Why piracy on firmware 3.60 won’t kill the PS Vita
Since the release of PS Vita game piracy tool Vitamin, I’ve seen growing discussions about piracy and how it will impact the future of the PS Vita. Spoiler alert: it won’t.
People on discussion boards easily surface examples of devices that were completely destroyed by piracy. The Sega Dreamcast is probably the most popular example: piracy is often used as one of the main reasons to explain the console’s ultimate demise. People also often mention the PSP as a device that was largely hit by piracy. Of course, piracy’s never the only reason a console performs poorly on the market. The NDS, PSP’s competitor, did great for many years despite its games being extremely easy to pirate with plug and play flashcarts.
I could of course mention how the PS Vita was dead long before piracy surfaced on it. But that’s not what I want to talk about. Today, I want to talk about cold, hard numbers, and how companies like Sony protect themselves against piracy much more efficiently than they used to.
It all boils down to the firmware updates, the added value of not pirating, and the potential number of people who can access the HENkaku hack (and therefore, play game “backups”) today.
Recently Yifanlu explained that there are about 100’000 HENkaku users since the hack launched. After discussing the source of this number with him, I understand the number to be pretty accurate. It doesn’t give us the whole picture, but we get a good idea of the scale. This number is massive, compared for example to Rejuvenate, which had (again according to Yifanlu) about 10’000 users.
Let’s assume for a minute that all these 100’000 users pirate games. Let’s even go crazy and imagine that this number grew to 150’000 since Yifanlu last announced the numbers.
Now lets compare this to the number of PS Vita owners: There’s no recent official numbers, but a quick look at Wikipedia shows us that we’re probably well above 6 million PS Vita sold by now (4 million by January 2013, plus about 2 million sold in Japan alone between 2013 and 2014). IGN say the number was 10 million by 2014.
Our 150’000 pirates represent 1.5% of the PS Vita user base. It’s not a completely insignificant number, but it’s not something that’s going to impact Sony’s bottom line or game developers sales. Would you be *** of if your salary went down 1.5%? Probably. But would you quit your job if that happened?
So the discussions about Vita Piracy, or Vitamin killing the PS Vita, and “independent developers” stopping support for the PS Vita are just from people who make lots of assumptions without even looking at actual numbers.
Additionally, it’s unlikely the number of HENkaku users is going to grow much further. Sony have patched the exploit in firmware 3.61. Many people will update their console before learning about the 3.60 hack, and even for those who know about the hack, there is a strong difference from the PSP days: nowadays, it matters a lot to be on the latest firmware to get the full experience.
In the new generation of consoles, Sony have made a successful transition to a system where having full access to the PSN services (and as such, being on the latest firmware and playing by the rules – yes, we can access the PSN with HENkaku now, but doing so is risky) is a requirement to get the full Playstation Vita experience. How many gamers will get tired of the possibility to pirate, and instead upgrade their system to get back to the full online experience?
I’m seeing these discussions happening already. As I said in a former article, piracy makes less sense nowadays than it did before, because the “legit” experience offers much more than a game: online access, updates, trophies, free PS+ games, social media… Sony has converted the gaming experience into a service that encompasses much more, making the value of piracy much less attractive to a significant amount of gamers.
Don’t get me wrong: people who want free games will pirate. Some of them will get a 3.60 PS Vita to get the best of both worlds. But at the end of the day, what matters is that Sony now has a good way of mitigating the risk of piracy because online access to the PSN is not only a requirement, it’s also a huge share of the experience. As such, the risk for them of piracy numbers growing exponentially is extremely limited, and today stands at less than 2.5% of the user base.
Remember the old C64 Times???
Frost time replying to a post and English not so good
First wololo thank you I’ve been here following you for years
2ed if you have ever bought a used game and never did no dlc than hop on that boat because ur a pirate game stop captain of the boat btw
wut?
He’s saying buying used games is piracy because the developers still don’t see any of your money.
can the hackers focus on ps1 and psp emulator? that would be great for me (retro gamer)
Why not buy a PSP?
A HenKAKU PSP emulator may have additional benefits vs something like TN-V or an actual PSP. For instance, running at the PSVita’s native resolution would be a YUUUUUUGE plus. 240p upscaled blows ***.
