Nintendo Battles Makers of the R4

eldavojohn writes "A neat little device called the R4 allows for homebrew on the DS ... and as micro SD prices fall, it is becoming easier and easier to put on these cartridges binary dumps of games people don't have the right to play. Which is why Nintendo will see them in court. Note, it's not just the console maker pressing charges, it's also Capcom, Koei, Square Enix, Tecmo, Bandai Namco, and Sega. Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"

Comments

What is the R4?

[jandrese]

The link in the summary is 404 already.

Re:What is the R4?

[MeanMF]

It's a sweet little sportscar that Audi is working on. But I have no idea why Nintendo would be upset over that. http://www.topspeed.com/cars/audi/2010-audi-r4-ar16931.html

Re:What is the R4?

[digitrev]

Nintendo DS mod chip. Wired has a short blog post as well.

Re:What is the R4?

[digitrev]

Wikipedia link that I just bothered to look for.

Re:What is the R4?

[JeremyBanks]

It's not a mod chip, exactly. You don't mod your system at all. It's just a custom game card with a microSD slot that allows you to play NDS ROMS you put on it.

Re:What is the R4?

[Sir_Dill]

Technically its whats referred to as a flash cart.

The gist is that you load in the roms to flash memory and then insert the cartridge in your DS and then you can access and play the games as normal.

The R4 takes this a step further and allows you to use a microSD card.

While I think they have a case, the lack of action of previous iterations of flash carts might end up hurting them in the long run.

Re:What is the R4?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the price of about 1 DS game, you can play DS games for free, all in the convenience of 1 cartridge.

Why hasn't someone/Nintendo made a download cart and service? Hell, make it usable from the Wii for gods sake!

They'd make a killing and they'd just have to keep up the server, and manufacture less.

Re:What is the R4?

[neokushan]

It's one of SEVERAL different DS flash carts out there. Last I checked, there were at least 10, some of which are superior to the R4 in terms of functionality (they offer things like ingame cheats, ingame guides, even savestate functionality), just the R4 was one of the first of it's kind and thus the most well known of the bunch.
It's a futile attempt to curb piracy on the DS, most of the technology invovled in their making is public knowledge (in terms of "you can find most of it by googlong around", not in terms of "any average Joe knows it"), hell I'm sure I seen schematics on how to build your own - Nintendo taking down this one group wont stop anything.

It's akin to the MPAA shutting down a single torrent site - 5 more pop up in it's place almost overnight.

Re:What is the R4?

[Pluvius]

This is just another example of how far behind Nintendo is in the online market. Sony has been selling downloadable PSP games pretty much since the PS3 came out.

Rob

Re:What is the R4?

[MikeFM]

I don't really care about pirating games but I've been tempted to get one of these toys so I can write my own DS apps. I think it is a major failing on the part of console makers that they don't make it easier for home brew software to be out there. There is no need to force buying development tools and distribution rights in hardware. Let small projects go for free and charge per number of copies sold or something.

Obviously they're not really stopping pirating to much either.

Re:What is the R4?

[christ, jesus H]

This is my big complaint with consoles too. They certainly shun the tinkerer and largely (I believe) becuase one of thier main advantages is the ability to promise publishers a "bootleg free" environment. Most of us know this promise is complete crap, but since publishers seems to understand less about IP piracy then most 5th graders, its a strategy that seems to make them happy.

Re:What is the R4?

[Tacvek]

Indeed. The R4 was for quite a while the generally considered the best Slot-1 flashcard around. It was among the first cards to have near-perfect game compatibility, and it was low cost.

However, when the CycloEvo came out it replaced R4 as the slot-1 Flashcard of choice. When it first came out, it had the game support of the R4, but also had perfect Download Play (A.K.A. 1 cart multiplayer) compatibility. It also had support for SDHC microsd cards, which was a market first.

Both the R4 and CycloEvo support cheats. But the CycloEvo has an in-game menu feature to allow one to toggle cheats on and off, "Soft reset" (reset back to menu without cycling the DS power), and most recently, the ability To save or load a single emulator-like save-state. (Obviously it is slower than an Emulator's save-state, making it slightly less useful, but it still has uses).

The CycloEvo also has some of the best support of any flash card makers. They actually listen to people in their forums, reply to them, and have implemented multiple features by user request. They have also been known to ship replacements for defective units to the purchaser along with a cash refund for the shipping costs of returning the defective one. It does not yet have ingame guide support (unless a new firmware release has been made while I was not looking), but it is programed and slated for release in the next firmware update.

Now, the CycloEvo is probably still the Flashcard of choice, but it does have some serious competition, and may not remain that way for long.

Oh, I should mention that while this sounds like an advertisement for the CycloEvo, I'm not related to them in any way, and do not own that card. I in fact do not any DS flash cards (or GBA flash carts for that matter). However, I've been considering purchasing a FlashCart for a long time, and the CycloEvo is currently the one I plan to get.

Re:What is the R4?

[neokushan]

Indeed, the Cyclo is an amazing piece of kit and if it wasn't for the fact that I already have a flash cart of sorts (I actually have a GBA cart, but with some jiggery-pokery, you can make the DS play DS games off of it) I'd probably get one myself.

In saying that, though, despite having the ability to play ANY DS game out there, I haven't touched the device in over a year due to the fact that 99.9% of the titles are all rubbish.
Good luck with this, Nintendo, even if they do succeed in stopping piracy, all I can see it doing is causing a dip in DS sales.

Re:What is the R4?

[mweather]

The only way to allow home brew would be to drastically increase the price of the console. Other than the Wii, consoles/handhelds operate on the Gilette business model. The console is sold at a lost in the hopes that license fees for game sales make up for the difference. Without those fees, the consoles will cost a lot more. The $600 PS3 would seem like a bargain if they did that. I'm talking Neo-Geo prices.

Re:What is the R4?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, I've been considering purchasing a FlashCart for a long time, and the CycloEvo is currently the one I plan to get.

You might be too late. All their websites seem to be down, but maybe it's just because of the news and not Nintendo's lawyers.

Re:What is the R4?

[Corwn of Amber]

Huzzah, one free threadjack, third place on the discussion.

Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?

WTF? Of course it's for fighting piracy. Oh, yes, homebrew is nice, and really risks stealing the market from Nintendo. Tetris and Breakout and Asteroid clones by the thousands, yeah, that's SO many more hours of games -for free!- than Enix and Camcom will ever develop.

Homebrew? Who will ever make, in their mom's basement, a game that's as good, as long, as advanced as a what real studio produces (read : all in 3D, nice and full environment, tons of art, hours of music)?

No, it's for pirating games. Of course it is. Yeah, you can program your very own PONG on it, too, but you can also copy Real Games and play them without buying them! What would YOU use it for?

Re:What is the R4?

[FictionPimp]

I've played nwn mods that destroyed the original campaign, made by one guy in his spare time.

Graphics do not make a game, creativity, controls and story make a game. It is possible to make great games that look like they come out of the nintendo era.

I'm assuming your being sarcastic, but I want to post to be sure.

Re:What is the R4?

[Tacvek]

The DNS host is giving the current error. This apparently happens during the last day or so of every month or two months. This is a result of exceeding their bandwidth limits. They will be back.

Re:What is the R4?

[Tacvek]

Ok, they did already release the in0game guide feature in a beta release while I was not looking.

Re:What is the R4?

[grumbel]

Why hasn't someone/Nintendo made a download cart and service?

They have, you can download NintendoDS demos with the Wii and then play them on the DS. Its of course limited to demos that fit into the DS RAM, not on a seperate flash card.

Re:What is the R4?

[Theoboley]

There's always EBay if he still wanted one.

Re:What is the R4?

[MikeFM]

As I said, keep charging license fees to those already paying them - those selling x or more copies. Letting small publishers and home brew also publish just increases the value of your console. There is no benefit to locking out small players.

It wouldn't be that difficult to keep some copy protection while allowing smaller publishers to publish non copy protected work. That'd be one way to enforce large publishers paying their license fees.

New Record

[wizden]

The site is slashdotted before the first comment rolls in.

A lot of homebrew games...

[QuantumLeaper]

have the quality of a Atari 2600 game, which means they stink.

Re:A lot of homebrew games...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh snap, son! Homebrewers just got told.

Re:A lot of homebrew games...

[neokushan]

A lot of DS games have the quality of an Atari 2600 game, same for the Wii. Doesn't mean some AWESOME ones don't exist out there as well.

Re:A lot of homebrew games...

[spyrochaete]

DS homebrew isn't just about games. There are IM and IRC clients, many innovative music making programs that make interesting use of the stylus interface, remote desktop clients, demoscene productions, ereaders, web browsers, and even an FTP server. The DS is a great little platform with a zillion nonstandard uses that Nintendo will never be smart enough to sell.

