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Nintendo To Take On Piracy In 3-D
crimeandpunishment writes "Nintendo says when its new handheld game device with 3-D technology comes out, it will have beefed-up anti-piracy measures. For obvious reasons, the company is keeping tight-lipped on the specifics. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata says they're not only concerned about software piracy, but also a growing tolerance for it. He said, 'We fear a kind of thinking is become widespread that paying for software is meaningless.'"
paying for copies of software is meaningless
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Well, if they keep allowing the release of 40 different versions of Imagine Babysitter and Pony Lover DS and whatever else crap takes up 90% of the Nintendo sections in stores, they won't have to worry about piracy, cause no one will want the crap. Push Squenix for a FFVI 3D remake and how about a new Kid Icuras, or New Super Mario Bros. 2 with bigger worlds and the racoon suit from SMB3?
Nintendo Takes On Pirates: IN 3D!
I don't mind paying for games. I mind paying for crappy games.
I might pirate a game to try it for five minutes out of curiosity. (Assuming there's no demo.) But I'll gladly pay for games that are high quality and original.
That being said, I buy only 3-5 games a year. But I'd rather see the industry doing fewer games and putting more effort into them. One great option is downloadable games in episodic format. The recent Tales of Monkey Island for the Wii are a good example. Lessens the risk both for the game developer and myself as a consumer.
.: Max Romantschuk
See this for an explanation why.
Short explanation of the link: Since pirates do not pay, they can download more than they could ever afford. So for a large part of what's pirated you couldn't force payment in any manner, since the money to do so simply doesn't exist.
I know of people who have enormous collections spanning thousands of movies, games, and music CDs, most of which they haven't even tried once. It seems that once somebody gets into that particular mindset they operate on a "Oh, this sounds interesting. *Adds to queue*" basis, and by the time it's done downloading they often don't remember what it was and why they have it.
Those people are largely unaffected by all this. If they can't get a copy of Nintendo's latest game, oh well, they have downloaded 20 others last week. And what they download is all pre-cracked already.
The people who it does affect though are the legitimate customers. I remember getting very angry (which doesn't happen very often to me), when I purchased Neverwinter Nights, and couldn't use it. Turns out the morons printed the CD key in a font that made B/8, O/0 and such indistinguishable. After 15 minutes I finally figured out one that worked, and I still don't know if that's the one I was supposed to use, or just a similar key that happened to work, and that will prevent somebody else from playing. I bet the pirates don't need to put up with that.
So don't buy into this protection nonsense, and support few people who view this sanely.
Heres a fun fact: One of the most massive reasons for many becoming tolerant of it is the (accurate) perception that many have no choice but to pirate some software to begin with because the legal version doesn't work on their platform with the DRM installed...
I also think the president is using piracy as a cop out to explain why there aren't more games being produced for the Wii by third party developers. In reality it has more to do with the fact that the gamecube was low in horsepower for its generation and the Wii is not much of an improvement in that regard... developing for the Wii along with the PS3, Xbox360 + PC adds an entire new development line thats much much further removed from the other 3 than any of those 3 are removed from each other. I mean, the Wii is so much lower in power that you're talking new textures, new models, new physics engine... the works. This is the reason you're not seeing the big titles for it even though technically its market penetration is greater. It also doesn't help that its market penetration is almost entirely the very casual gamer... people that may buy 2-3 games a year at birthday/christmas and not buy any others. Theres outstanding sales for the Wii itself and the mario/wii fit games but the other titles that come to the platform have mostly languished despite the overall console ownership numbers.
Case in point: I own a wii, I have Wii sports and Wii fit, and likely will never buy another game for the thing. I know at least 4 other people that are in the same boat.
If you're tight lipped about the nature of your security, you have lost already. Best security is still one where the procedure itself is well known but it's still secure. If you rely on obscurity, you're prone to lose. Especially if you have no option but to give your "enemy" the secured device.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You lose more to that than you ever did on piracy.
We are all God's parents.
No, its obscene.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Please please don't go all Apple on us Nintendo
I'd tell a UDP joke, but you may not get it. I'd tell a TCP joke, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it.
I stopped pirating PC games when Steam came out. The convenience of ownership outweighed the convenience of piracy.
I have a few pirated games on my DSi XL because I hate lugging cartridges around. I own several DSiware titles because shopping was convenient and I don't need cartridges. Beef up the DS's storage and make games intangible and they'll have sold me.
Dear Nintendo,
I am a paying customer. I do not pirate DS games. But I do transfer my legally-purchased games to my CycloDS Evolution because there's no way in hell I'm going to carry around 40 different cartridges when I can just carry one (and the ability to use cheat codes comes in handy occasionally, too). Recently, however, I was tempted to just start pirating games again. Do you know why? Because your God damn copy protection on the latest Zelda game left it unplayable on the CycloDS, while the cracked version available online was fine!
You ridiculous attempt at stopping piracy didn't turn any pirates into customers, it just made your existing customers start considering piracy! Thankfully, the CycloDS team has since released an update to evade your stupid piracy-detecting-game-breaker. But please, Nintendo, don't fall into a situation where the pirated product is better than the legitimate one. Because if you dick me around to the point where I still have to search through the Internet to get the product I bought to actually work, I might just start skipping the step where I buy the game in the first place!
Oh, and I might as well mention that the only reason I haven't bought your DSi is because the CycloDS won't run on it.
I totally agree with you, Max. I have HUGE library of SNES, N64, and PSX games. My library of GCN and PS2 games is a little smaller, and my library of Wii games is less than 10. I'm tired of shelling out an increasing amount of money for ports of games (Chrono Trigger DS for $40? I bought it because I'm a fanboy, but **** you, too, Square-Enix) and increasingly shitty flagship titles (FFXIII was the my last straw for the Final Fantasy series).
I've grown cynical of anything that any of the new games that the big publishers are putting out because all they've been doing for nearly two software generations, now, is taking a formula that worked 15 years ago and applying it over, and over, and over, and over again. The last game I bought for the DS was Black Sigil from a small startup Canadian company. It was new, and it was awesome. Other games from the big publishers, I just download them. They're either rehashes or they're boring.
But you know, when you think about it, how many of you have actually beaten the games that you've pirated? For me, I play pirated games for an hour, maybe two, and then I'm done. Most people I know do the same thing with their downloaded games. Piracy is less about getting games you're interested in for free and more about basically replacing what game demos used to be. Game demos used to be long, and you could play them for a while for entertainment once, and then you'd either really like the game and buy it, or you'd have had fun wasting some time and never play it again. That's how I see the current trend of piracy. Most people who pirate play the pirated game for a short waste of time and then they're done. Without a DS flash cart, they wouldn't have instead bought the game, they'd have just instead played nothing at all.
The PS3 has done extremely well in the anti-piracy department. As have the newer versions of the PSP.
Of course, one could then make the argument that the PS3 is protected by an expensive media format, and both the PS3 and newer PSPs are protected by a lack of interest to hack them.