Nintendo Cracks Down on Copying Devices

Adrian Lopez writes "Nintendo is cracking down on mod chips and copying devices with the help of the Hong Kong government. 'The Hong Kong High Court has intervened, at Nintendo's request, to help stop a global distribution operation involving game copying devices and modification chips that violate the copyrights and trademarks of Nintendo DS and Wii. On Oct. 8th, the court ordered the raid of Supreme Factory Limited facilities, through which Nintendo representatives seized more than 10,000 game copying devices and mod chips over the course of three days. The devices seized are used to copy and play Nintendo DS games offered unlawfully over the Internet, and the mod chips allow the play of pirated Wii discs or illegal copies of downloaded Nintendo games.'"

Comments

But they wont achive much

[Tainek]

Its like taking piss out of a swimming pool, you can make wii chips out of commonly availible materials for $5 (WiiFree, OpenWii etc)

Re:But they wont achive much

[Kamokazi]

That's all fine and dandy for the Wii, but for the DS it's not so simple. The sad thing here is I think Nintento is missing the opportunity for a new product.

What a lot of these 3rd party cartridges do for the DS do is allow people to (aside from copying DS/GBA games) play music and movies, and have PDA functionality. They also allow users to play NES, SNES, etc games on them as well.

Many of these cards sell for $80+ (or do once you add the removable flash memory). If they were smart, they would take a page from the Wii's online service, sell a cartridge for $20 that allows you to buy and download old NES/SNES games with Nintento points like you can on the Wii. They could also sell a cartridge with a flash memory slot and allow it to do multimedia playback.

Re:But they wont achive much

[jamar0303]

In Japan, they do- it's called the Play-Yan. Strange that they don't try to sell it outside Japan.

Re:But they wont achive much

[Phisbut]

Making stuff illegal just drives it further underground.

And driving it further underground makes it that much harder for Joe Sixpack to access, which is exactly what they want. Nintendo (or any other company hitting hard on pirates) aren't dumb. They know that piracy will always exist, but they want to drive it underground, really deep underground. So deep most people won't know about it.

Slashdot 10 year Party?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but notice that every article on the Main Page has been posted by ScuttleMonkey...where did everyone else go? Was there a party last night that Scuttlemonkey wasn't invited to?

Misread that..

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Heh. I misread the first sentence as:

Nintendo is cracking down on mod chips and copying devices with the help of the Donkey Kong government. Need more coffee.

GBA Flash2Advance / eBay / ESA Tale Of Woe

[pandrijeczko]

I recently sold my Gameboy Advance & two Flash2Advance backup cartridges on eBay (all of them separately). Along with the F2A cartridges, I threw in with each a DVD full of **ONLY** GBA PD ROMs.

Fortunately, the auctions ended & the buyers had paid me before eBay informed me that they were taking the F2A listings down due to software piracy. When I questioned eBay as to why this had been done when I was not advertising any commercially copied software with the cartridges, they told me to get in touch with the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) who had asked for the listings to be removed.

So far, I have emailed the officious tosspots at the ESA four times & demanded an explanation as to why they insisted the F2As be removed when eBay can still advertise writable CDs & DVDs, USB flash keys and DVD writers, all of which can be used for piracy in a similar fashion.

In over 4 weeks now, I have not received one reply from the ESA who, as far as I am concerned, have accused me of being a software pirate & been heavy-handed in their attitude - even though I made it clear to them that the F2A can be a legitimate developer tool for homebrew GBA ROMs.

All these heavy-handed corporations are just assholes!

Homebrew development earned me a career

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in high school, I bought a Flash2Advance for gobs and gobs of money because I wanted to play NES games on my Gameboy Advance. I did that for a few days, and then got sick of it. A few months later I decided to try my hand at GBA game development, and made a few demos and a complete game over the course of a few months. I entered the game in a Homebrew GBA competition and got an honorable mention... My parents thought it was the biggest waste of money and for a while I did too, until three years later when I mentioned it on my resume. I got a job at an embedded engineering company, and my boss later told me that the whole reason they called me in for an interview was because of they downloaded my GBA game and tried it out. Before that I had never even heard of "embedded engineering," and now it is my passion and specialty.

I never thought a $500 video game would change the direction of my life, but I will never doubt that homebrew is great. Certainly it can be used to steal games, but it is also one of the cheapest and most effective ways for a novice programmer to get into a booming industry. And, yes, developing for emulators is also valid, but testing on real hardware was an invaluable experience that an emulator cannot replicate.