Re:A lot of homebrew games...

[Anonymous Coward]

Among them using the DS for a PDA. Where's the Super Organizer we were promised, Nintendo? Why don't you try to meet demand, rather than fighting your own enthusiastic customers?

Re:A lot of homebrew games...

[LWATCDR]

Cool I spent hours playing games on the 2600. If they got a version of combat that I can play over wifi I am so there!

Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"

It is truly a case of fighting piracy. Anybody who thinks otherwise is severely delusional.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Spykk]

While I do believe that the primary goal is to fight piracy, these devices have legitimate uses as a conduit for homebrew and backups. Being able to choose a game from a list that contains your entire library sure beats carrying a backpack full of cartridges around...

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I just ordered a CycloDS flash cart and while I could load it up with illegal ROMs, I'd be totally satisfied with backing up the games I already own. It's going to be much easier to carry around one card with my 10+ games rather than keep track of the separate cards and having to swap them out. Plus I can load it up with MP3's, videos, and NES and ScummVM games of which I do own legal copies.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Tenebrousedge]

Well, I don't know anything about using R4 for pirating, but I do know that with the right homebrew software, the DS is a cheap portable art tablet par excellence.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Sir_Dill]

Devils Advocate Fair use argument:

I have 10-15 DS games. Traveling with them is a real PITA. Either I am hauling around a manpurse or pockets full of cartridges.

The ARRRR4 would allow me to load all of my games to a single cartridge thus reducing the risk of theft, loss, or damage. Sure I can always lose it too but I find its generally easier to keep track of one thing, especially when that one thing "lives" in a larger one thing than it is to keep track of lots of little ones.

For the record I am not deluded. I know that one of the primary uses for these things is piracy, however that is not their ONLY use. Further arguments on that subject would be semantics.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[TheRealMindChild]

While I'll agree, it is very dangerous to concede to the "It can be used for bad things... who cares about the legitimate uses". Imagine other things taken on if this becomes ok... alcohol, guns, gambling, motorcycles, bleach, linux, dogs, sharp pencils, etc. You may think some of that is a bit off the wall, but once you let the bad guys into the building, good luck telling them what rooms they can go into.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's going to be much easier to carry around one card with my 10+ games

Because that 2 square inches that those 10 games take up is too much for you to afford?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[xtracto]

It is truly a case of fighting piracy. Anybody who thinks otherwise is severely delusional.

Wow, I feel personally offended by such comment.

I do develop homebrew programs for the DS. I am specifically developing a translator (based on the dicts.info dictionaries) using PAlib.

There are several *really good* homebrew apps for the Nintendo DS like Moonshell, DSOrganize or games like Lemmings (all the levels of lemmings for the DS, REALLY good). The DSLibris game is also a *very* good piece of software which allows you to read XHTML ebooks.

I am also in the process of doing a TIF image "reader", with the idea of converting PDF files directly to TIF multipage (monochrome for now...) via ghostscript and then being able to read them directly in the DS. This, after having played with the idea of porting xpdf or other programs... unfortunately the PDF and RTF are too complex for the tiny DS...

I don't have an R4 but a CycloDS Evolution and it is a really neat piece of technology.

So, as you can see, there are pleny of opportunities for a device like the DS. It is really a neat piece of hardware, and the touchscreen makes it more versatile.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[revlayle]

Not too much to afford.... too HEAVY, we're geeks, not body builders... sheesh!!

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[RyoShin]

I have to agree. On certain gaming boards/sites I visit with lax rules about content, it's not uncommon to hear people talking about their R4.

I can recall one time when someone asked about homebrew. This is contrary to the 500+ times someone has asked what games to load on it first (and sites to get them from).

I like the R4 as a product for convenience. I would love to be able to load up the info for my moderate-sized collection of GBA games (actual cartridges, not some ROM folder) and take them all with me in a convenient package. However, the primary use of the R4 is pirating and, as suggested by the OP, anyone telling themselves (or others) that the push against it is for its homebrew ability is delirious.

Honestly I'm surprised it took this long for Nintendo et al. to react. Though from what I hear, the R4 (and its close cousin, the M3) is on the way out and some other card with similar functionality is on the rise.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

Wow, I feel personally offended by such comment.

Then you did not understand it. I'm sure you're doing all kinds of wonderful things with your R4, but that doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people use them for piracy, and neither does it change the fact that neither you nor anybody else in the homebrew scene is any kind of threat to the established developers.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

While I'll agree, it is very dangerous to concede to the "It can be used for bad things... who cares about the legitimate uses".

I was taking no moral stand at all on its uses for any purpose. I was merely answering the silly question posed by the article: Whether Nintendo was suing to stop piracy or because it was afraid of homebrewers. The answer to that is blindingly obvious, no matter what you think of the worth of products like the R4.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[drcagn]

He never said that there wasn't any good homebrew on the DS. He said that the reason why Nintendo fighting the R4 is piracy.

I really doubt Nintendo would go this far over homebrew.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[xtracto]

Then you did not understand it. I'm sure you're doing all kinds of wonderful things with your R4,

haha
You really should read my post.

I don't have an R4 but a CycloDS Evolution and it is a really neat piece of technology.

:)
Other than that, yeah I guess I took it to personally. The bad thing about trying to take out R4 or any other similar card manufacturer is that they also hit us the homebrew developers :(

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

Any amount of cartridge swapping creates new oppurtunity for misplacing of said cartridge. How many games does somebody need to own before it is considered an acceptably large amount of games that space saving is allowed?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

If it is so clear and obvious as to make one "severely delusional" to consider alternative motivations, it would be nice if you provided some form of supporting content for the statement.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[philspear]

The entire library of DS games available in all countries may get hefty, but the cards themselves weigh, what, three paperclips? My cat could carry all the DS games I've ever played and not break a sweat. Although I don't think he's ever sweated.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[KDR_11k]

How many of them do you actually want to carry around with you at the same time? I have 20-30 games but I carry at most 10 of them and usually much less (they're pretty damn small if you don't bring the large plastic cases along, I can fit two into a protective case that was meant for one GBA game).

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Culture20]

Any amount of cartridge swapping creates new oppurtunity for misplacing of said cartridge.

Which creates opportunity for you to buy it again. This hurts the company how?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[solraith]

Generally, the idea behind these things is, if you own the actual cartridge, you're allowed to make a backup. How you store that backup might be a gray area, but I would hate to see this get shot down for the very reason you mentioned. DS cartridges are small and transportable, but easily lost.

That's not to say the R4 helps prevent piracy, exactly, but then again, not many things do. Aside from crappy games, anyway.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"

It is truly a case of fighting piracy. Anybody who thinks otherwise is severely delusional.

R4 is used 99% for piracy. End of Story.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Neoprofin]

Backpack? A normal size lunchbox could probably hold a copy of every DS game ever made...

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

And as a counter-point, I take you to the Metacritic DS list.

Notice how few green titles there are on that list?

The DS has become a shovel-ware platform, mainly because it has no competition, so all sorts of crap gets released for it. Of course they want to reduce competition from actual creative and innovative games.

Hell, the first green game on the list (as of the time I'm posting) is Final Fantasy IV - a rerelease of a 20-year old game! (How it got that high a score I'll never know, but since almost all the Sqeenix games on the list got good scores it's fairly safe to say that the reviewers are biased in favor of Squeenix.)

So, yes, it's safe to say that at least some of this move is to drive out competition from unlicensed games.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

Of course they want to reduce competition from actual creative and innovative games.

Yes, but what does that have to do with the homebrew scene?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

Wow, I feel personally offended by such comment.

Then you did not understand it. I'm sure you're doing all kinds of wonderful things with your R4, but that doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people use them for piracy, and neither does it change the fact that neither you nor anybody else in the homebrew scene is any kind of threat to the established developers.

There wasn't much to understand, you made a statement with no supporting argument and said anybody that didn't already agree with you was severely delusional. Beyond that, is there some sort of document explaining how vast a majority must be to qualify something as "piracy paraphenelia" and make legitimate use unworthy of protecting? The makers of the R4 itself can be considered part of the homebrew scene, and clearly they are some kind of threat since they are being battled?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

I want to carry around all of them. There is no reason the amount of games I have available on my DS should be restricted by something beyond the amount of games I can both afford to purchase, and afford a large enough flash to pack them all into.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

Beyond that, is there some sort of document explaining how vast a majority must be to qualify something as "piracy paraphenelia" and make legitimate use unworthy of protecting?

Did I ever say anything of the sort? No, I did not.

