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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."
People are going to pirate your software, no matter how hard you try to protect it, there was even devices for the original gameboy.
People are going to copy software, and find an excuse for it, they always have, and always will.
company X is bad, Company x charge to much...
It's called an R4 card, though there are others too.
ilovegeorgebush
flash carts
/standard rant about Slashdot editors
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.
Or, you could actually take a few minutes to look up online what the good games are which aren't. Or just grab a top 10 list from someplace. Just the same concept of using rotten tomatoes to avoid dropping money on bad movies.
I don't think ignorance is really a valid excuse anymore. At least 90% of any media has always been crap.
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 â" including the slew of inferior games, availability of flash carts and industry greed."
Which sort of leaves out the obvious. People are cheap, and given the choice between having something for money or for free, many opt for free.
It won't help much, but it would be a step in the right direction to offer the comodity of having all games in a single cartidge (or simply to a static internal memory).
Maye a system like Steam that downloads any game you own to your DS from any computer with internet access.
Just an idea.
You actually use all 50 carts? I've got enough room for 12 in my bag and rarely ever use more than 1-2 of them.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
('about $60 on 4-5 games is about $7 a game)
Where did you learn math?
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Not to mention consumer greed. It's all the industry's fault, or at least those damn flash cart manufacturers. They provide a product like that, how could we possibly have the free will to say no?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
If someone wants more games than he or she can pay for, isn't it fair to call that consumer is greedy?
Do I really want to download "Strawberry Shortcake: The Four Seasons Cake?" I think not.
People pirate X-Box 360 games, PS2 and Dreamcast games, and emulate Game Boy Advance and Super Nintendo games. From a 750kb ROM to a full 4.9 gig ISO file.
Anyone with a 'decent' broadband connection can leave a torrent or PSP program on overnights and grab any game they want relatively easily.
Size has never stopped most people from pirating games before who want to pirate.
People segmented PC games into .rar/.zip files and shared them on IRC or USENET well over a decade ago. Those games were ten times the size of a single DS game and that was then.
I purchased Golden Sun I and II for my Game Boy Advance when they came out but only opened them for the manual, the games are sitting in a box never used. I downloaded the ROMS that same week and played them off of an emulator. Full screen, my own controller, save states, etc.
Yes piracy sucks for game companies but for keeping old cartridge games alive I use ROMS always. And I own the original game at least.
I was thinking the same thing!
His Brain Age must be, like, a MILLION!
I just pooped your party.
If you're going to look for game reviews I suggest metacritic and only look at the user ratings. I've noticed a lot of game review sites and magazines consistently give big release titles a much higher score than they deserve. Just look at the average critic score given to Far Cry 2 versus the average user score on metacritic. I think hundreds if not thousands of user scores coming from people who play games for fun are a better indication of a games worth than a handful of people who are paid to review them.
Just my opinion though.
The Slot-1 Secret -- this piece from early December '08 looks not only into rampant DS game piracy but how Nintendo rendered this piracy moot by shifting toward new audiences. The latter point is far more interesting, as the R4 topic is otherwise old hat.
When the Nintendo DS came out, RSA made it well known that its code protected the games Now I don't hear so much from them about this. Maybe it's not their best example of protecting data?
Nintendo has produced seven generations or so of handheld game consoles. Not a single one supported region codes until the DSi. It stands to reason that if Nintendo wasn't trying to lock out pirates with new protection technology, there's a good chance the region codes never would have made it into this system.
DSi is also the first Nintendo handheld to enforce parental controls based on a rating system, and each region has a different rating system. For instance, ESRB ratings are meaningless in the European market, which largely uses PEGI.
The vast majority of people who use flash carts use it for piracy, plain and simple. Trying to deny this is just naÃve. They may also try a homebrew app or two, but they would never have bought the thing if it wasn't for piracy.
Furhtermore, Nintendo has absolutely no obligation to support homebrewers.
And I say this as a homebrew developer myself.
I would have thought the hacked PSPs would be more common based on my own experiences. It's a lot more appealing because it doesn't require any extra hardware beyond the little SONY proprietary flash drive it supports normally anyways.
Except for the "LARGE ISO's". IMO there aren't any pirate-worthy games for the PSP; I use it entirely for homebrew. It's a wonderful little machine, if a tad uncomfortable.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
A problem with user scores is that many will just vote 10 or 0 purely on the hype they feel for a game (or even vote for/against it purely out of console fanboyism).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.