Nintendo and Capcom to take legal action against R4 sellers

A lawsuit has been filed by Capcom, Nintendo and 53 other DS software manufacturers against four companies importing and selling R4 Revolution for DS devices.

Filed with the Tokyo District Court, the companies are seeking an injunction to prevent distribution of the piracy enabling devices, and compensation for their losses as well.

In February, the court ruled in favour of the game companies and made it illegal to import and sell the R4. However, in an official statement Capcom said there had been no sign of their disappearance from the market.

Despite repeated warnings requesting their discontinuation, the publisher noted that in many cases vendors were ignoring requests, forcing the renewed legal action.

"We are expecting the entire society, including users, to recognise that our company and other software manufacturers have extremely sustained damages from proliferation of illegal instruments such as the Game Copying Devices," Capcom said in the statement.

"The computer industries have sustained serious damages because of those vendors, and we expect to influence the society to eliminate such illegal instruments from the market."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...nst-r4-sellers

It's sad that R4 is considered an illegal instrument. Like any weapon, or a PC, it is not; rather it is capable of being used for illegal ends as well as legitimate ones. I don't blame them for not feeling that the general public is trustworthy with such a responsibility, but instead of punishing them with an iron grip they could try stepping up their efforts to cater to the consumer.

Every PC on the face of the earth is capable of pirating a wealth of video games, music, and movies. In music and movies, they've more or less proven that the majority of people will take the legal route and pay for their entertainment so long as the distributors are making an effort to deliver more convenient methods as time goes on. The consumer expects a supplier to grow with time, and many believe that Napster forced the hand of the music industry, that without it we wouldn't have legitimate MP3 shops today. A valid point, I think.

It's when the consumer is neglected/antagonized that they are most likely to take matters into their own hands. If Nintendo feels the need to take legal action then they can, and should, target rom distributors. But they should also stop antagonizing their consumers (forbidding access to the Shop Channel without a known dangerous update; why exactly do pirates care about access to the Shop Channel again?) and accept the fact that one who buys a piece of hardware has the right to make whatever modification to it that they want. And although I am not a fan of Digital Distribution, I think that to cater to as wide an audience as possible both it and retail discs/cartridges should co-exist (CDs and DVDs are still out there, after all). Nintendo's competitors have been known at times to offer the same game both physically and digitally, I think there needs to be more of that. Nintendo's own hardware, unfortunately, was not designed to handle downloads of that magnitude. And so even though they have given their consumers a taste of digitally distributed games, they are unable to match the same experience that their physical media provide.