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Nintendo Upset Over Nokia Game Emulation Video
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo is investigating potential copyright infringement by Nokia during some video demos of their N900 phone, which can be seen emulating Nintendo games. Nintendo spokesman Robert Saunders says: 'We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place.' In the video, Nokia says, 'Most publishers allow individual title usage, provided that the user is in possession of the original title.'"
Actually, the "launch" of the N900 has been shambolic to say the least!
For Nokia (a global company!) to actually sanction a video showing the N900 running software in a "legally-gray" area is typical of the brain-dead decisions made by Nokia "management".
What if Nintendo decided to pursue this legally?
I know that emulation in itself is legal but I imagine Nintendo have much deeper pockets that Nokia and could use a court case to make an example of Nokia.
*IF* Nintendo *had* an actual case they could halt the sale of the phone or demand changes to the software?
At the very least financial compensation?
Using emulation of software as an "official" selling point of the phone is just typical of the wierd decisions made by Nokia and seems a bit desperate.
Nokia a *European* company decide to ship the N900 in the USA first (nothing wrong in itself) but considering thier market share is less than 9% and no carrier willing to subsidise the phone is pretty stupid - will you have to pay for the phone upfront?.
Here in the UK Nokia have a 40% share (and losing it to iPhone) of the market and launching in the UK last!
Also the release of the N900 was supposed to be at the end of October then delayed over three times (now 4th December) - people pre-ordered it in October (expecting it at the end of the October) and just maybe will get the phone this week - it's the first week of December - *if* you pre-ordered early!
*Many* people were pissed-off about this and some of cancelled thier orders.
I think this was an under-handed tactic to delay the consumer's purchasing decision - it's now December, wait a couple more months and some sexy mobile phones will be hitting the market (e.g. Motorola Droid and se X10 Android phones)
Oh and originally the phone would not work with the "3" network in the UK without a "pending" update - a major oversight and....
Portrait mode only worked on the "phone call" application - other apps *only* worked in landscape!
You're incredibly stupid. Property rights mean that Nintendo can do whatever they want with their intellectual property - including lock it in a nuclear bunker so nobody can play it.
You don't think that Nintendo's rights are "fair"? Tough - you don't own Nintendo's property. The same way that I don't own yours.
For example, I'll pretend to be you, you be Nintendo:
Your house is not used while you're not home. Therefore, you must have no objection to me sleeping in your living room while you're not home. So either let me into your house, or shut up about me breaking in while you're not home.
(Also, I'll be around tomorrow to use your computer while you're watching TV.)
So, in short: just as I can't use your property without your permission, you can't use Nintendo's intellectual property without their permission. That's the way it works. Period.
I would gladly pay for any app that would let me run something similar to the Pokemon DS/DSi games on the iPhone. I had high hopes for the DS emulator on the iPhone, but it did not allow one to run any real DS game roms on it, and Apple immediately yanked it off the app store soon after it was released.
Maybe, the authors of the DS emulator would eventually consider putting a non-crippled version of their DS emulator onto the Cydia store. Or better yet, maybe Nintendo might release their games to the iPhone/iTouch platform, since they are no longer interested in making any non-trival (DS, DS Lite, DSi, ...) changes to their existing outdated handheld gaming platform in more than 5 years since the original DS was launched in Nov 2004.
Definitely worth a few bucks to avoid having to carry separate Nintendo game and Apple phone devices for my Pokemon fix.