Headlines - Nintendo go after R4DS sellers

[HEXUS]

Nintendo switches focus to its hand-held and the huge game's piracy problem that plagues it.

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[Whiternoise]

The damage has been done though. If they wanted to stop the problem, they should have nipped it in the bud before loads of people bought the cards.

The major problem now is not the buying, it's back to the same old problem of downloading. Which is going to be very hard to stop, and the only way i can think they'll manage it is either to bring out a new DS that won't play the flash carts (although no doubt they'll be cracked by pirates) or to add stuff to the new game carts so that just downloading a ROM won't work.

Or.. thirdly a firmware update that will be mandatory for playing new games. As far as i know, Nintendo have never released a new firmware version for their DS's, with the exception of the Lites, perhaps? As it's reasonably easy to replace the stock firmware, i imagine Nintendo would simply put it as a "download play" option on all their new carts.

They'll still be stuck with people buying abroad and bringing in though. And whatever they say about it helping Piracy, they still sell record numbers of ds's/games!

Oh and the TechRadar article is a bit misleading. The guy doesn't really seem to know what he's talking about - "There are various SD cards for the DS that illegally circumvent the copyright protection in place and allows copied games to be played." - Well yeah they're the same ones you can put in your phone..

[Workaholic]

They'll still be stuck with people buying abroad and bringing in though. And whatever they say about it helping Piracy, they still sell record numbers of ds's/games!

When I was in HK last week, quite a few of the smaller computers/gaming shops in smaller shopping centres had stopped selling them as the HK government had been clamping down on them but then when I went to the Golden Gate Computer Center in a different town literally each stall had them for sale (although they didn;t have them all for sale.)

[father smurf]

And what about people who use these things simply to use home-grown software?

This isn't illegal software - and some people only use the DS forthis.

[Whiternoise]

Yep, it's a strong case for the carts.

The argument in court is that it doesn't circumvent copy protection. IE you don't have to break your DS apart to do it, it doesn't void the warranty, and you're not hacking anything either. The illegal bit is downloading the games. Much like bittorrent is used by Linux fans to get new distros quickly, it's also criticised by music companies for facilitating easy piracy. People will argue that an R4 is no different from a CD, and so long as they're not downloading commercial games, they're not breaking any laws. As i said, if Ninty want to stop it then they need to do it in a way that won't cripple the homebrew market. However, you do have to sympathise with the companies, if every person downloads FF:XII - who would otherwise have bought it - that's 500,000-1,000,000 x £25 they're missing out on - although they'd only get a fraction of it.

[Lanky123]

Do developers not have to be licenced by and pay royalties to the maker of the console? That's why Sony and MS sold their consoles at a loss so they could recoup it on increased game sales?

If so presumably you could make a case for the R4 being a game since it goes into the game slot, and therefore if Ninty don't want it made it's up to them?

[Whiternoise]

That would be another argument against it, yes.

All official games are licensed afaik, however, whether it's a bit like the OS X on windows debate - ie Apple say it's not illegal if you've purchased OS X, but they won't support it - or not then i don't know.

I assume it means that if the game bricks your console, or if you screw up something on your console as a direct result of using it then Nintendo won't be responsible and it won't be covered by the warranty.