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Games Entertainment Hardware

Nintendo Creates Piracy-Proof Console For China 47

Posted by simoniker from the go-retro-to-go-forward dept.
Thanks to Bloomberg for their story discussing Nintendo's announcement of a new console for China, apparently based on N64 technology. According to the article, "Nintendo will sell the console, called the 'iQue player' for 498 yuan ($60)... To prevent copying... users will download software onto a 64-megabyte flash-memory card at a local [retail] store, paying 48 yuan for each title" - a little like the Lawson partnership Nintendo had in Japan? The piece goes on to explain: "Nintendo will sell Chinese-language versions of software originally designed for the company's older-generation game players such as Nintendo 64."
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Nintendo Creates Piracy-Proof Console For China More

Nintendo Creates Piracy-Proof Console For China

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  • Piracy-Proof (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Selfbain ( 624722 )
    I love it when they claim something is piracy-proof.

    I give it a week.

    • Re:Piracy-Proof (Score:2, Funny)

      by n0wak ( 631202 )
      I hope you didn't give the GameCube "a week". With analysis like that, you'd be a great partner for poker night.
      • Hmm, I could've sworn that I had read about pirated copies being made using a DVD writer of some kind. Ah well whatever, I was thinking of the claims that DVD's were piracy-proof.
        • Gamecube games have not been copied. People have been able to get the data off the disks, which is a totally different thing.
    • Sure, like Nintendo's current console, Gamecube. Yep, that was hacked in about five days. It's so easy to pirate games and run them on your Gamecube...so easy that I've already done it twice today!</sarcasm>

    • Re:Piracy-Proof (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, kind of like how it's currently not possible to burn GameCube disc images, which are only now surfacing because of an exploit in a third-party developed game (from Sega, no less).

      A week my ass. The GameCube is more than halfway down its lifespan, with Nintendo already prepping its console successor, and no pirates have been able to crack the Cube. Nintendo knows what they are doing.

      And no, nothing is piracy-proof, but the Cube has proven that you only have to be piracy-proof long enough for it to
      • Great post, AC no less. Piracy protection is not about perma protection, its about the here and now. As you said GC has been unpirated for how long now? Long enough. If it were pirated literally a week after release they wouldn't have made nearly as much money as they have. Despite the fact that GC isn't the most popular of the consoles, it's still made a crapload of money in retrospect.

        Putting this in perspective, I'm an emu enthusiast and a rabid pirate. I would love to see a GC emulator along with a sol
      • And no, nothing is piracy-proof...

        I found a console that's 100% completely, absolutely, and permanently piracy proof! It's called the Phantom! It's piracy proof because it doesn't, and never will exist! Try to crack THAT protection...
    • NOTHING is piracy proof. I mean hell, they figured the cartridge systems would be, and then someone came up with a disk based device that plugged into the cartridge slot. VOILA! Instant free games.

      I mean hell, Nintendo chose a proprietary format for Gamecube games, and those have been cracked (though as of the moment, they can't be played, but they've been copied.)
  • It's too bad this is only coming out in China. I've thought that something like this would have serious potential for a while. I would gladly pay $50 for even a Super Nintendo and $5 each for some of the better games for it. I realize you can buy a system on eBay and elswhere for cheaper than that, but the good games aren't there. If this were released on a wider scale, I'll bet it could make some good money, especially if it had the best of N64 + SNES + NES. So many great games for so little!

    • It's still thinking (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If this were released on a wider scale, I'll bet it could make some good money, especially if it had the best of N64 + SNES + NES. So many great games for so little!

      If you want to play SNES+SNES+Genesis+SMS etc games:

      1. Buy a used Dreamcast for $40 or so.
      2. www.dcemulation.com [dcemulation.com].
      3. Got a good NNTP client?
      4. Burn
      5. Play
      6. Support the companies (the ones that still exist, at least) by buying their current products (since the morons aren't set up to receive payment for electronic versions of discontinued pr
    • Nintendo is managing to do quite well, oddly enough, with its $30 Game Boy games that are direct ports of old Mario (NES/SNES) games. I've already bought most of those games twice...

      There's also the e-reader, a Game Boy gadget that reads packs of cards you can buy for about $5 that have old NES games (like Donkey Kong Jr. or Tennis) on them.

      Also WarioWare is a fairly recent GBA game that involves playing hundreds of little games. So Nintendo is following similar strategies in many places.

  • If the problem with piracy is rampant, as Nintendo thinks it is, why would people buy a console that's designed around piracy prevention? Since software piracy is legal in China, why not buy a PS2 and burn games for a couple cents each?

    • Re:Dumb Idea? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @09:05PM (#7050821) Journal
      Because they won't sell anything else. If you want to play a Nintendo title, then you're going to BUY it.

