it's there, I'd brick the system.  Delete everything off their memory stick, brick the system, and do it in a way that it takes something more than a Pandora Battery to get it going again.  If the pirates are killing the system, strike a blow against them and do something about it already. 

I'm glad to see Assassin's Creed, Rock Band (Frequency?), Little Big Planet, Persona, and more coming to the system.  I'm interested in seeing if Monster Hunter can be as big of a deal in the US as it is in Japan.  But it's not going to happen unless you take a HARD stance against the piracy which is running rampant on the system. 

Reading the Kotaku comments on the thread someone pointed out correctly that at first glance, the PSP is "the sex".  It is.  Seriously, if you have a DSi and a PSP, take them out and take a good look at them.  One looks like a kid's toy, one looks like an adult's portable gaming system.  Strike a blow like Sega did.  You do what Nintendon't, the PSP isn't your little brother's handheld (although with the demographic buying it I guess it IS your little brother's system).  Yes, it's harder to develop for, but third party developers for the most part aren't making money on Nintendo's system.  It's Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Wii Mini Game Collection.  People aren't buying Madworld, House of the Dead: Overkill, No More Heroes, hell, they're not even buying Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and the enthusiast press is fawning over that game. 

The DS is also easy as hell to pirate, see the R4 debacle in Japan, but Nintendo's install base includes people not savvy enough to us it for the most part.  It's aimed at moms, kids, and not the demographic of people who are going to be savvy enough to Pandora their system, flash their firmware, reinstall custom firmware and throw an eyepatch on.  The PSP is a companion piece to the PS3, which has the most powerful components of any of the current generation hardware.  Looking at the guts of a PS3 compared to an Xbox 360 or Wii, both systems pale in comparison.  Fortunately for Microsoft, the 360's early start  combined with the their own initial development kit has created more dev time to make the tools better, allowing more developers to create spectacular looking games, and because of it's early start and $199 price point, it's hit a critical install base which makes it the lead console for most multi-platform games.  In the long run, as people develop for the PS3 as the lead, the games will look better on that system, but it's high price point, smaller install base, and difficulty to program for is preventing that from happening now.  The people with PS3s for the most part are drawn to the power the system has, the PSP also contains amazing power for a handheld and people who want that power are going to know how to use it, and use it to the fullest extent they're capable of. 

That means the system's not just an internet browser, MP3 player, MP4 player, Skype capable phone, and game system.  It's one of the best emulators ever made.  It's processing power is spectacular, but if you're going to emulate NES and SNES games, why not PS1 games if Sony's not going to give those to us, and from there why not PSP games?  And that's where the system sits now.  With people using the power not just to emulate older systems, but to emulate games within days of their release, hurting the developers and the creators.  At this rate, the PSP will be solely an emulation device, because even SCEA wouldn't be foolish enough to throw money developing AAA titles that everyone's going to play for free, right?

The PSP is at a crossroads, and if Sony doesn't do something about it quickly, it's death rattles of the last few years are going to turn into it's premature death.  At the end of 2007 I thought that the PSP finally hit it's strong point.  Games like Joanne D'Arc, Final Fantasy: War of the Lions, and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness made it appear that people finally figured out how to best use the system.  Now it's 2009 and while there's promise on the horizon, the system might not make it to that point with enough momentum to enjoy the fruits of all of these developers labors.  The system will still sell, so long as the pirates continue to crack the system and SCEA does nothing about it.  Time to play hardball Sony.  Manditory firmware installs, kill systems with known piracy enablers, update that firmware often and have the games being released on the system require offical and current firmware for use.  You can't do much about UMDs that are already out, but you can start protecting the system now.

Do it, or perish, the situation's that dire now.