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Piracy and the Nintendo DS
Graffitiwriter writes
"With the average DS game weighing in at about 30-60MB (well within the reach of anyone with a half-decent broadband connection) gamers now have an alarmingly easy route to free games — a fact that Nintendo is all too aware of. Pocket Gamer takes a look at how piracy affects the Nintendo DS console, along with the reasons so many gamers turn to piracy to play their games — including the slew of inferior games, availability of flash carts and industry greed."
As a CycloDS owner, I can say that exactly zero (0) of the roms I have are pirated.
Why did I get a flash card if not to pirate?
Primarily, my upgrade to the lite left the gba cart sticking out, which made it less than convenient to carry with anything but the plug in the gba slot. Next was the convenience of not having to bring anything more then the DS itself while still having access to all my carts. Also some used games can't easily be restored to a clean state. The ripping process and separate save files solves that problem.
If someone wants more games than he or she can pay for, isn't it fair to call that consumer is greedy?
The problem persists with every Nintendo console. The DS had amazing two years. Nintendo brought out quality games, third party developers were toying around with the new input controls and brought ought amazing games. Year three. Nintendo reduces a lot of its output down to the usual annual pokemon shit... Third party developers flock onto other consoles with their better developers, the rest is up to Disney and Co... That means 1-2 excellent quality titles per year which are drowned in a flood of my horse farm, cook yourself a bread, pink pony games...
If you look at the shelves you will only see the cheap cash in games, because they flood the games, the 1-2 excellent games drown and often do not even reach the shelves anymore.
It was like that with the Gameboy, the GBA, it is like that with the DS and to some smaller extent with the Wii.
But the situation still is better than on the PSP, the PSP currently only gets 5 shovelware games per year and not even a single good one, or one if at all.
For me I am rather sick of this entire situation I reverted back to PC gaming, the situation on the PC has changed a lot, you do not have to do yearly upgrades, and a mid range card does it mostly!Also the games are way cheaper than on the consoles. Also the games are not abandonware once the next upgrade cycle comes, like it was with the case PS2->PS3
Why can't the people who buy games just read review magazines?
I stopped taking reviews serious when I started working for a computer magazine. Take a wild guess why.
It's not so much that you're outright "bought" to write a good review for a shitty product. It's more the psychological pressure. After all, you get nice stuff from them, ya know? You get all those "test samples" and other goodies. They sit down with you for a lenghty interview. And you got to fill those pages, you really, really have to, because first of all, you're paid by the page and you have to provide some content for your reader or they'll wonder why they should drop their five or even more bucks on a mag that's more the thickness of a leaflet and contains a few full page ads with little in between them.
And then there's this super-nice company that gives you all that for free. Free! You don't have to go out and buy their crap to write a review, no, they hand you a ton of pics and even an interview that's good for a page or even two, and they also give you those test samples so you can easily (and cost free!) write a couple more pages.
And then you should go and call it a stinker? Where do you think you'll get your next test sample from? Certainly not from those guys, that much I can tell you!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.