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Nintendo Businesses Government Entertainment Games Politics

Nintendo Supports US's Anti-Piracy China Measure 45

Posted by Zonk from the one-too-many-phoney-dses dept.
Earlier today we discussed the China/US Piracy clash, and it's worth noting that yesterday Nintendo came out in strong support of the US's position. Gamasutra reports that an estimated 7.7 million counterfeit gaming products have been seized in the last four years of piracy raids. "According to Nintendo, China has continued to be the leading production site and exporter for counterfeit Nintendo products, and has the largest domestic consumption, and in 2006 alone the company estimates that the overall industry lost $762 million due to piracy. Commented Nintendo in a statement: 'Despite the millions of counterfeit Nintendo products seized from retailers and manufacturing plants in China through the years, there has only been one criminal prosecution. Numerous factories, where tens of thousands of counterfeit Nintendo products were seized, escaped with only trivial fines or no penalty at all.'"
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Nintendo Supports US's Anti-Piracy China Measure More

Nintendo Supports US's Anti-Piracy China Measure

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  • Real use of piracy (Score:3, Funny)

    by torqer ( 538711 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @03:36PM (#18693697)
    If only the Chinese would pirate (clone) the Nintendo Wii hardware... so I could actually get one.
    • Lemme see if I can remember all this correctly -

      First off they have Wii's here freely available, no shortages as much as I think just a lack of customers. That is two fold: Nintendo obviosuly isnt advertising in China and the local shops arent advertising that they arebreaking a number of laws. Hell, it should be Microsoft complaining - the xbox 360 was hacked within weeks out here and a number of my friends now own one - and at $1.25 a game its not a bad deal at all.

      I just got paid and was planning on pick
      • Well this is interesting. Last I remembered US was offending Japan for "reselling" used games, there was a slashdot article on this awhile back. I think Japan is too aggressive to begin with. I also heard once that their "greatest hits" aren't really that much cheaper than the original price.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by rts008 ( 812749 )
      Timely article....I was just asking myself where I wanted to go on vacation!

      Chinese pirates RULE!
  • Given that Nintendo can't keep the genuine articles in stores, you'd think they'd be grateful to the Chinese for stepping up to meet demand. :-)

    And no, I'm not just talking about the Wii. Nintendo has had terrible trouble getting hardware and software into the retail channel for years. As a GameCube owner, shopping for new games was always an exercise in frustration.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @03:40PM (#18693761)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:China does need to do more (Score:5, Interesting)

      by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @04:08PM (#18694085)
      but the fact is, if China never gets its act together on IP, it'll never be attractive for more than grunt work R&D
      And if China only sold to China, there would still be a ton o' money to be made, so your particular diatribe not only years behind reality, it is DOA, sorry.

      Want facts? No problem...
      • Intel just broke ground on the newest fab center in seven years, worldwide. Location: China.
      • IBM just moved their world headquarters for one specific division...from: USA - to: China The largest domestic Chinese telecom saw stock prices rise 13% yesterday. 15 R&D centers inside China and another 10 outside...o u t s i d e - with more on the way.
      • The 'grunt' work is already being moved offshore, to Vietnam, as one example...soon to North Korea. Foreign companies that want to put up major factories must also build hefty R & D centers, just in case the factory folds. The R & D centers will stay around and work as a foundation to keep the domestic infrastructure intact for the long term. So, every time you hear about some American or European company opening another factory in China, remember that such news also means another research center that isn't being built in the US or EU, UK, etc.
      Only when China gets bitten in a fair play on problems with domestic IP will things MAYBE turn around. I suspect they will never return to days of yore, actually, and we can all look forward to new business models, new definitions of IP, etc. that simply don't exist now. Your comments represent the type of staid, off-the-shelf thinking that is not related to what is really going on, sorry. It will take some time before new thinking replaces old and by then, the Chinese will have become comfortable in their new role on the world stage.

      A slightly funny situation is currently taking place over the 2008 Olympics and the Chinese govt. finding themselves being tagged by fake products such as keyrings, stuffed toys of the 'official' mascots, etc. Only authorized retail outlets are allowed to pedal these products, but of course, you can buy fakes on any street corner...
  • Many products used in homebrew on the DS are manufactured in China, even when designed by western teams. I wonder, does Nintendo consider such flash carts and loaders to be "counterfeit" products?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ProppaT ( 557551 )

      I think a large part of what Nintendo is talking about are bootleg games. I buy a lot of second hand games from flea markets and when I'm looking at GBA and DS games, I always look carefully at the label on the game. A lot of the games at the flea market are clearly counterfeit. I've also seen a resurgence of retro controllers (SNES in particular) that are "new in the box" pop up at a lot of flea markets and small game stores. I'm fairly sure that these are knock offs as well. I doubt they've been sitt
  • Perhaps I'm just daydreaming, but it seems to me that if the market wants what these 'pirates' are producing, wouldn't the companies being infringed upon be better off just buying them up? They could sell more, at a cheaper price and still make a huge profit. I'm not saying I'm for making the big, mean corporations bigger and meaner, but if they can't keep up with demand or sell for what people are willing to pay, then nuts to them. The products can't cost all that much to create or the 'pirates' wouldn'
    • The cost to make isn't in the physical media. If I measured cost to make the linux kernel only with physical CD media, I would then say that the kernel is worth less than a a single US dollar. All the thousands and thousands of man hours worked to get the kernel to it's kernel state are completely ignored under your model, because you assume that the cost to deliver the physical media is where the value is, when that actually is the least costly and least profitable part of the business.

      It's the equivalen

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
        > I would then say that the kernel is worth less than a single US dollar.

        that's overpriced

    • The products can't cost all that much to create or the 'pirates' wouldn't bother making it and selling it for 1/4 or less of it's value, unless there was a nice fat profit involved.

      Of course there's plenty of profit involved. They don't have to have to pay for big teams of marketing/executives/legal staff. Not to mention programmers/engineers/artists. All they need is 1 or 2 clever guys who can reverse engineer a cart, or crack a little code. Then its just the cost of pressing/burning CDs, or packaging

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )
      Daydreaming is exactly what you are doing. Think it through.

      Company A R&Ds a product through conception, marketing, design, and release. Suppose the unit cost to manufacture and distribute is $14/unit. Now if R&D etc costs 1,000,000 and you want to pay that back in two years, and you project sales at 50,000 per year. Then you'll need to charge $20 to cover that cost, plus a modest profit margin of say 15%. Your price would then be $39.99.

      Company B, buys the product and replicates it, skipping all th
  • A few years back there was a plug and play thing with NES games (mario, contra, duck hunt to name a few) in a cheap looking packaging without any nintendo branding being sold on boardwalks and mall Kiosks in the states. That has to be the most blatant infringment I've ever seen.
  • So...when I saw that Nintendo quote, the wording ("Commented Nintendo in a statement") really reminded me of Yoda. So I took the entire quote and put it through a Text-to-Yoda website, and got this...

    Of counterfeit Nintendo products seized from retailers and manufacturing plants in China through the years despite the millions, only been one criminal prosecution, there has. Numerous factories, seized, where tens of thousands of counterfeit Nintendo products were, with only trivial fines or no penalty at

  • Annoyed (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jrieth50 ( 846378 )
    I'm just annoyed that everyone quoting piracy never says how many items they estimate on the black market, but always say - we lose $XXX BILLION DOLLARS every year,' etc... That is a red herring. You are first assuming that legitimate paying customers are reaching the market and choosing the cheap 3rd party knock off over the official product. People who pirate to pirate generally do not intend to buy - therefore reducing that figure by 1/2 to 3/4 as I think its safe to say half or more would not buy the of

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