I merely answered the question regarding Nintendo's motivations, and took no stand at all on the merits of their or anybody else's actions.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Kamineko]

>games like Lemmings (all the levels of lemmings for the DS, REALLY good)

You're too kind. =)

Here's the Lemmings DS website, for anybody who wants a look. http://lemmings.mrdictionary.net/

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[jkerman]

So are blank DVD's then?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[MaineCoon]

To be fair, Final Fantasy IV for the DS is a complete remake of the game. It is presented in 3D (vs the 2D sprites of the previous incarnations), and features full motion video and voice acting. It does stil follow the same story and characters, and is probably one of the best FF stories (though I'm still very partial to FF6).

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

You're totally right man. Nintendo's shown that they don't mind homebrew even if they can't take steps to actually support it.

Anyone who thinks they might be pissing on homebrew hasn't been *anywhere* near the NDS homebrew scene.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

Homebrew products are competing directly with Nintendo products. The question was clearly biased and poorly written, but it was phrased as this or also this, not this or that. There is an argument to be made that Nintendo would also be motivated by the chilling effect this could have on people developing and using software they do not recieve a licensing fee for. Nintendo even recently announced the official Nintendo MP3 Player will be launching this fall. It is a cartridge that accepts SD cards. Now where have we heard about devices like that....

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Leonard Fedorov]

But where would you put the lunchbox while playing on your DS?

In a backpack of course...

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Toonol]

If it is so clear and obvious as to make one "severely delusional" to consider alternative motivations, it would be nice if you provided some form of supporting content for the statement.

But it's clear and obvious; why should he? The only people who argue against it are deliberately ignoring the truth, or misunderstanding him. (Really... it is both clear and obvious).

He's not saying that's the only use for it, just that that is the obvious primary purpose, and that is the reason Nintendo and all the game publishers are going after it. I'm sure you know that.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[SirSlud]

Funny, the only people that I know that are sufficiently advanced game pirates are professionally employed game developers.

I sincerely doubt that the majority of the DS/WII demographic are all that interested in carting around everything on an SD card.

I've had the ability to carry around tons of backed up albums on different mediums for years now. Let's face it - piracy is a problem for the industry to solve when it comes to distributors, not end users nor content creators. As soon as you're illegally distributing a work of art, fine, go after it. But man, we have this exact same argument every 5 minutes - the VCR did not kill movies. The ability to back up and distribute roms will not kill games, as long as the industry remains focused on those who distribute ROMs rather than those who provide a mechanism to utilize them conveniently.

How difficult is this? It's easy as shit to pirate anything, and the method of distribution isn't SD cards. It's just a technology that overcomes an artificial limitation in the hardware that makes life more convenient for legitimate owners and interested programmers - many, by the way, who cut their chops before they end up working in the trenches of 'the establishment'. iPODs didn't kill music, DVDs didn't kill movies, etc etc etc.

So what's all the hubub about? Shitty games get pirated, but wouldn't have sold anyhow, and great games make tons of cash and are pirated by a small amount. Never mind the fact that if you want to carry around a bunch of games at one time on a cartridge on a DS, you already can. It should say lots that I love Nintendo to death and have more than 40 gamecube/wii titles on my shelf, but man, cooperate juggernauts like Nintendo are the last things on earth who actually need anybody to stand up for them. They're doing just fine on their own, and what you see as a means to enable piracy, I see as the usual technological one upmanship that is good old-fashioned capitalist innovation. The barrier to entry, for the vast majority of end users, to engage in piracy is always high enough to not really impact whatever the mass market form of publishing is. Publishers know that - theres no technical reason that DS games don't involve gigs of data. They just know that nobody is going to plug in a DVD reader at the back of the DS for the same reasons. They know their market, which is what makes this kind of legal issue so disingenuous. It very very slightly raises the bar of convenience, and therefore, there's no way it'll make a significant dent in game sales.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

Did you have a point that was actually relevant to the question at hand?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[jplkeekif]

Good argument, but one of the problems with it is that the R4 doesn't allow you to backup any of the cartridges you own, so you'll never be playing a backup copy of your own game, instead you'll have to go online to grab a copy that somebody else ripped and doing this would mean that you're contributing to sites that distribute copies of games.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[retroStick]

My company recently produced a single-purpose application for the DS, best described as a "virtual schedule" for a conference our client was holding. Since it was for a private customer as opposed to a retail application, we made it entirely using homebrew software and distributed it on M3 flash carts - almost identical to the R4 ones. Shipped about 1,500 of the things as I recall.

If those flash carts are now banned, I doubt there would be legal repercussions for our company distributing them - but the prospect of repeat business would be gone, and our months of development time on the application would suddenly become less valuable if not wasted.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

That would be a shame, but I'm not sure I see how that is relevant.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[MacTO]

To an extent, I agree that these cards are for piracy.

I have an M3DS Real, and the launch menu clearly has a slot named NDS for commercial games and MyCard for homebrew stuff. (It also has one called GBA, which can be used for both commercial and homebrew.) It is clear that one of the purposes of these cards is to run commercial software. Depending upon the owners actions and the definition of piracy, this card is made for running pirated software. If it's purpose was to run homebrew, they would not have the option to use copied commercial carts.

That being said, if you want to run or create homebrew you don't have much choice. And there is a lot of excellent homebrew for the DS. Particularly on the applications front. (I'm not really into games, and only regularly play two games on the DS. Even though I bought four. Wimper.)

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[10101001 10101001]

Agreed. It's truly a fight against piracy. Just like "Serial Copy Management System" was for DAT tapes, CSS was for DVDs, etc.

The fact is, no matter how noble the intentions might be, the lawsuit and the laws that back it are as ridiculous as if floppies, hard drives, etc were legally mandated to have hardware based do-not-copy bits. The difference is, floppies and hard drives were made at a time well before there was one or a few powerful companies able to push such influence to implement such a requirement de facto or de jure. But Nintendo has maintained control over the manufacturer of DS cartridges (whether that originally had to do with piracy, as a revenue stream, or as a quality control scheme is a side point*). And regardless of the DMCA, the courts are inclined to see the current situation and maintain the status quo instead of recognizing the obvious contradictions**.

It is for this reason that movements towards TPM are so scary. After all, once five or ten years pass where there's an inherent fact that on most available computers the author controls through hardware means the ability to copy something, it'll come as little surprise that the courts will agree that *any* hardware that could circumvent it is a piracy tool. Examples like Nintendo, I think, really highlight the reasonable paranoia of people against DRM laws, de jure by perceived de facto.

*This is one of the main reasons Apple gets compared to Nintendo, I think. But, in the end, Apple doesn't really have control over who can sell on the Mac. They just have more control than Microsoft. Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn't really care one way or the other if software other than theirs is pirated, so greatly encourages copying in general. Of course, that comes hand-in-hand with their various measures to protect their own software.

**Case in point, you can just as easily copy a GBA rom on a USB jump drive to play on a computer as a GBA flash cart to play on a GBA (hell, with some GBA flash carts, you can use the exact same microsd card for both). Yet, Nintendo was quite successful at shutting down Lik Sang and keeping flash carts out of the US in general for all their platforms (NES, SNES, etc). Once the DS emulators become sufficiently compatable, the analogy will apply just as well for DS roms. But, because only a handful of companies make flash carts of various designs, it's believed somehow legal to squash them while wide-spread flash cart use doesn't exist. Yet, they're not willing to squash USB jump drives because they're much too common. DVD-Rs are treated special, but Blu-ray-Rs will likely not be. So long as there's a means to legally control the supply of a medium long enough, the courts will side with your interpretation of the validity of the format for piracy or for everything.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Drek]

This argument carried a lot more weight when the cartridges themselves carried a lot more weight. The DS carts are so tiny that any claims of "piracy for convenience" seem more like a facetious justification than anything. I have probably about 15-20 games along with 5-6 favored Gameboy Advance games that I carry around in a ziploc baggie in my laptop bag.

And besides that, how many games do you REALLY need to carry with you? I carry my whole library because I have somewhere to put them. Realistically, I only really need 2-3 games to keep myself occupied for hours.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[KGIII]

*goes to Wikipedia to add that and cite /. as the source*

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[KGIII]

I'll agree with you. I thought (and still think) that the reason is obviously piracy. At the very least it is the main reason in my opinion.

If you hadn't called 'em names your karma might still be intact after tonight. No worries, sometimes you have to say what you have to say and I, of all people, fully agree with doing so even if it means a karma hit.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently, that breeze over your head wasn't strong enough either ;)

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[crafty.munchkin]

That's great, you have the discipline to keep your games in the one location. Good for you. However, my daughters aged 9 and 6 don't have such discipline, despite my attempts to instill it in them. Between the two of them, they have managed to lose 5 games since getting their DS's in May. Now that I know about these R4DS cartridges I'm going to get them one each, so they don't have to swap cartridges and lose them in the process to play their games.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[KDR_11k]

I guess Nintendo would be more lenient if you had to insert the original cart to put the ROM on the flash cart but they probably don't like it when you can just as easily download something you DIDN'T pay for because few will be able to resist that temptation.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[LordVader717]

Interesting thing is though, that these things are used for piracy most of the time. Yes, I know that there are many many people who use it for homebrew, and I applaud them for it. But everyone I know personally who owns ones uses it exclusively for piracy.
If you check the forums you will see how so many morons can't figure out how to copy roms save files to an SD card.
I don't think they should have to stop making them, it's just that Nintendo has my full understanding wanting to do something about it.

