Despite public statements to the contrary by industry associations, software piracy in the US is not considered to be a top-level business problem among executives interviewed at US firms. In many other countries, however, piracy is rampant because of different cultural perceptions of software as intellectual property, different histories with respect to bundling of software free with computer systems, and lack of enforcement of copyright laws. As mentioned above, a secondary impact of rampant piracy is debilitation of the domestic software industry, even in countries where there is a well-developed infrastructure that could support such an industry. In India, especially, there is an extensive supply of high-level programming talent who, in addition, are generally fluent in English. Many projects that would be done by average programmers in the US can be done at lower cost and by better programmers abroad.
Quality is as much a factor in decisions for offshore outsourcing as is price.
In both Japan and the US, all interviewees were asked whether their respective education systems produced well-trained software professionals. Japanese interviewees in government, academic, and corporate settings were uniformly dissatisfied with the technical skills of newly graduated programmers and software engineers. In contrast, interviewees at software publishing firms in the US were satisfied with the graduates of US computer science programs, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The video game industry is already playing a significant role in accelerating the consumerization of computing worldwide. Through an increasing number of strategic alliances in interactive multimedia, game makers will continue to expand their markets and their influence on the direction of consumer software products in general.