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DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court
Hatta writes with a snippet from MaxConsole: "Nintendo has today lost a major court case against the Divineo group in the main court of Paris. Nintendo originally took the group to court over DS flash carts, however the judge today has ruled against Nintendo and suggested that they are purposely locking out developers from their consoles and things should be more like Windows where ANYONE can develop any application if they wish to."
This is a precedent I approve of, and would like to see the trend continue in the consoles market - if we make access to the tools easier for game devs, we'll end up with better games... win-win so far as I can see.
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
When someone holds up Windows as the standard for openness that you should strive for, you have to be really messing up!
Maybe its time that Nintendo opened up the market to game developers such as those currently targeting the iPhone and the Android platforms. Yes they will loose profits, especially when the DS is still working so well, but maybe forcing them to open up will encourage more innovation?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Please excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is a flash cart?
If you've read the initial requirements for getting a Nintendo dev kit, you know this is a Good Thing!
At least the result is right.
A famous Chinese proverb: "I don't care if it is black cat or white cat. If it catch a mouse, it is a good cat."
New Economic Perspectives
You can buy an Apple with OS X and program on it. You can't (couldn't) do that with Nintendo.
Having worked in the game industry, I can attest that this may not be the best solution. The current measures are in place to hoard revenue for Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, but a side benefit of this is usually higher standards of quality in the games (not content, but code...trust me, you'd be surprised). First party requirements for many of these new systems are very stringent and help, in many ways, to protect consumers and the products they buy. As it stands all games published for an Xbox 360, a PlayStation®3, or a Nintendo system must be tested and approved by the companies' own QA team. Does this catch all bugs and potential issues in a game before it hits market, hell no. It does, however, ensure that a lower number of games are released with game-crashing bugs, progression stoppers (bugs that leave a player unable to finish the game no matter what they do), and bugs that can damage the system's internal software. If the format is opened to anyone who can make a flash cart, etc., you will, most likely, begin to see a higher number of games with these show-stopping bugs hitting the market in the rush to lower standards in order to maximize profit.
Does one automatically follow the other, not at all. The chance, however, is a high one. Potential backlash from this could see a return of the "Nintendo Seal" type of licensing for other game companies for games that were actually published through the first party, which would cost more to pass through QA process and in turn raise the price of the game. Opening the field for other companies isn't a bad thing, but people will definitely have to be more careful as to what software they buy for their game consoles. With fewer first party blocks in place I would expect to see a game on the market within six months that at least corrupted system software. I've seen software like that in my job already, and the companies may not be willing to fix things like that on their own.
When the decision will be appealed, everything will change: French judges uses RNGs to decide which one is right (except if you attack the government; in that case, you're always wrong).
Somebody should thank the folks who write these judges' paychecks, thank them for having the ethics to not make them sing somebody else's tune in return for their supper.
They're legal, as are modchips in some other countries, but it doesn't stop Nintendo or anyone else from deploying updates that cripple hardware that legally has modchips or whatever. This law isn't really a solution unless it compels Nintendo or any other console manufacturers from treating customers with modchips or whatever differently.
People who develop WGA cracks get hounded like crazy.
Actually, it is the distribution of the WGA cracks that will get you hounded. If people only developed these cracks for their own use then Microsoft would bother trying to stop them.
Similarly, Nintendo wouldn't care about the DS flash cartridges if people only backed up games to which they physically had access, because that kind of piracy doesn't have a great impact on sales. But when the ROMs are so easy to find on the net, it has got to make them pay attention.
Mind you, DS titles feature very well in the game charts, so they still make a hell of a lot of money. It's hard to feel too sorry for the publishers.
The FSF doesn't sue over GPL violations that relate to the Linux kernel. They don't have standing, as they do not hold any copyrights over that code. Now the GNU toolchain that typically lives on a Linux system - that they can sue over.
Kernel developers, however, do have standing, and hence can sue over copyright infringement.
If this is done against the wishes of the console-maker, than you can claim, that they are "winning" too. However unreasonable their wishes may be, they ought to be respected, period. They created the product, they licensed their use to others (of whom nobody was unduly coerced into agreeing) on certain conditions.
You — or this judge — then coming around and saying, you know, we think, those conditions should be changed, and we are going to force you to change them, is just not how things ought to be done in a free society.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
> If this is done against the wishes of the console-maker, than you can claim...
