Piracy and the Nintendo DS 261
Graffitiwriter writes
"With the average DS game weighing in at about 30-60MB (well within the reach of anyone with a half-decent broadband connection) gamers now have an alarmingly easy route to free games — a fact that Nintendo is all too aware of. Pocket Gamer takes a look at how piracy affects the Nintendo DS console, along with the reasons so many gamers turn to piracy to play their games — including the slew of inferior games, availability of flash carts and industry greed."
Size doesn't matter... (Score:1, Insightful)
Free mod points! (Score:2, