Well first of all let's break down the categories of pirates.
There are three real types of pirates:
-The big international cartels that pirate games or media and sell the copies for profit
-The hardcore pirate contingent that wouldn't buy media even if it came with a goose that laid golden eggs
-The casual pirate
The first two are never going to go legit. Fortunately they're probably the smallest percentage of pirates (though the first tends to sell to the third group... which is a problem).
Therefore if I was in charge of a publisher, I'd essentially cut my losses on the first two and attempt to convert the third: the casual pirate. Casual pirates tend to do so because it's easy and often is the same or superior version of the media (ie no DRM), or because it is not available DAY ONE in their region.
Now, most publishers go for crazier and crazier DRM in attempt to block this segment of pirates. It probably works for a few. But it really doesn't solve the problem. Casual pirates will just find a crack or wait until one is readily available rather than purchasing something just because it has DRM.
My solution would be to make the retail, legitimate package to be the more appealing one. Whether that's active community support for PC games, or the addition at no extra cost of certain freebies such as official soundtracks or other "nice" freebies like figurines, ensuring that countries that play your games can get them at the same time (or at least a reasonable timeframe), would all help to staunch the flow of piracy.
Companies are already doing this (or at least acknowledging it): Valve and Atlus are two good examples. Valve realises that people pirate their games in Russia because there are no legitimate copies for sale until months well after its original release. Atlus has been in the habit lately of including "spoils" for the first run of their releases, which both aid in encouraging already purchasing users to buy earlier, and perhaps also converts a few casual pirates into the legit purchasing customer.