Is Piracy really to Blame for Lower DS Sales ?

Heres an interesting article from GXmod that has a few translation errors but disucusses the recent claim that piracy is to blame for the lower ds game sales.

Last Tuesday, the website of The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun revealed studyCarried out by Nintendo on lower sales of its products are Kyoto worldwide.

We learn that Nintendo deplores a decline in sales of 7% Japan 11% U.S. and 45% for Europe, between April and December 2009. According to the article, the company said these figures mainly by piracy, and cites another study, American this time, which presents Italy, Spain and France as the top three European countries most followers illegal downloading.

The article also explains that in June 2009, Nintendo has conducted a study of 10 foreign sites, specializing in the Roma game, and found 238 million illegal downloads, which represent the firm said a shortfall of 10 7 billion dollars. An enormous number obtained by multiplying the number of downloads pirated by the average price of a branded product. Knowing that the turnover of the company, for the fiscal year 2008-2009, was about $ 14 billion, the method of calculation appears to be rather dubious.

A shortfall and therefore a history of heavy Nintendo faced with piracy, the ratio of declining sales and abuse of linkers seems obvious from reading the article relayed massively since its publication.

However, contacted by us, Nintendo provides a perspective different from that proposed by the Japanese site: "The English version of the Asahi newspaper, which indicates that Nintendo has accused the material in violation of copyright declining sales European, is incorrect. In the original Japanese version of the article, it is clear that the views of the journalist is displayed, and not that of Nintendo. . Selon l'éditeur de jeux, le journaliste d'Asahi Shimbun aurait donc pris quelques raccourcis dans son analyse.

In fact, if Nintendo indeed follows closely the evolution of piracy of its products in the world, not openly accuse it of being responsible for declining sales.

Still, Europe and especially France, is still in the crosshairs of Nintendo, which is still in litigation against vendors linkers. Nintendo France had been dismissed, on 3 December by the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris in the case between the firm resellers of cartridges for pirating DS games. The company had appealed Nippon five days later, and the case is still pending.