Nintendo: DS Piracy Claims are Overblown

[wraggster]

Nintendo of America tells Next-Gen that recent claims of a 90 percent DS software piracy rate are an exaggeration.
John Hillier, manager of ELSPA’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit, told The Sunday Post earlier this week that the R4 chip used to play pirated DS games is facilitating enormous piracy rates in the US.

“The implications are massive. In America it’s thought 90 percent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s,” Hillier said.

But a Nintendo of America spokesperson countered Hillier’s comments in a Friday statement to Next-Gen.

"While the R4 and other game copying devices are available and cause Nintendo concern, they have not reached the mass market as indicated,” the rep said in an e-mail.

“Nintendo continues to be aggressive in taking action to protect the unparalleled creativity and innovation of its world famous game developers.”

The ELSPA had yet to reply to Next-Gen’s multiple requests for clarification of Hillier’s statements.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...=8948&Itemid=2

[wiggy fuzz]

thank you. now we can all go to sleep knowing a nintendo swatt team won't come crashing through your window and hold you at gunpoint while you use "DSOrganize"

[phsychokill]

that comment is like saying 100% of people pirate on the psp as it only needs a software mod.

[cal360]

Do Nintendo even realise that not all people who own an R4 do piracy and they shouldn't put the sole blame on the R4 as there are many other different companies out there. Personally I own an M3 simply and all I use it for is homebrew. They shouldn't of exagerated on their percentages they should of know it would just give them trouble.

[DanTheManMS]

Do Nintendo even realise that not all people who own an R4 do piracy and they shouldn't put the sole blame on the R4 as there are many other different companies out there. Personally I own an M3 simply and all I use it for is homebrew. They shouldn't of exagerated on their percentages they should of know it would just give them trouble.

You missed the point. Someone else stated that 90% of people pirated using the R4. Nintendo here is stating that that figure is way overblown.

[Pilot_51]

I'd find it more realistic to say that 90% of R4 owners are pirates. While my friends who own an R4 don't pirate to my knowledge (probably because I have good friends), I hear from something like 70% of other R4 owners that they "play backups", which usually tells me that they're downright pirating since there isn't much point to have illegal backups of the games you legally own.
It might also be realistic to say that 90% of pirating on the DS is through the use of the R4 considering how incredibly cheap and popular it is among the community.

The mass population of DS owners seems to be mostly of the non-geek type, such as mothers and young kids, but seeing that all the DS owners I talk to online are mostly guys between 10 and 25 (most of which don't own an R4 but have a somewhat geeky nature) I could be wrong.
I'd guess realistically that the percentage of DS owners that own an R4 is closer to about 5%.

[Eyedunno]

Yeah, I think you're sadly right, Pilot_51. Personally, I have used my R4 to play backups, but only in three situations:

1) I'm not sure it's going to be good or something I'll want to buy (Worms Open Warfare 2, Nihon Bungaku 100sen, and Taiko no Tatsujin DS are examples of games I tried on my R4, but bought within a week of doing so).
2) It's something I own, but not something I want to carry around with me (Mario 64 DS is an example of this that's been on my R4 forever, with ripped save data from my actual cartridge).
3) Similar to 2, but I backed up the games just so I could use a friend's DS to help me unlock wi-fi features when not enough people are playing the game on BBSes and so on (I did this for Contact).

But probably on this particular board, most people use theirs mostly for homebrew (or emulation), and I'm no exception. I personally can't wait until the Pandora comes out. Then hopefully we can run homebrew without worrying about this stuff.

[wiggy fuzz]

"Pandora"?

[argor]

"Pandora"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%28console%29

[Eviltaco64]

Well, DS roms are pretty easy to come by these days. If you have any experience with emulators, then you should be able to get roms working with an R4.