I kinda agree with GlaG (welcome back by the way!^^) I can only tell what I noticed way back when the PSP was only just released for a bit: I went to two schools over the course of the PSPs prime-time and in both the situation regarding the PSP was rather clear, people were interested in hacking it not really to pirate PSP games, that was just a factor at the beginning they downloaded a few games and mostly deleted them swiftly after ten minutes because they didn't like them. The only games I ever saw having a appeal with people were games like Burnout, FIFA, PES and Ridge Racer.

Another thing, people actually disliked taking their PSP anywhere outside of home for various reasons, mostly because of the size and how easy the PSP 1000 broke when dropped plus it was kinda a likely thing to be 'borrowed' in schools. Some of the things were fixed with the PSP Slim but even then when I compare it to my old GBA SP/DS Lite (the orignal DS was poo poo for that as well) I still couldn't just fit it easily in a pocket :/

So if people don't took it outside, what did they do with it? The first years the line-up was quite similar to the PS2 which on the one hand is great because the PS2 had many nice games but on the other hand, if I have a PS2 with, lets say PES at home, I guess most people play the PS2 version then >.<

And the majority of people I helped hacking their PSPs at school later on were much more interested in pirating PSX/SNES/N64 games on their PSP simply because what got stuck in peoples minds was "PSP games suck" Like Sensei said, looking back it rather had a decent line-up of games but by the time that happened people already largely lost interest.

So yeah I don't think piracy was one of the main reasons the PSP didn't do well, it was one of the reasons but in my opinion not the main reason. Like GlaG said, DSs are even easier to pirate, yeah you have to buy something but there was a time where cheap DS knock-off cards were sold here everywhere for 20-30 that worked rather well until the copy protected games came which required more sophisticated flashcards. And even then, it was just pop-in and play while there's always a chance for bricked PSPs when you try to hack it.

But like said, that's only what I saw here around my town, it could very well be that it was different in other parts of the world^^

I for my part don't care much if the Vita gets hacked or not, the games seem nice and interesting this time around (though wee still get a fair share of "similar to PS3" games again >.<) so wee will see, I think the Vita will do well even if hacked^^