However, consoles provide a much higher barriers to any would be pirates than PC. It’s fairly easy to chip a console, and new chips come out fast, but in some countries it’s getting harder to get hold of them, and I know *far* more people whose devices are unchipped rather than chipped. Online services offer a further incentive to keep a console squeaky clean (Much like VAC bans on Steam, though Valve are incredibly harsh with enforcement of these, i.e. there’s no recourse whatsoever if someone hacks your account open and merrily cheats away for a while).

As for the loss estimates in terms of $, they’re laughably exaggerated. I’m not saying piracy isn’t a problem for the industry, or that it should be ignored, but demand is elastic according to price variations. Once something is launched at one price it’s impossible to know how it would have fared at another. All the people who pirated Spore weren’t willing to pay full price for it, but might have paid 1/2 or 1/3 if they’d had the opportunity. There’s no way for EA to tell which price point would have led to the most revenue and least piracy, but you can bet any publisher will make piracy sound as bad as possible (and then some) when talking about it.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Almost-1-Billion-Dollars-Lost-by-Nintendo-in-2007-78918.shtml

http://kotaku.com/5060952/fallout-3-360-compromised-by-pre+apocalyptic-pirates

http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/3GwK3lZIp7jrUUeZdcp7se3MlENRIULs

VGChartz is pretty dumb / unconfirmed but I’m all for other investigatory techniques and leaks, or more figures being released.

I think the point he’s making is that because people want to know, there are people who make a living finding out. The larger a community gets, the better and more common the techniques of those people will become.

Looking at the Wii head tracking though, I really want to play. I think that fools our brains in a very different, by giving direct feedback to body movement.