That 100K number also is just per specific device also, I have three OLED Vitas. So that number isn’t that accurate to the number of people actually using it. Could be around 90K or less active HENkaku users since I know many users on Wololo and other scene sites have multiple systems.
But PSP was great console and being famous only because of being hackable system so that’s made many people buy it so that’s mean this new hack is the starting point of PSVita to REVIVE!
Wat. Who cares if some weird dudes buy vitas when noone is buying the software? How do you create a logic like that. PSP suffered horribly and lost quite a lot of games in the west because of piracy.
go f…your self , look at PSP game library and at PSvita library. PSP was hacked in first year.logic ***.
Yes, and vita’s library has been getting a lot of japanese games lately because it wasn’t hacked. ***k you, de*enerate, I curse you and your family if you pirate a single game.
I had to collect my thoughts on whether I wanted PSN to play God Eater Resurrection & 2 with a friend who has a PS4, which I had waited for the release of the game for a long time; or to pirate games I might not finish. I mean, I have already gotten good deals off the PSN and I haven’t been able to play all of the games I’ve bought. Heck, I even was in FW 3.18, longing for good homebrews and pirated games, then HENKAKU came out, but I hadn’t reached that conclusion yet until now.
Overall I’m enjoying my PSN experience with the Vita again. All thanks to my favorite game from the PSP (God Eater Burst) 🙂
This article’s point is misleading.
First, it’s very important to make the distinction between West and Japan. The PS Vita is still successful in Japan (a fact everyone chooses to ignore), and lots of games are still being released for the device over there. It has a limited install base in the West.
Second, the PS Vita was surviving in the West on niche titles (another fact everyone chooses to ignore so they can call it dead). Titles that struggle to break the 100000 sold units mark. Not all sold PS Vitas are still being loved by their owner, and some even have two.
Based on that, the number of HENkaku users comes frighteningly close to what might be the amount of users that are still using it and buying those niche games.
Eh… When it comes down to it, I’m against piracy 100%, no matter the system it is for.
I love the Vita, actually, maybe because it failed to become what Sony wanted. It’s full of niche JRPG’s, and I already have dozens of games. When I bought the Vita, I did it mainly for Persona 4 Golden, Ys, and Demon Gaze, after that I bought tons of games, even digital ones due to their sales (I’m a fan of physical media).
FIRST
And here i thought wololo would be going to talk about the actual positive impact that piracy can have on the success of certain games.
From personal experience i can only talk about games i showed to friends and which they just grabbed after seeing them at my place, not to mention me still buying them later on in their lifecycles just out of fond memories.
And if that isn’t something that seems all that common the more public example would be minecraft, and the fact that the first spread of the game was majorly driven by piracy, at the very start there where less players actually owning the game than there where pirates for it…
Not wanting to sound rude, but just another perspective about piracy as an advertising factor when remedied the right way and at the right time instead of being killed of in an instant…
Thank you for posting this. I was never vocal about it, but I was never too thrilled about Vita piracy. But this article does make some fine points, which admiteddly put me at ease.
Why? Vita piracy wont destroy the vita because for the west the vita is already pronounced dead and is not being produced. The vita died due to lack of whatever the users wanted (for months the top bought thing on the ps store for vita was *** mlb money packs) And now it will be brought back to life. heck my local gamestop went from a vita games goldmine to having just sao and thats it!
10,000,000 Vita’s sold over its lifespan =/= 10,000,000 active Vita users. 150,000 makes up a much larger portion of the active userbase than 1.5%. It’s going to kill the Vita, which had a pretty great year in 2016 for 3rd party releases.
And how many of those vitas are broken? how many are on 3.61? I dont think you understand or know what you are talking about. Even pc statistics show that 1.5% is the average for piracy. Kind of stupid to say piracy killed a console not sold in 99% or stores and considered a dead console by sony directly. But what do i know i only worked retail for 3 years and watched everything vita expect the memory cards get marked down and never got a new stock
a great point and 1.5% is very high from a business standpoint to begin with.
Piracy is never a good thing in terms of software sales, not hardware.
2 million people in Japan and whatever for the rest of the world have PS Vita but most PSV games sold is about 10k, 30k, 50k depending on what company, same as PSV localizations.
