I have stated my reasons for why I think piracy killed the DC, it would be in your best interest to review the thread.
As for PSX being able to boot with no mod... yeah in the 10xx series with a dodgy swap trick (similar to generation 1 saturn swap trick). Ask anyone that you know that owns a PSX if they have ever executed the no mod swap trick. The external mod did hit psx pretty hard, thus the 90xx series removing the serial io adapater.
As for Rent Burn Own.. sure its not as bad as psx, and its harder than DC... but a lot of the people that are too cheap to buy the games are also too cheap to hire them out.. The thing slowing XBOX down is that people don't have access to DVDR's now like they did to CDR's when DC was big.
I grow tired of this discussion however as I am not perticularly for or against, I just like people to consider what has resulted in other similar circumstances.