I don't see this lawsuit being effective though, especially not now that there are probbly millions of the things out there. Maybe they can find a way to prevent them from playing pirated games. IIRC Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles could detect whether it was being read from an SD card and if so would show a message "thanks for playing" and end.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[LordVader717]

Shitty games get pirated, but wouldn't have sold anyhow, and great games make tons of cash and are pirated by a small amount.

The shitt games sell alright, as they're usually the ones a parent buys for his kid.
The users who are prepared to spend 100$ or so to play pirated games OTOH will know better than to waste their time on shitty games. They're the ones who would buy the next installment of Final Fantasy because they want it, but would rather pirate it and save 30 bucks.
A freind of mine has 40+ PS2 games, most of them purchased at full price even. He didn't feel like modding his console and didn't like the idea of pirating tons of games anyhow.

He then bought a DS and a card reader and has yet to buy a single DS game, despite it being the only system he plays nowadays.
I think it's largely down to the fact that it's so fucking easy.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[MBGMorden]

Unless he's paying for access, then he's not "contributing" anything by using a site.

Also, given that somebody has indeed gotten the ROMS onto a computer, it is already proven that it's feasible to dump the ROM's - maybe not with this particular equipment, but to say that he couldn't do it himself is incorrect.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Phisbut]

Generally, the idea behind these things is, if you own the actual cartridge, you're allowed to make a backup. How you store that backup might be a gray area, but I would hate to see this get shot down for the very reason you mentioned. DS cartridges are small and transportable, but easily lost.

That's not to say the R4 helps prevent piracy, exactly, but then again, not many things do. Aside from crappy games, anyway.

True, you can make a backup. However, downloading a ROM from a random website is not making a backup. Making a backup is dumping your own cartridge into a file, not someone else's cartridge.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Midnight Thunder]

It is truly a case of fighting piracy. Anybody who thinks otherwise is severely delusional.

Although I don't own a DS, I can say I do know some owners and they are using hacks to allow the use of pirated games. Sure one or two of them are using the hack to use Linux, but I doubt that's what most people are using them for. One of the reasons cited is that if they were to pay for all the games they played they would be broke.

If SD chips are really getting that cheap, why don't magazines start including them with demos? At least that way gamers could try the games before coughing up the money.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[ivan256]

The question, though, was:

"Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"

It's obviously the former. Nintendo doesn't care about your use of this device. You paid for your games. They're trying to stop the people who *don't* pay for their games. People like you are a small enough portion of the market that they really don't care if you can't media-shift anymore.

I use things like this for the same reason (I don't have one yet for my DS, but I had a GBA equivalent, and I use virtual CD drives on my PC for games there). When you're reading about these things online, it is clear that the majority of the people are using these devices and software for piracy, even if there are the people who are using them for convenience out ther.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Half-pint HAL]

I have 10-15 DS games. Traveling with them is a real PITA. Either I am hauling around a manpurse or pockets full of cartridges.

The ARRRR4 would allow me to load all of my games to a single cartridge thus reducing the risk of theft, loss, or damage.

Wow. You want a lot, don't you? Next you'll be wanting to carry your entire music collection with you -- "hold everything", as it were. What a bizarre notion.

What do you think this is, the 21st century?!?!?

HAL.

Sure I can always lose it too but I find its generally easier to keep track of one thing, especially when that one thing "lives" in a larger one thing than it is to keep track of lots of little ones.

For the record I am not deluded. I know that one of the primary uses for these things is piracy, however that is not their ONLY use. Further arguments on that subject would be semantics.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is VERY simple to dump your own DS games if you have an R4.
You run "NDS backup tool WIFI" from your R4 (or other flash cart), it says "put in your game cart" you put in your game cart and then FTP the game ROM or your save files to your computer. ANYONE with a flashcart can do this, it requires no linker, reader or anything like that.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[bigstrat2003]

(How it got that high a score I'll never know, but since almost all the Sqeenix games on the list got good scores it's fairly safe to say that the reviewers are biased in favor of Squeenix.)

Or the simply think S-E makes good games. Shocking thought, I know.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

2 or more I'd say. Nothing worse than not being able to find some game you just dished $50.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, lets be honest. Nintendo does not care about homebrew. I have one of these. I bought one for my 11 year old, too. I downloaded shitloads of ROMS for games that I didn't own. Mario Kart is a lot more fun than moonshell. If these things did not play/dump commercial roms Nintendo would give two shits about them. Of course they would not even exist in that scenario, because neither would anyone else.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Rycross]

I like homebrew as much as the next guy, but they're hardly beating the pants off the industry in creativity and innovation. I'd say the vast majority of quality homebrew games tend to copy pre-existing ideas. I mean, what have other posters in this thread put forth as an example of quality homebrew? Lemmings. A copy of a commercial game.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

In regards to Lik Sang: it was the lawsuits filed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and not Nintendo that closed Lik Sang. (According to the Lik Sang website [lik-sang.com] anyway.)

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[darguskelen]

And besides that, how many games do you REALLY need to carry with you? I carry my whole library because I have somewhere to put them. Realistically, I only really need 2-3 games to keep myself occupied for hours.

I don't NEED to carry more than what's in my DS. However, personally, I like to have the variety available, because I don't know what I'll be in the mood for 2 hours later. The only game that I have to make an honest effort to make sure I have is Guitar Hero, and that's because of the Fret pad. Otherwise, all my other games could be on the R4 device and all would be great.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

True, you can make a backup. However, downloading a ROM from a random website is not making a backup. Making a backup is dumping your own cartridge into a file, not someone else's cartridge.

You are allowed to make a backup, even though it's against the rules, because a court ruled it falls under fair use. You cannot say that downloading a backup isn't fair use, because no court has ever rule on it. The courts have ruled that providing said download is not fair use, even if the provider verifies the downloader owns a copy already. I think that's a crazy ruling, but I think the whole system is nuts.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[10101001 10101001]

Ah, so it was. Sorry for that mistake. Apparently Lik-Sang was closed down because it was selling PSPs in Europe before Sony's official PSP launch date. Viva la free market.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[agentultra]

I totally agree.

Having bought over 20 cartridges, I am definitely jealous of R4 owners.

All these cartridges and their packaging are either going to horde space in my closets for the rest of my life or end up in a garbage dump one day. The R4 solves that problem and makes the device more convenient and valuable. No more shuffling through pockets and no more bulky packaging.

The R4 clearly makes carts unnecessary and shows that DS owners don't want them. A download service akin to Steam would be so much better and retailers could still get a piece with in-store kiosks for those unfortunate souls without wireless Internet access or credit cards.

Follow the demand -- stop suppressing new technology simply because it changes your business.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[SirSlud]

that doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people use them for piracy

Is that a question? Not to you apparently. My post was pretty clearly in reply to this assertion. Of course Nintendo goes after stuff like this due to piracy fears. The question you apparently feel isn't a question is whether or not products like these hurt society more than they benefit it. Because as I alluded to in my post, Nintendo's use for a few extra bucks may not outweigh the benefits society and the industry receives from its availability.

It's disingenuous to say that one company's right to earn should be placed above the the benefit of society, because capitalism itself is designed to raise all our standards of living. As soon as you place one company above what I concede is a nebulous, and therefore worth discussing, plus for everyone else, you're negating an axiom that is used to justify the existence of capitalism in the first place. One which I believe in, for what it's worth.

If your point was just to say, "Nintendo is going after this because it can be used for piracy," well great, welcome to the moot point club. It is you who claims that products like this are used more for piracy than legitimate (lets define this as not harmful to Nintendo and game developers and publishers) purposes, but you don't provide any kind of metric for what 'more' means, and why it's relevant in this discussion.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Goaway]

The question you apparently feel isn't a question is whether or not products like these hurt society more than they benefit it.

I specifically did not because that was not the question. The question was, and I quote, "Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

Honest? I honestly don't know whether or not Nintendo cares about homebrew, I just believe that they should. I don't want them to care about it because they see it as a threat, I want them to care about it the way that Valve cared about Day of Defeat, recognizing that somebody not the original producer of a product has created added value that consumers appreciate. If it were not possible to dump a commercial rom to it, it would still be useful for homebrew applications like pocket dictionaries and media players.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

Of course this is where it gets really fun, what if you could pay to download the ROM dump from the Nintendo website?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

I should care about whether somethign hurts the company over it hurting the consumer why?

