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Q-Games Gone PSP-Shy Due To Pixeljunk Monsters Piracy
by Leigh Alexander
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October 20, 2009
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Q-Games head Dylan Cuthbert says he's hesitant to port any more titles to PSP after witnessing the impact of piracy on sales of tower defense title PixelJunk Monsters.
Talking to fans and media on his Twitter account, Cuthbert said: "I don't think we'll port anything else to the PSP, we have to see how PJMD does as there's a *lot* of piracy."
Cuthbert elaborated that Monsters' "good fit" for the platform makes it especially attractive to pirates, and says he hopes they'll ultimately buy the full version "out of guilt."
If the theory is that pirates are helping themselves to a free demo and may later pay for the game, why not just offer a demo, as suggested by a fan who bemoaned the relative dearth of demos for PSP games?
"A PSP demo is in the works," said Cuthbert, "but I don't think it makes any difference to piracy."
The PSP in particular has long been an attractive platform to pirates, prompting Sony to consider piracy prohibitions with every revision to the hardware it makes.
For example, the battery in the new PSP Go is placed such that it can't easily be opened without critically damaging the hardware, a design decision Sony has stated is designed to discourage tampering with it to the fullest possible extent. The lack of a removable battery is an obstacle to hackers trying to modify official firmware.
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Humm... I think that piracy is not the fault that he does not sell... Seriously, I never heard of that game, and I activelly follow games around, neither any of my friends that own PSPs, I don't know a single friend that has this game (not even pirated).
I can't say I blame them for their hesitation, but it's certainly a big loss to PSP owners. This game is fantastic.
I'm not sure what it would take to break the TD genre away from the stigma of being a cheap minigame, but damn are they addicting.
Games don't get pirated in mass when people don't know about it. Your anecdotal evidence is obviously not representative of the norm. If it was, then while sales might still not have been great, piracy wouldn't have been nearly as widespread either.
There are many PixelJunk Monsters articles here on Gamasutra, I've seen a lot of comments from you here, I don't know how you've never heard about this awesome game. If you have a ps3 I recommend you to purchase it.
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About the article:
This is such a shame!! PixelJunk Monsters is my favorite PSN game, maybe my favorite PS3 game. I'm planing on purchasing a PSPgo and the digital downloads of PJM and both Patapon games soon.
I have a PSPstay and I dislike UMDs, all PSPstay owners I know dislike the format as well. I think Sony could drop it completely and go for the digital download format to prevent piracy in a near future.