      I agree that there are other consoles to switch to, but that doesn't realy mean it'll effect Nintendo's sales.

      You see, Nintendo is to Sony as kumquats are to watermelons. Just because watermelons are larger doesn't mean everyone is going to stop buying kumquats...

      ...unfortunately I've lost track of the point I was trying to make, but I hope you'll agree that both kumquats and watermelons have their seasons, and that either or both make a fine addition to any table. </DrScience>
      =Smidge=

    • In Asia piracy is very rampant. In some countries, the piracy rate is close to 100%. It's much harder to find a legit copy than a pirated one.
    • Because entry price is absolutely critical in China. The PS2 is mind-blowingly expensive to the rural Chinese. They're in that mental space you were in back in the 80s where you were willing to buy an NES and play Super Mario three hundred times, because it was a video game, god damn it, and you'd never had one.
    • why not buy a PS2 and burn games for a couple cents each?

      Because they won't be translated into Chinese. I'm sure Sony doesn't like ignoring such a large market but since they make a loss on the console it is very unattractive market to spend money on given that profits come from selling games (which you pointed out will only be pirated).

      It looks like Nintendo is willing to go to the effort of translation since they are confident that they have eliminated the piracy problem (whether the whole unpiratable
  • So its the Famicom Disk System Mk 2?

    Interesting... Of course they won't get the really good games, cause the biggies like Ogre Battle 64 are kinda on the large size
    • Yes they will. The largest size carts available for the N64 were 64MB (such as Resident Evil 2), the same size as the flash memory used in the iQue player. Ogre Battle 64 itself was indeed one of the larger carts, though not 64MB; however, I would be more worried about the chip technology, because the cartridge included a special chip for decompressing sprites, which a flash card can't replicate.

  • Umm, names been taken (Score:2, Interesting)

    by redune45 ( 194113 )
    Gamin has had a line of iQue GPS enabled PDAs for a little while now, check out the link [garmin.com]
  • ...GameCube usage in China drops 400%

    • 400% thats quite a bit, maybe they will start giving them away for free. I would like that cause I always like new toys and I damn sure wouldn't buy one. Also if they do can you tell me how I can burn those mini disc games that the game cube uses.

  • stop piracy how? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by evilWurst ( 96042 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @11:36PM (#7051792) Journal
    I'm not seeing how writing to flash cards would stop piracy. If they're already mass producing copied hardware and software, what's to stop them from reverse engineering the custom flash card writer? What's to stop the pirates from running a business selling the service of writing games to your card for 50 cents each?

    Hell, this might make it *easier* to pirate by making it all digital. Customer supplies all the equipment, pirate vendor downloads all the games, and the flash writer is probably cheaper than a cd burner and stockpile of CDs, too. They wouldn't need to haul a cart full of CDs around, just a laptop.
    • They will probably encrypt the stuff.

      Nobody has found the key to the Xbox yet. If people are going to be able to copy and run the software, it will be via some hack or weakness in the software/hardware.

      I'd imagine each card to have a special hard-coded ID that would be imprinted on the game image when it's written to the thing. All encrypted on the fly by the store's machine.
  • I can't find anything on this console except for the foggy details we see here. Anyone?
  • it's not been cracked yet, right?

    • Actually... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sits ( 117492 )
      The custom DVD format the Gamecube uses has been broken and in a manner Nintendo is unlikely to be able to block. Take a look at the fledling GC home brew scene on Dexrose [dextrose.com].
    • Well, the main reason is price-point. N64 games are smaller and fit on encrypted flashcards easier.

      And as for the other posts with mine, every "crack" of a console has to work BOTH ways. Meaning a way to emulate it on something else and a way to play simple media on the actual device.

      When a news release for a disc browser is big, you know any sort of EITHER-WAY piracy is a ways off.

      On top of that all, you'd need the Panasonic/Matsushita Q($500), which is the only Cube device that takes DVD media directly

  • I find it hard to believe.... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .... any statement of a console being secure against piracy when the words 'download' & 'flash cartridge' are in the same article.

    It'll just take time.
  • The reason why ordinary people (not devoted hackers that can crack it, download it, burn it themselves mind you) buy pirated instead of original software is because is substantially cheaper. However they know this comes with a degrade in quality (no manual, no internet key, no license, etc) what if a company was able to sell their original software at almost the same price than pirated somehow? per example what about if Nintendos next console (or handheld) came with dvd-rws (or other kind of recording devic
  • It's current US retail is $99 (not that much more). It's had the greatest success of piracy protection of any console in the last decade and they're got warehouses full of the damn things. Surely the production costs of the actual disks can't be that high (and if you're tapping the chinese market you could easily justify a fab plant for them there).

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