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

He should provide supporting arguments because, clearly and obviously, I could as easily say that everybody knows Nintendo doesn't care about piracy they just hate homebrew. If you disagree with that you are being obtuse. What is clear and obvious to me is that the horribly written question posed in the summary was intended to be inflammatory and spark discussion, but despite that already recognizes that the primary motivator for Nintendo is likely to be piracy. The question was whether or not homebrew projects are intentionally being targeted, or just an unfortunate casualty in the war on piracy. I just wanted them to not be a boor who tosses out ad-hoc's, and actually participate in a discussion. This is done as simply as deleting the second sentance of the post, and instead putting "I don't believe homebrew is on a significant enough scale to even be on the Nintendo radar" at which point somebody actually has something of substance to respond to.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Culture20]

I was just pointing out that the company has an incentive to keep things that way because people will buy more of their products.

Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer

[Hoknor]

Which has nothing to do with preventing piracy, therefore this is all supporting argument for why Nintendo just may care about this beyond the piracy factor.

It would be nice

[Wiseblood1]

To finally see a graphical Nethack or slashEM on the DS one day, I might even buy the DS just to fiddle with it and play nethack. Would be a fun way to waste time.

Re:It would be nice

[gEvil (beta)]

To finally see a graphical Nethack or slashEM on the DS one day, I might even buy the DS just to fiddle with it and play nethack. Would be a fun way to waste time.

Haven't tried any of them yet, but here you go.

Re:It would be nice

[Wiseblood1]

WOW thanks! I _greatly_ appreciate that. I might just buy a DS now......

Re:It would be nice

[Annymouse Cowherd]

it exists, it really sucks though
http://frodo.dyn.gno.org/~brettk/NetHackDS

Re:It would be nice

[Annymouse Cowherd]

err actually i was thinking of the other NetHackDS: http://stuartp.commixus.com/nhds/ which is the one that sucks.

Re:It would be nice

[TheForgotton]

Of those, I think Powder DS is the most fun. It uses both screens, a touch interface, draggable buttons, and has (somewhat) remappable controls. It's also available in lot of different platforms if you want to try it on your desktop/laptop first.

R4

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pry my R4 from my cold, dead R4.

SuperCards for All!

[morari]

I had bought a MiniSD SuperCard for my Gameboy Advance SP some time ago. Due to the SP's form factor I can take it just about anywhere, so I always have a robust arcade in my pocket. GBA games, Gameboy and Gameboy Color games if you like, as well as full NES and Game Gear emulation!

Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[VoxMagis]

I just see this as Nintendo seeing what happened to the PSP and homebrew and getting it under control before it's too late.

It's sad - both systems should have some level of a 'code pack' that lets people write apps and such for their portable toys, but the level of flat piracy that the homebrew community has created for the PSP is really affecting it's viability as a game platform for developers.

http://www.pspfanboy.com/2008/03/09/ridiculous-psp-piracy-numbers/

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[Shados]

Its already too late. At this point, the PSP has it -better- than the DS... There -is- a reason why the PSP made a "come back". It was originally the one of the two that was pirate-land... but now that the two are (and the DS doesn't even require custom firmware), PSP looks better from a publisher's point of view than it did originally...

You're right though. I'm sure console makers would like nothing more than to give us a cool SDK and tools... it would raise the value of the machine enough to sell it at a profit earlier on (I'm guessing the DS always was, but I doubt the PSP did). But they can't: the FIRST freagin application that -always- comes out on these things is Emulator ABCD for console XYZ.

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[VoxMagis]

Actually - the come-back seems to be (as an owner and somewhat a fanboy of the PSP) because:

1- Exceptionally successful games and marketing in Asia.
2 - Redesign in the USA causes new splash.
3 - Actually, I think a couple of the latest new games have helped alot, see God of War.

Note that #3 actually is contrary to my argument, but factor in that there may have been more piracy of that game than there were sales (which may have helped drive up system sales, as a thought) AND that the developer that designed this incredible game immediately shut down PSP development, even shipping off all their dev kits.

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[Shados]

Point 2 stands, though it came -after- the big come back of the PSP (plus its not like the DS Lite... if you look at the demos in stores, the 2 PSPs look the same from a couple of feets away unless you look carefuly =).

Mind you, I do have a PSP2000, mostly because component support kicks ass, so it still helped at least move one unit.

The other 2 are -results- of what I was talking about :) first party aside, the good games came -after- (MUCH after, too) the DS got piracy-pwned.

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[Perseid]

Flash carts have existed almost as long as the DS itself has. Originally people were flashing the DS to trick it into booting DS code from the GBA flash carts. This has been going on for years and until now Nintendo has done nothing. In fact, I still think Nintendo doesn't really care. Nothing's going to bring them down at this point. There are literally dozens of these carts out there now, so I think this is just a show for the publishers.

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[Perseid]

I think the piracy figures are, as usual, greatly exaggerated. Flashing a PSP, while not as hard as it is for some other systems, is not easy. Little Billy and Joe Six Pack are unlikely to do it successfully.

And the developer announced GoW was their last PSP game before the game was even released, so piracy of GoW itself was not a factor in their decision.

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[Ant P.]

Nintendo hasn't seemed to realise, after several years, they have so much piracy because they make homebrew so difficult.

All they've achieved is making the barrier for homebrew equal to the barrier for pirated games. Homebrew hackers are essentially doing all the work for the lazy, stupid warez kiddies who otherwise would have figure out how to do it themselves.

Sony almost had the right idea by giving the PS3 a bootloader. Sooner or later someone will crack the hypervisor though, just for the sake of running glxgears fast.

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[ivan256]

I hate to break it to you, but it's the other way around. The warez kiddies are making it easy for the homebrew hackers.

I did a lot of hacking on the N64 back before I was old enough to be tried as an adult. I know a lot of what I did was used for homebrew, but the reason I wrote it was 'cause I couldn't afford the games, and I wanted to download them instead. Most of the people doing the heavy work to get around the N64 security back then were the pirates, and the homebrew coders came along for the ride.

As an aside, I was once presented with a sheet of paper during a job interview that was a printout of some of the code I wrote for N64 hacking, and was asked "what does that do". Surprisingly, they still offered me the job...

Re:Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP

[Anonymous Coward]

The PSP simply isn't viable because it's loaded with crappy games, and bad playstation ports, although if you buy the $600 dongle you can download your own PSX games to a PSP, but why bother if you can save $600 and use a custom firmware?

As to stopping the DS "piracy", it's already a little late as custom flash carts have been around for years now starting with the old slot-2 (GBA cart) adapters and the followed about 2y ago by the slot-1 carts.

Also there really is some good DS homebrew, e.g. Powder (originally GBA) a nifty roguelike, Nethack ports, Crawl ports, a version of linux that IMO has the best browser(non-graphical) for the DS, as well as a ton of other toy apps that other people have mentioned. It also has a nifty little organizer software, catchily called DSOrganize although it is recomended to use the 3.1129 aka "birthday" release as v3.2 has some serious problems.

As to games, yep I own a couple of slot-1 carts and a slot-2 cart just so that I can play a fair selection of my DS & GBA games w/o having to cart around all the physical carts. It also allows me to backup copies of my save games, modify games, etc.

You people should also know that Nintendo is starting to sell their own flashcart called DSVision in Japan. AFAIK they are planning on releasing movies, books, graphical "novels", music and other things likely with the added possibility of supporting downloadable games. They simply just don't want the competition from cheaper more versatile and experienced competitors.

Closing amusing note, first story listed as related to this one on gamasutra is the c. $1B profit for Nintendo in Q1. Man, they must be starved for cash ATM... I wonder if they plan on going after photocopiers, blank CDs, personal printers, cameras, your hands, etc. after this after all we wouldn't want people to just be able to copy anything.

Seriously?

[Robert1]

I can't tell if the article summary comment is tongue-in-cheek or actually serious. I should hope that it isn't the latter, its tough to believe people are really that delusional. How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists? The cost and man-hours necessary to complete a modern game have effectively shoved small time developers out of business. Its not like they were muscled out, the technology and cost just ran away from them. Today, an amateur game maker can realistically hope to make games equivalent to those seen 15 years ago. How much market share will the 800th clone of pong or snake or RPG Maker-esque rpg really take away from licensed games? How fun is it, really, to play yet another generic 2d platformer?

Don't lie to yourself, nobody's clamoring to buy this to play any of those games. This is designed for piracy. I guarantee >95% use it exclusively for getting non-homebrew games.

Re:Seriously?

[AuMatar]

Far more fun than to play yet another FPS, a genre that hasn't had anything new to it since deathmatch.