It won’t kill the PS Vita, but it will slowly kill the amount of games developed for it sure.
If 150,000 people pirates, then all the 3rd party localizations are doomed lmao.
Everyone who bought a PsVita isn’t using it now and probably won’t be buying any more games. The actual userbase is a lot lower than 10 million.
You cannot kill what is already dead. Bwahahahahaha!
godlike !
How can you kill what’s already dead?
Double Kill !!!!!
this article is pretty shortsighted. the proper comparison here isn’t the total hardware userbase (the 10M users) but rather, the number of users currently purchasing vita games. the sales numbers for recent vita titles are often in the tens of thousands, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir was considered a success on the vita and sold 40-50k on the platform in its debut Japan, where the Vita games are more commercially successful and enjoy higher sales.
When we consider that over a 100,000 people have downloaded software that allow them to potentially pirate games on vita, even if only a fraction of those people do actually turn to pirating games they would have otherwise bought, that would significantly affect sales of new titles on the vita.
so when people say piracy will negatively affect the vita, they are doing these simple heuristics – since the vita is relegated to niche localisations and indie titles, the potential effect size of piracy is magnified. if i were a developer or a localisation team i would be thinking twice about my next project being a vita title, despite the fact that 2015-16 has been a very strong time for interesting new vita releases.
OMAE WA MAU SHINDEIRU, VITA
realquickmedia is selling 2 PS Vitas on ebay right now that are both under 3.60
now one by one
move on from coding brew
and make a h.bin with an actuall exploit app
making all the installs for u to dump and run ur brew
and having an evolutionpsv avapsv and a psvmediacenter/player
cut the code. piracy for the middleman. third.
What is this ridiculous lunacy? 1.5% and growing is huge number when compared to active users (wololol seriously can’t into the simplest of mathetics?) and piracy will completely destroy vita in the near future. Every pirate should be ashamed to look in the mirror, I can’t help but despise modern gaming community, it hasn’t improved at all from the days of the past. Damn you, guys, damn you, you have no decency, no concience to speak of.
Indeed…
A lot of people just want free games.
Screw the devs and everyone whose jobs revolve around the games.
When I was a small kid I pirated and thought it was cool: With time I grew up and changed my mind, anyone over 16, legally an adult in many countries, should be ashamed of themselves.
You are all idiots if you think piracy is killing anything. Simple fact: I bought Vita only to pirate, so Sony already won by getting my money for console keeping in mind that I would never buy any game anyway. Think again crying dumbfuk nerds.
Noone cares about your tard money that you paid for the console, only bought software actually ever matter. It would be much better if a pig like you never had vita to begin with.
The people saying 1.5 are from the active users. How do you know the 100000 are active users? I rarely used my vita until the piracy made it more attractive. I bet many of those had the vita collecting dust at home until the piracy came. The people care about the vita will keep supporting it in the only territory that matters ( Japan ). The device was basically dead outside japan.
If you don’t know anything about the situation, please stay silent. People are worried about exactly that: we are going to lose all those localizations, dozens of which we had this year. Japanese games don’t translate themselves and those games found a great niche in the West. Jap vita is very far from dead in the West. Was. It’s exactly the same situation as with psp when we never got Fate/Extra CCC, Sol Trigger and many more japanese games because ****ing **iots like you and other thiefs.
