I fully agree with your post—and I think that part of the problem with the bolded in particular is that we still have this weird concept that piracy ≠ lost sales. Yeah, not every pirated download is a lost sale, but I'm sure that some downloads are.
And some people—people I personally know, unfortunately—take this to a to an extreme: "I wouldn't have bought that game anyway, so I pirated it. They're not losing any money, so it's okay."
And I guess that if said person really wouldn't have bought the game anyway, he's right. But I question whether he can really know that. I certainly don't think that I can ever know that. There are TONS of things that I wanted but thought were too expensive, and I eventually caved and made the purchase anyway. If I let myself just pirate stuff, that would never happen. Furthermore, I wouldn't be an unbiased decision maker—I'd have an incentive to tell myself that I wouldn't have bought the game anyway.
There's just no way to know for sure, and I worry people aren't altruistic enough to support a digital economy in the long term. Yeah, Netflix is doing well, but I wonder if it'll be enough to sustain the large movie budgets we're used to as physical media sales continue to dry up.
And this is coming from someone who, on a personal level, hates DRM'd media: I buy all of my movies from iTunes because it's easy to strip out the DRM with requiem, and I buy all of my games DRM-free whenever it's humanely possible to do so.
(Wow, this post got a broader than I'd originally intended...)
You're exactly right. Having to wait when you could spend money and get it RIGHT NOW is a fantastic incentive in and of itself.
Imagine you see your favorite Let's Player go through some fantastic open-world game on YouTube that just released. You make a good salary and money isn't a big issue. After watching the Let's Play, you feel compelled to play the game in some way, shape or form. You could spend $60 buying the new release on Steam...but there's this nifty piracy release that's completely free and conveniently released the same day. "Oh, I wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's not a lost sale," these people say. But if you're really THAT compelled to play it before, would you have really avoided it if it weren't available through piracy? Probably not. You would have bought it as an impulse. I feel like that situation is more common than people want to admit.
Video games are an impulse medium. Countless times I've bought something on sale, or a game that others recommend, or a fun game I see on YouTube. I take a chance on it and I splurge simply because of that impulse. That impulse tends to get eroded when there is a completely free alternative instantaneously available. If I had to wait to save up $3000 for a new TV...or there were a brand new, identical TV right next to me I could take for free with no potential consequences...then it's hard to save up $3000 and not just take the TV if morals aren't an issue. And I'm sure we're all aware that there are lots of us who just don't care under the veneer of excuses.
"It's only one copy, the publishers are filthy rich anyway"
"I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so it's not a lost sale"
"They did something they don't like, so they don't deserve my money"
"I live in a third-world random country, so they don't care about my money"
Etc.
I've been on lots of piracy sites and I notice the commentary of the pirates towards Denuvo regarding the uncrackable Just Cause 3. It's mainly one of frustration. People are really frustrated that they have to wait to pirate it. Some people even proclaimed that they just took the leap and bought it on Steam because they were sick of "the lazy hackers taking too long."
This really should be the ideal with high-profile titles. That frustration has spurred impulse purchases to some extent. I've seen it anecdotally, you're talking about it, and I've seen it online. It's not a complete non-issue like people make it out to be. People make excuses for themselves to justify their behavior when things are free and instantly available. That's why, for a while, there should be consequences like with physical goods so we can keep that impulse momentum intact for the sake of the content creators.
However, as I said before, I recognize the value of long-term video game preservation and in the long-run I appreciate the pirates eventually figuring out how to crack it. Twenty years from now, the actions of these piracy groups will keep the games alive for future generations long after the companies have gone defunct and exited the business.
But right now, it has a purpose.