Look at the kind of numbers simple games like popcap, yahoo games, and similar flash games sites get. Those can easily be written by 1 man in a few weeks. And people play them like mad. So yes, there is a market out there for simple yet fun games that the majority of publishers ignore. Graphics and art are not required for fun gameplay.

Re:Seriously?

[kipman725]

you do know that you can play quake on a DS right?

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists?

This is the same question that people ask about the rest of the game industry. The answer is, and always has been, originality and better gameplay. If you think that bigger is better, then you're severely deluded. Tiny teams make great games all the time.

Re:Seriously?

[The-Bus]

How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists?

I'll play Devil's Advocate here, but I've played the crap out of Line Rider, Porrasturvat and Desktop Tower Defense, all games made (initially) by a single person (or a very small group). DTD is a lot more fun and challenging than most blockbuster games.

Re:Seriously?

[Ambiguous Puzuma]

Well, it would be a real shame if that 95% ruined it for the rest of us. I have an R4 and I'll be using it exclusively for a VNC-like application I'm writing so I can run programs on my desktop computer remotely. (Originally I wanted to use DSLinux, but it turns out that without a GBA cartridge to expand the memory capacity, it can't run very many programs--not even ssh. And the web browser in DSOrganize was a letdown as well.)

Re:Seriously?

[pythian]

I picked up a similar device to use ScummVM and play my old copy of Loom.

Re:Seriously?

[Paralizer]

Don't lie to yourself, nobody's clamoring to buy this to play any of those games. This is designed for piracy. I guarantee >95% use it exclusively for getting non-homebrew games.

I suppose they should also sue anyone who makes the microSD cards since they are the medium stores any copyright code the R4 may use. Now let's expand that to include Sony, Maxwell, and all the other companies that make blank CD-R's and DVD-R's because they can be used to copy copyrighted material.

This is utterly ridiculous. The R4 is a development tool, if it can or can not run copyrighted code is irrelevant. I've had one of these things for a while and I have to say they are pretty awesome. (I'm a developer.)

These companies need to get over themselves and focus on making quality products consumers want to buy and stop blaming their shortcomings on piracy that only a tiny fraction of their potential customer base even abuse.

Re:Seriously?

[KDR_11k]

Yeah but those simple games are often free and can be played on an office PC, they don't require a dedicated piece of gaming hardware along with a specialized cartridge for it. Then again many attribute the success of the Wii to delivering exactly these games but in forms people haven't seen before...

Re:Seriously?

[poot_rootbeer]

I'll play Devil's Advocate here, but I've played the crap out of Line Rider, Porrasturvat and Desktop Tower Defense, all games made (initially) by a single person (or a very small group). DTD is a lot more fun and challenging than most blockbuster games.

Would you have paid $35 per title to purchase any of those games as a commercial cartridge, without having had the opportunity to playtest them first?

If not, homebrew can't really be considered a threat to the game publishers. Which leaves concerns over piracy at the motivation for Nintendo, et al, in filing suit.

Re:Seriously?

[pxc]

I could care less about the homebrew games for it--but I'm not talking about piracy, either. I'm more interested in its capabilities as a little portable media player and web browsing device.

Re:Seriously?

[Paradigm_Complex]

How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists?

Well, here's three ways:

(1) You're ID is just over half mine. You should know by now about this whole F/OSS thing that lets people build on other's work. A F/OSS project can (not always does, but can) use a lot less man-hours than a proprietary job that has to re-invent the wheel.

(2) Games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists usually end up being very unoriginal, because whomever has to fund the whole thing does not want to take a risk (and justifiably so). Homebrew stuff, with very small investments, can afford to act out their dreams and try crazy new stuff which may very well be super-awesome. Super-awesome can compete with unoriginal very, very well.

(3) "Games were better back in my day." Maybe I'm getting old and out of touch, or maybe it's just the nostalgia-bonus, but most new games these days don't appeal to me nearly as much as some of the older ones. The ability to take some of my favorite oldies around with me on a portable platform like the DS is very appealing.

I can't tell if the article summary comment is tongue-in-cheek or actually serious. I should hope that it isn't the latter, its tough to believe people are really that delusional.

I ended up buying a used PSP specifically - and only - for homebrew/ports. I haven't purchased or pirated a single "official" PSP game (from what I've seen they all suck to varying degrees - none are worth the bandwidth to pirate), but for quite some time I've used it for things like Quake, NES/SNES/PS emulation (all games I *should* have the rights too - I even own multiple copies of games like Super Metroid), and board games like Chess and (the best game of all time:) Go.

I'm willing to accept that technology is primarily used for piracy and is hurting Nintendo financially, but acting as though there is no way anyone would actually prefer the legitimate usage is, to be frank, either severely misinformed or blatantly malicious. I'll give you Hanlon's razor and just hope you're modded down.

Re:Seriously?

[jmorris42]

> they don't require a dedicated piece of gaming hardware along with
> a specialized cartridge for it

They do if you want to play away from a PC. Zillions of people play simple flash games. It stands to reason that some non-trivial number would play them on a handheld if it were easy. The reason vendors don't sell games like that is Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft demands a large fixed price per title on all of the locked consoles and simple games like that would have to sell for $5-$10 to have a chance of selling.

A Nintendo DS is a small computer: Trying to stop people from running programs on it is like trying to make water not wet. (To mangle an infamous quote.)

Personally my dream is to someday have the Supremes issue a ruling to that effect. Say something like, "You can try to lock down your products if you like, just don't expect US to put people in jail for running programs on a computer they own. Oh, and that goes for you Apple, we won't put people in jail for running your software on whatever computer they want to."

Re:Seriously?

[jmorris42]

> Would you have paid $35 per title...

Who cares?

> Which leaves concerns over piracy at the motivation for Nintendo,
> et al, in filing suit.

Who cares? By your logic the Supremes would have ruled against Sony in the Betamax decision, because most VCR use was piracy. Especially if you buy the argument that recording TV was infringing use. And thus the whole home video revolution would have been stillborn. You can't ban technology because it MIGHT be used for ill, you can't even ban it because MOST use of it is illegal. You CAN bust people trading ROM images.

Re:Seriously?

[Goaway]

That would be a great point, if the homebrew games were actually original in any way. The vast majority of them are re-implementations of well-known simple games.

Re:Seriously?

[Goaway]

I suppose they should also sue anyone who makes the microSD cards since they are the medium stores any copyright code the R4 may use.

The "should" not do that, because they'd lose in an instant. They are going after the R4 because they actually have a chance of winning that one.

You speak as if this was some kind of question of ethics. It is not, it is simple business.

Re:Seriously?

[KGIII]

I have an older Motorola RAZR V3x that I hacked the crap out of just so that I'd be able to run small games. It was just sitting there and the battery was still good so, why not? It gets used when the wife drives, in doctor's offices, when I'm bored, and I don't look like an adult with a facination for toys. So, yeah, what I'm saying is that there *is* a market for these small games that someone writes in their basement.

Re:Seriously?

[KGIII]

I think you might want to qualify that a wee bit more.

Look at, for instance, the death of many of the P2P clients being sued for enabling copyright infringement successfully.

Not saying that it is right or anything but, well, they managed to do it.

It isn't that they can't, it is that they shouldn't. They *can* if they get the right judge it would seem.

Re:Seriously?

[jmorris42]

> Look at, for instance, the death of many of the P2P clients
> being sued for enabling copyright infringement successfully.

A few differences. Most of those cases involved arguing that the operators were actively encouraging infringement. Screenshots on Napster's old site filled with copyrighted works didn't do em much good. Note that there are still a lot of P2P networks still operating. It required a fair amount of greed and stupidity to get into legal trouble.

> They *can* if they get the right judge it would seem.

That is a more general problem with judges making law and the unpredictability of the US legal system that resulted from judicial activism.

Re:Seriously?

[KGIII]

I agree entirely but, well, they *can* which was my idea. They may very well do so. Didn't Sony do something about mod chips (again not entirely the same but who knows what a judge will understand and then rule on) a few years back?

Re:Seriously?

[KDR_11k]

The cellphone seems like the ideal device for them though, something everyone owns and carries anyway so the hardware doesn't add cost or weight. A DS costs like 140€, that's a LOT for someone who wants to play 5-10€ worth of games.

Re:Seriously?

[Inda]

My daughter spends hours on a 'Paint' homebrew game and sometimes passes the time away with a falling sand game. The games don't need to be big budget.

Re:Seriously?

[Paralizer]

All I said was it doesn't make sense to sue someone who makes something that can be abused and used for something it wasn't intended for (eg microSD cards). The R4 was not designed for piracy, it is a developer tool plain and simple. It is simple common sense.

Perhaps Nintendo thinks it can go around and sue anyone for anything because they lost that ridiculous law suit over joysticks?

Re:Seriously?

