Nintendo Ratting out R4 Sellers
Any folks with a DS? Or DSi? Do you buy original games or do you use R4 for your gaming purposes? :D We all know that piracy is bad, and hence, Nintendo is taking further measures to combat the pirates.
Earlier this year, Nintendo announced that it and 54 software game companies were filing a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against companies that import “R4 Revolution”-type devices, using the Unfair Competition Prevention Law as the legal grounding.
According to Nintendo, such devices hurts the growth of the entire game industry and steps must be taken regarding the legality of R4 carts. It’s important to note that this legal injunction is for Japan only.
Nintendo is asking for the cease of marketing, sales and importation of these Chinese-made devices. The R4 allows easy software piracy by fitting right into the DS’s cartridge slot. Data is stored on a Micro SD and downloaded from websites via a flash drive, and the R4 has a small slot that the Micro SD card goes into.
Nintendo is calling out to the masses to help eradicate the sale of these devices - it’s impossible to track down every single retailer out there. Nintendo has set up a website which has an anonymous form that can be filled out. Information like shop’s address or home page can be filled in. Fill in and help Nintendo catch the retailers? Who on earth would do that o.O.
I don’t know what’s the big deal, since the DS/DSi sales have been doing extremely well. Look at the chart below which shows the console sales in the last week of August. 3/4 is ruled by Nintendo!
Maybe it’s only for the consoles section. Perhaps many people purchase DS/DSi as they’re easier to modify to play pirated games? :D I know a friend who refused to purchase a PS3 because of piracy issues. He believes in waiting until the PS3 will be able to play pirated games - which I highly doubt so. Lol.
Is that why the sales of PS3 have been so bad(before PS3 Slim was launched)? =/ PS3 Slim is slightly cheaper compared to the PS3 Phat.
Source: Kotaku
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The PSP was easy to hacked up until the PSPGo came out but yet someone still managed to hack it using exploits from games that’s been around for ages (and yet he won’t share any information =( ).
Also, with the older PS3 models, you could load an OS on there other then the Sony’s OS but was locked down to what you can access on the system but someone still managed to find away through to use it’s core processing to run a copy of a game. Also, someone else managed to actually RIP A WHOLE GAME onto the PS3’s hard drive and ACTUALLY PLAY IT! (granted that it took up about 50% of the hard drive space). So a cracked for PS3 is on the horizon.
Where there’s systems or softwares, there’s always someone out there that’s going to reverse engineer it to and make a crack. To be honest, I don’t think piracy will never go away when there’s needs for CD Keys or serial numbers or anything of that sorts.
@scsa20
I think piracy with never be totally gone. It will always be around one way or another. However, for the case of the PS3, I think most people have reached a point whereby even if it is possible to pirate the games, they will probably continue buying the real thing. I dunno, but that’s how I see it O.o.
mmorpg’s are the solution. game companies just want to keep revenue coming in, so having a controlled server and monthly payments is the new fad. lucasarts took that direction with the next star wars game, square enix is banging it like crazy alongside their regular developments, WoW? obviously a big $ maker. and i have to 2nd scsa’s forecast on piracy, and 2nd guuzen. piracy will remain, but so will lawful consumers.
As Guuzen said, piracy will never be gone. For god’s sakes, I see people with downloaded PFD versions of textbooks all the time.
I would push the solution to online play, because even stealing CD keys require a valid CD key to begin with. The only problem with this is it only applies to big consoles and PC.
@ atmchino: The way I see it is to have the game released on blu-ray(since it’s pretty expensive to get a blank BR here) and pirates would think twice of pirating, since you save pretty much if you actually bother to purchase the original game >_<. Yeah but the DS games are not on blu-ray discs, so pirating is still possible. Nintendo should have an online member thingy for its customers, like Sony gave us the Playstation Network to download demos and exclusive stuff. Many people are giving up of ever obtaining a modded PSP just for the PSN exclusives. Good way to chase us to the original side eh lol
@ GNdynames: The only way to stop this is those online games. They would check the copy of the game whether it’s legit or not. Meaning = Buy original to play online. If you don’t and you connect online to the server, your computer would be banned forever from playing this game or any other games by the company. Good idea. This is what Microsoft did with the Xbox pirates. heh.