I don't know about Korea, but there was some serious piracy going on in Hong Kong when I went there just last week. Supposedly it's all moved to Mainland China, but at Mong Kok there are whole buildings full of pirated software, games, and movies. I got over 80 anime vcd's of tv shows and they almost busted me at SF customs. Their customs x-ray could detect the cd's in my bag.
Yeah but look where Nintendo is today compared to "back in the day". When the NES was the only real system on the market Nintendo used to bully around retailers who were discounting it. Now they're sending out letters asking these retailers to pretty please remove Microsoft's advertising.
As far as Nintendo being profitable, sure the games you see every day are doing really well, but Nintendo's not doing as well in the Japanese market, just like Sega and the Dreamcast. And we all know what happend to them.
If Sega is successful as a software-only company, it might make a lot of sense for Nintendo to follow suit. If all the good games are produced by Nintendo, then they aren't getting that much in royalties from the other games that are produced by other companies. So balance out the massive investments needed to build your own console and the losses incurred by selling that console at a loss against the profits they could make if they just made games (minus of course royalties).
We'll have to see how the GameCube fares overall, but if it's not a huge hit, and Sega does well without having its own console, the GameCube could very well be Nintendo's last console.
I think we can move toward a system where IP is not necessary, such as Mass Market Busking, but we should let people demonstrate that the system works without it before we dump it.
From his website-
Total busking income to date (in US Dollars): $4.60 By product: -unspecified: $4.60
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I don't know about Korea, but there was some serious piracy going on in Hong Kong when I went there just last week. Supposedly it's all moved to Mainland China, but at Mong Kok there are whole buildings full of pirated software, games, and movies. I got over 80 anime vcd's of tv shows and they almost busted me at SF customs. Their customs x-ray could detect the cd's in my bag.
As far as Nintendo being profitable, sure the games you see every day are doing really well, but Nintendo's not doing as well in the Japanese market, just like Sega and the Dreamcast. And we all know what happend to them.
If Sega is successful as a software-only company, it might make a lot of sense for Nintendo to follow suit. If all the good games are produced by Nintendo, then they aren't getting that much in royalties from the other games that are produced by other companies. So balance out the massive investments needed to build your own console and the losses incurred by selling that console at a loss against the profits they could make if they just made games (minus of course royalties).
We'll have to see how the GameCube fares overall, but if it's not a huge hit, and Sega does well without having its own console, the GameCube could very well be Nintendo's last console.
Total busking income to date (in US Dollars): $4.60 By product: -unspecified: $4.60
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