[Goaway]

All I said was it doesn't make sense to sue someone who makes something that can be abused and used for something it wasn't intended for (eg microSD cards). The R4 was not designed for piracy, it is a developer tool plain and simple. It is simple common sense.

Er.

1. It makes perfect sense to sue someone for making that, if you think you can win, and if you want to prevent piracy, both of which are true here. Intent doesn't matter to the party that is trying to prevent piracy, the damage (perceived or real) is done no matter what the original intent was. Like I said, business, not ethics.

2. Even so, the R4 is designed for piracy! If it weren't designed for piracy, why would the firmware updates specifically address problems with specific commercial games? See the release notes for the latest version for an example: "Solved 2203, 2219, 2240, 2250 problem" means they made those specific officially numbered games run on it. Really, it is delusional to think it is not specifically intended for piracy first and foremost, and homebrew as an extra and as an excuse.

Re:Seriously?

[gauauu]

Shameless self-promotion, but as a counter-example, my homebrew Nintendo GBA game Anguna has received pretty good reviews, and thousands of people downloading it to play it. Sure, it's not quite up to par with a commercial release, but I like to think it's pretty good.

Re:Seriously?

[ivan256]

Proof of the parent's point.

You can still buy Loom, BTW.

Re:Seriously?

[bigstrat2003]

Er... how is that proof of the parent's point in the least? Playing a game you already own is perfectly legit. And who cares if you can still buy Loom? He already owns a copy, why should he go out and buy it again?

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Today, an amateur game maker can realistically hope to make games equivalent to those seen 15 years ago. How much market share will the 800th clone of pong or snake or RPG Maker-esque rpg really take away from licensed games? How fun is it, really, to play yet another generic 2d platformer?

Other's must have said it, but you're ignorance is astounding. The "indie" game scene today is not "equivalent" to games made 15 years ago. The first step to realize that console games are no longer tied to the console. With tools like the R4, the games can come off of dem dar intertubes. It turns the PC-game market INTO the DS market. The second step is to open your eyes to what basement developers have made. "Require" HA! Google the mythical man month. The last step is to realize that the DS is just hardware. It's not some sacred untouchable temple to Nintendo.

But as for step 2, here's my list of favorites:
Gish - It's not JUST a 2d platformer.
Cortex Command - Started as a particle physics experiment, but then they added guns.
Exile - ok, it's a dated RPG, but Spiderweb software has newer stuff
Defcon - Anyone for a game of world-wide thermonuclear warfare?
Everything at fun-motion.com, and nearly everything at PlayThisThing.com

And then there's the FREE scene:
Dwarf Fortress - Mind-blowingly deep resource management.
Nethack, Slash'Em, DungeonCrawl, DungeonClimb, well, ok I'm in a rogue-like rut.

Hell, POWDER has a DS port!

The only way your argument makes sense is if you only consider yourself as the target market and will only play the prettiest game avaliable. Wake up! You are now a minority in the gamer community.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

""How can a game written by 3-4 teen/early 20 year olds hope to compete against games that REQUIRE dozens of designers/artists?"

Erm... Wasn't Portal pretty much made by a small handfull of people?

And isn't it pretty huge?

Amatures can make great games. Most probably don't, but some do.

Hey Nintendo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for telling me about this device. Now after a bit of searching and reading the R4 wiki I can figure out how to pirate your games more easily!

Big names are always making the same mistakes

[doyoulikeworms]

Bad move, Nintendo...

Re:Big names are always making the same mistakes

[uglydog]

that's not applicable. streisand effect refers to unwanted publicity generated by an attempt at censorship (first line of the wikipedia article). nintendo at al are not censoring anyone, and they aren't trying to prevent some piece of information from becoming widely known. they are attempting to prevent piracy of their video games. analogies to the riaa and mpaa would make more sense.

i also dont see nintendo or other video game producers as evil as the riaa or mpaa. maybe that's just habit. anyway, i don't mind paying for a video. i play it for a few months, then sell it. i do have an r4 tho. i downloaded sim city for the ds before it was available in the us, and i ended up buying the us version when it came out. cuz i also own nintendo stock.

Re:Big names are always making the same mistakes

[grm_wnr]

Nobody but a couple of geeks care about DS homebrew, and the rest of the world will instantly see that DS flashcarts are used almost exclusively to pirate games (which is, in fact the truth, don't even try to deny it). This isn't a PR disaster for Nintendo at all.

They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battles..

[Channard]

.. since there are plenty of R4 clones, and successors out there.

for once i agree with the corporation

[cpicon92]

I think it's pretty obvious that this is about piracy and not killing homebrew or modding. How are game developers supposed to make money if all their games can be dumped onto a cartridge for free, easily.

Re:for once i agree with the corporation

[Jorophose]

(Oh, does anybody know if this will affect M3? Or is it just R4?)

I personally don't.

There's a lot of room for good homebrew there. Unless Nintendo wants to try selling us FTP, MP3, etc. software carts.

But of course Nintendo is doing it for piracy. It's not unreasonable to see why. Nintendo hasn't dropped the pricing on ANY of its games in two or so years. New Super Mario Bros. is still 35$/40$ here, same for all the other nintendo games. At least here in Canada.

IMHO Nintendo should release its own homebrew kit, but that still allows you to play commercial games. However, it'd be styled like Virtual Console. You buy your games as digital downloads, they get put onto the console, and they do some sort of digital signage technique; maybe something that locks it down to the DS? Like it's saved on microSD cards, but it's an encryped and/or obscure format... You can then buy games for ~5$ as digital downloads, 10$/15$ for new releases. Or they make the carts with built-in flash enough for a small downloader-type app, and then they sell a GBA cart that can have an SD card or microSD card or like 2GB of flash or whatever, in which the games are stored, and can be backed up, but it will sign them with a system like GPG so that you can't just get any random files and play them, just stuff from the DS store...

I know this isn't as good as the R4/M3 but what the fuck do you want?

There's a lot of good games for the DS, they don't all deserve 20$+. Drawn To Life looks like a great game but I don't want to waste 20$. I want Tingle games but they're only in Japan.

Re:for once i agree with the corporation

[jmorris42]

> How are game developers supposed to make money if all their games
> can be dumped onto a cartridge for free, easily.

How does Hollywood make billions when DVDs can be trivially copied? How does the music industry make money in a world of mp3 trading? They do it, perhaps not quite as humongous piles of cash but Batman just cleared 300M$ at the box office and Britney Spears is heading back to the studio so she expects her mindless drones^W^Wremaining fans to cough up some more cash.

PC games often have 'no cd' cracks up before the game is in the stores and they still rake in Sagens.

Copyright grants authors an exclusive right to control reproduction and public performance of their works. I missed the clause in the Constituition that gives em the right to control any and all physical products sold in interstate commerce on the grounds that among their uses is that it might make infringement a little easier. Thus the DMCA is flatly unconstituitional and I for one ignore it.

Re:for once i agree with the corporation

[cduffy]

I think it's pretty obvious that this is about piracy and not killing homebrew or modding. How are game developers supposed to make money if all their games can be dumped onto a cartridge for free, easily.

Right. It's unfortunate that it's necessary, though -- if they got their protection right (as they did for the Wii, excepting Virtual Console titles), these devices would be useful only for homebrew.

That said, contrary to the conclusion you implied (to the question you beggered), publishers certainly do make money off the DS, despite the very longstanding availability of hardware to circumvent its protection mechanisms.

Re:for once i agree with the corporation

[LordVader717]

You can get one of the Tingle games as a european localisation clled "Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland"

Re:for once i agree with the corporation

[Jorophose]

I'm not european, and the last time I was there I didn't even notice any resonably-priced video games.

I'm not flying to europe or importing from there just to get a Tingle game, I'd much rather download it if they're never going to get it for me.

Of course american reviewers are morons. Starfox Assault was good (it needed more varied missions, like defending stuff and deliveries) but the american mags slammed it. Tingle was my favourite Zelda NPC, but he gets slammed because nobody sees the humour and sadness in such a character...

Re:for once i agree with the corporation

[LordVader717]

These days getting an import game is as easy as copying the title to google and ordering from an independant games dealer.
What's reasonably-priced is open to discussion I guess. The game cost 35 Euros here, I was able to pick it up for 20 a few months later (didn't sell too good so I guess they were right). I don't know what that translates as in dollars these days, but it's pretty reasonable.

I suppose I can understand how importing a game seems totally alien to most US consumers however. For europeans it's a bare necessity if you want to enjoy some of the best games out there, although the situation has been getting better in the past few years.

Homebrew is wonderful

[PIPBoy3000]

I decided to get an R4 chip for our Nintendo DS. The kids love it, as I loaded it up with things like Colors!, which is a touch sensitive drawing program. It also nicely plays music and home videos. My kids were both mesmerized by family movies I took of them from a couple years ago.