you must not be fully informed either friend telling other people to be silent. He made his point and stated it correctly that 1.5% is from active installers of henkaku and that number falls in line with other consoles and even pc piracy. THE VITA IS ALREADY *** DEAD its what we call a niche console. People were only buying the vita up until now to play imports. I also love when people rule in morals when that 1.5% is more than likely to be in terms of a pc or 3ds owner someone who cant afford to buy every new release. Do some research before you be a *** just because people have internet access doesnt mean everything is going perfect for them and many just want to enjoy their games. You should go to the 3ds scene and tlk to them about piracy and how their console is doomed since they have it far worse than sony does. 5 years for one vita hack and the 3ds has been hacked since like what 4.5
You also forgot Can that 99.99 percent of people dont give a *** about localization …. Fate/Extra CCC, Sol Trigger and many more japanese games that you listed you can probably imagine that myself and many people dont give a single *** if those games get english text or not if you really want to play them learn Japanese and contribute to their society since an american company translating a game doesnt mean they will release more in the west it just makes more hassle. Most Japanese devs dont like america because of that american attitude you got there
Hey, braindead, being xenophobic doesn’t equal arguments. You are just an **iot who literally shouts NOONE CARES ABOUT LOCALIZATIONS, SO SCREW THEM. That’s not true. Sure, you are an **iot, so you don’t, but a lot of people do. If even half of those switch to piracy we are pretty much doomed. But why am explaining things to someone who calls himself a “***”
Hey, br**ndead, being xenophobic doesn’t equal arguments. You are just an **iot who literally shouts NOONE CARES ABOUT LOCALIZATIONS, SO SCREW THEM. That’s not true. Sure, you are an **iot, so you don’t, but a lot of people do. If even half of those switch to piracy we are pretty much doomed. But why am explaining things to someone who calls himself a “*etard”
Many game are also on PS4 so they will have to translate them anyway and they could do digital only if they don’t want loses. Many niche games from idea factory, NIS and Marvelous make a lot of profit in the west so I don’t see them stopping the localization. I rarely bought anything for it before the piracy so I didn’t make any difference and will only buy if I want to support something so badly.
Who cares about an **iot like you who has always been a thief through and through? They can just stop localizing vita versions, ps4 doesn’t mean jack, especially if this pirating will threaten their overall sales. You guys really are pathetic don’t care about others in the least.
I think you didn’t get that support-part,
if you didnt at any point mean to buy a game in the first place, like ever, for example if it just ends up having way to high of a price (which is a thing, poor sales of your console don’t justify games staying on 2/3 of their startingprice for most of their lifetime, quite the contrary)
And you pirate it, there are up to six possible, and fairly even-chanced outcomes, either you play it a bit and forget it and you didn’t affect the market at all and got some tinsy hours of free half-fun (i know, unbelievably selfish),
Or (and that actually happens from time to time) you have that great of a time with it that you buy it at some later point in time,
Just for the sake of owning it.
Then you can in either case end up talking about your experience with people who can be a bit more lose wih their money and maybe they end up buying it or they end up just thinking about the game.
So in four out of those six scenarious
you actually mean a netgain, in one of it you don’t affect the market whatsoever and in one you mean a theoretical loss, which is when you made said friend reconsider from buying it. If you are buying digitally, the profit is close to 99% of the games price.
No, you are not selfish, you are just another honorless pathetic thief.
Lol, the active user base is not even a quarter of that 10 million vitas.
A typical vita game released now can’t even sell 150,000 copies lol.
The % should be like 35% of active users pirate now.
how do i restore my ps vita without updating? i am already on 3.60. i don”t want to use my legit psn account?
Here is what i did in similar situation, remember you need latest henkaku to login into psn. This will completely delete all settings, data, saves, everything. PSN steps are important!
Go to settings —> PSN —–> Login to psn —–> Deactivate your system. —-> Log out from psn.
Now go to vitashell and to vs0:registry/ folder —-> delete registry.dreg and registry.ireg files.
Go to settings and format your memory card.
Reboot. After that your vita will act like booted first time. Just remember to turn off automatic update download in setting menu after first boot.
I will reply with a GoT quote: “What is dead may never die”.
And now will go and steal the amazing library of a “dead” console. Can a human be more sordid than you guys?
“amazing library” ? You have ever seen 3DS library ? Vita is beautiful console but her father is a crook. I never buy anymore a console or even game from SONY. Check out what he says: Sorry people but the number of 10000000 is too little and we don’t care about you.
Wat. You make no sense.
I’m done with this ***, to be honest Wololo. Vita architecture is too difficult to crack. Piracy for this platform was just nothing but a meme.
It’ it ‘s a dead console. The piracy will revive the ps vita. Long live the ps vita.
I LOVE PS VITA 3.60 + HENKAKU v3
Piracy won’t kill a console, it’s more often killing the localization of games.
May I simply just say what a relief to find a person that truly
understands what they are discussing on the internet.
You certainly know how to bring a problem to light and
make it important. More and more people ought to check this out
and understand this side of the story. I was surprised that you
aren’t more popular since you certainly possess the gift.