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Nintendo Battles Makers of the R4

Posted by kdawson on from the another-victim-of-moore's-law dept.

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?"

9 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Well, that's an easy one to answer by Goaway · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer by Spykk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer by Sir_Dill · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

    3. Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer by RyoShin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer by drcagn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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      Scorta futuere amo!
    5. Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer by Hoknor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

    6. Re:Well, that's an easy one to answer by jkerman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So are blank DVD's then?

  2. Avoiding the pitfall of the PSP by VoxMagis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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/

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    -- I really need to bleed off some of this /. karma.
  3. Seriously? by Robert1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.