There is a long list of homebrew software out there. And yes, you can even get your DS running Linux.

Re:Homebrew is wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, you can even get your DS running Linux.

Behold! There first ever reversed meme:

Of course you can. What doesn't run Linux?

DMCA/BnetD

[IdeaMan]

The bad thing about trying to take out R4 or any other similar card manufacturer is that they also hit us the homebrew developers :(

Similar fight happened with Blizzard Vs BnetD.
http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

That + how they deleted your Diablo 2 account after 90 days ticked me off at Blizzard badly enough I never subscribed to WoW.

Legitimate uses

[Xian97]

When I was over in Asia last year they were everywhere. They also enable your DS to play MP3s, videos (after conversion), and function as an E-Book Reader and PDA. How many people use them for those functions can be debated, but there are legitimate uses for the devices.

Re:Legitimate uses

[kn0tw0rk]

I use my DS with one of these mod carts to listen to music, as I'm not allowed to put any media on my pc at work. Cheaper than an Ipod and it has built in speakers as an alternative to wearing headphones. I had a R4 as my first cart but changed to the M3 after finding out that the later would support the higher density mirco SD cards.

Yeah, this is a bit late

[Pluvius]

Not only has the R4 been superceded by other carts, but the no$gba emulator has fairly reasonable DS support. Nintendo has basically no chance of stopping piracy on the DS.

Rob

Think again about homebrew

[Anonymous Coward]

This won't do anything to stop DS piracy, The pirates know, Nintendo knows, everyone does. That's why they never had more than a token effort at fighting flashcarts.

However Nintendo's new "casual" focus changes things a bit. The casual market seems to like a few small, quirky and fun titles, with a good degree of shovelware to pad things out......which couldn't sound more like the homebrew scene. If the R4 or one of its' ilk got mass market somehow that could be a serious dent for Nintendo and 3rd parties.

R4 is the sole reason I purchased a DS

[bevoblake]

If no card had existed like this, I would not have purchased the unit, nor the Zelda game that I bought the first week. I'm only willing to spend enough to buy a game or two per year, which would've pushed me to the psp or cell phone games, except for the ease of the R4.

I'll still buy the game or two per year that I was planning on, and Nintendo profited on the sale of the device. So, in my case, the R4 gave Nintendo profit they wouldn't have had otherwise. However, probably only a small percentage of R4 users match my scenario (only purchased DS because of the available crack). Nintendo may or may not want me as a customer, but I'd think that some profitable revenue is better than none...

lol wut

[poot_rootbeer]

Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?

Are you fucking kidding me.

Many of the plaintiff companies here -- Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, et al -- have traditions of excellence in video game design dating back nearly THREE DECADES. Who in the homebrew community, though I do love and support them, is going to beat them at their game?

Re:lol wut

[jdogalt]

Playing mp3s/oggs, datebook, email, voip, without being chained to proprietary software and service. This is a threat to nintendo that the r4 combined with homebrew and OSS enable. Or home automation (think touchpad lighting controls and voip intercom panels located throughout the house that can display video from wifi security cameras).

This may well be about piracy. But even if piracy were impossible with this device, I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to crack down because they want the control to deliver software that does the above at their leisure, and not have to compete with the fact that it is really pretty easy to simply compile OSS that does the above on this device. And yes, I have written my own homebrew, and really enjoyed the OSless bare-metalness of it (so please don't bother with the - 'your an idiot, it's not just a recompile' comment. People have worked hard to port OSS and write new OSS. And seeing that swept under the rug, even if the driving issue is piracy, is a very sad thing.

Re:lol wut

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be easy to beat them on price. DS games are expensive. Homebrew games could be cheap and even free. Why do you think my cell phone doesn't allow me to load free games?

Re:They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battle

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking the same thing, why only R4?

There are TONS of homebrew apps for DS

[MobyDisk]

The Nintendo DS is homebrew heaven. There are dozens of mod chips for the DS. And many, many forums and libraries for homebrew applications. There's several development wiki's and some must have applications.

This is not a tool for piracy. If they want to stop piracy, they need to stop the people who are dumping roms. And you won't find tools to dump roms quite so easily. Attacking the companies that make legitimate devices lazy and anti-customer.

Re:There are TONS of homebrew apps for DS

[NorQue]

The tools are out there. How do you suppose these ROMs get dumped in the frist place? Want to know why they haven't spread? Because it's a whole lot easier and faster to just download a game from a ROM Site than dumping it yourself. Plus you can usually get the other ~2300 DS games you don't own there, too.

It is for piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I like homebrew, it's insane to think the majority of R4 owners are using it for anything but playing games.

I moderate several large forums and there are non-stop, daily requests for "romz" for the R4. People post links to games the day they are released -- or earlier! This isn't try-before-you-buy, this isn't renting, this is simply downloading commercial games you don't own that you never intend to buy.

There are honest pirates who test games and purchase them later. There are people who are into homebrew and programming on the DS. That is wondeful. But I wouldn't be surprised if they account for less than 10% of the R4 owners.

To the majority of people out there, the R4 means free games. Nothing more, nothing less. Homebrew is just icing on the cake.

R4 makes your DS 10 times better!

[Ren.Tamek]

The R4 is the single best thing i've ever got for my DS. I bought it for linux, to play music on and to try my hand at some homebrew. Out of vague interest I 'acquired' another copy of MKDS to try out the games feature. I have not put any games from my fairly substantial collection into the device since! With 10-12 games loaded onto a single unit, it's the most ultimately convenient thing i've bought for a while. The best part is, you can routinely back up your game saves on your PC at home, which means I don't have to care about roughly 100 hours of saved game information being lost on the train. Does someone want to tell me why it takes a bunch of hackers and pirates to make my DS awesome? Why can't Nintendo build something similar into their own product?

Re:They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battle

[KGIII]

Because they only have to win one to get the rest to crumble more easily. They have very highly paid and very skilled legal and PR staff. They didn't bring this suit without reason and, most likely, have every expectation for a successful outcome.

My *guess* is that the outcome won't be making the product illegal, my guess is that they want some money for it and future versions will somehow make it more difficult (read: suck) to do what you want with them in the name of preventing piracy.

But in some cases...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is important to note that in some cases, temporary "piracy" can lead to gains for the company in question. I purchased an R4 primarily for homebrew purposes, but soon found myself "previewing" titles for a short while to determine whether or not they warranted a purchase (as I lack a lucrative friend to borrow from ^^) My R4 has resulted in the sales of at least 5 additional games that I wouldn't have normally bought from Nintendo, Square Enix and Sega. This move could potentially disrupt not only their software sales (decent money), but also their hardware sales (where most of their income is brought in).

Re:But in some cases...

[mrjimorg]

I've had the same experience. I've been developing my own DS game, which is why I bought the card. Since then I've bought more DS games than before. Being able to see what's good and what sucks has let me buy the games that I really enjoy, and I can't express how freeing it is to never have to carry around a set of cards and worry about loosing them. Oddly, I think this has helped Nintendo in yet another way- I never return the games that I buy.

Re:They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battle

[Perseid]

Except these manufacturers are Chinese and don't give a rat's ass. The R4 team is screwed, but none of the other ones care. They'll just fade into the mist and re-emerge with a new cart and a new name. The plaintiffs win nothing by this.

Re:They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battle

[KGIII]

I'm still going with the guess on this one. Even if non-interested countries manufacture goods there are countries who will ban importing them. I figure they just need a win under their belts and then they can go for the licensing fees. I actually expect it to be settled out of court but we'll see where the chips fall soon enough.

Killing homebrew?

[Anonymous Coward]

or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?

You're a moron.

Homebrew "taking over" the market?

[KIFulgore]

Without homebrew, where oh where can I get my steady stream of shoddy Pong and Space Invaders knock offs?

Best thing to ever happen to the R4...

[hyperz69]

I mean R4 is old hat in terns of flashcards Though still a goodie *I still use mine* it lacks SHDC and In Game Save that newer carts have for just a few dollars more. So the R4 wasn't selling as strong as it did many moons ago. Look for R4 sales to go thru the roof, I am sure they will send Nintendo a thank you card ;)

Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy

If you have seen the number of Chinese pirates using these to sell 30-in-1 game cartridges, you would want to sue them too.

Re:They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battle

[ShadowsHawk]

There are guides to build your own. I'm sure it will deter the casual pirates, but I doubt they have that much to spend on games anyways.

Re:They'll have to fight a hell of a lot of battle

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that it was about going after the companies that SELL the R4. I don't think that there are many shops that carry one popular brand of flash cart and not another. They are not trying to stop the R4 from existing or being sold. They are trying to make it a pain in the ass to get hold of it (and other cartridges that are sold by the same stores).