There's no way to prove it, but enabling piracy will never increase sales, only lose them. Not enabling piracy will not lose sales. I don't even know how jaded you must be to act like piracy doesn't hurt the publisher.It doesn't mean a majority those downloads would have been converted into sales. Of course there's potential, and it sounds what they're talking about, but there's now way to prove that.
Edit: It's all Europe's fault and they still get all the good stuff? Wtf Nintendo.
Also not sure why you think Europe is the only region where piracy is a problem just because the article is specifically referring to them.