What in the wide wide world of sports does the 'wishes' of the console maker matter? I have never understood how this came to be. I though we (here in the US at least) had already had this fight. Atari v Activision supposedly settled this matter. Atart couldn't decide who could or could not sell software for their system. Case closed, the Supremes had SPOKEN.
Then the video bust came and a few years later Nintendo introduced the NES and it was like nothing had ever been decided, they blessed your title or you didn't ship, and f**k the Supreme Court if they don't like it. And they got away with it and it has since been thus on the console market and now the handset market, the home video market and if the major players ever thought they could get away with it on the PC as well.
And now on the console (but especially Nintendo fanbois) and with Mac the users have been abused so long they have fscking Stockholm Syndrome or something and not only accept it they LIKE getting hosed by their vendor now.
Clue time. When I BUY a computing device off the shelf I BOUGHT it, I didn't LICENSE it and I couldn't give a good god damn what the vendor of that product WANTS me to do with it. If I want to hack it up and use the individual components in a project I'll do that. If I wanna put NetBSD on it thats exactly what I'll do and screw em if they don't like it.
Democrat delenda est
Consoles make very little money on the hardware. In fact, some of them even take a loss. If you look at the money made through hardware sales, they'd really not be a worthwhile proposition. Way to risky given the meager returns when they succeed compared to other consumer electronics.
Where consoles make their money is games. Every copy of every game sold generates licensing revenue for them, because you need to be licensed to produce games. That's where the cash is. Game sales far outstrip console sales and the license fees they collect are little cost to them.
So, unlicensed development would be a real problem. Previously, it might not have been such a big deal. You could probalby strong arm a lot of retailers in to not carrying unlicensed games. Ok but now, those games could be sold over the Internet. You buy the game online, download it to your flash card and go. It would be rather easy to bypass Nintendo entirely.
Yes I realize people can and do use the carts to copy games but who really cares? All systems suffer from people doing that, back in the SNES days people did it with cart to floppy copiers. Copyright infringement is a fact of life on all platforms, and they do fine even so. Look at the PC, the one that is the easiest. It still has over double the games revenue of the biggest console platform.
The real concern for Nintendo is that they'd lose control on their platform and lose out on license fees.
I can go with that.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
This is a rather dangerous precedent. A completely open system would eliminate any need for licensing which is the console manufacturers bread and butter. Most consoles at least in the first couple years sell at a significantly subsidized loss. The PS3 for instance was broken down by isupply shortly after release and was determined to cost around $800 to manufacture, its alot cheaper now as parts and components have come down in price but still supposedly sells at a small loss. How many console manufacturers are going to want to sustain a product model with no clear way to make a profit? If they changed the model to something more like the computer industry will consumers be able to accept at $1000 gaming device?
Homebrew is great, but for the vast majority its just an excuse for piracy. If homebrew were the be all end all...the gp32 would be the top selling handheld in existence rather than a platform no one outside the geek community has heard of. So far no attempts at a truly open console have been successful. I havent seen people beating down the doors to own a Pandora or Evo yet, and if the past is any indication they will never amount to more than an interesting footnote in gaming history.
If anything the only thing that will happen if this holds up is consoles will move even further towards a physical media-less system. Downloads only will eventually replace disks and cartridges eventually being replaced by streaming services like OnLive as manufacturers and developers try to maintain some semblance of control. In the end the "everything should be open" crowd might win but the result would be that we all loose.
The fact is 99.99% of the people using them are doing so for piracy. Just like anything else, people aren't interested in the little guy's efforts. They're interested in pirating the big name popular stuff. This is why, despite how easy it is to discover new and legal music, most people are downloading shit from Beyonce and Brittany Spears.
Secondly, saying people should have free access to develop on the system, like a PC, ignore the fact that PC gaming is dying. Part of the reason for this is piracy and part of this is because anyone can do anything on it and we receive a glut of half baked titles that just plan suck or won't be any good until they're patched.
I know the pre-Nintendo days of console gaming had some decent games but forgetting the rose tinted glasses, there was a glut of utter shit out there and that sank console gaming (just as it's killing real PC gaming).
Bill Gates was so certain he could beat consoles with PCs but I think MS realised it was working against them to have a platform where any numbnuts can release something and the decided to give in and go down the console route.
It would be nice to have freedom and in an ideal world the PC would be on top. It would have an excellent wide spread system to promote good games from people while allowing people, if they so choose, get onto Google and hunt down the rubbish as well. There were decent sites, even ages ago (like Happy Puppy) that helped find good games but I don't think, like the games, there were too many shit sites.
France has good intentions but this decision was a cock-up.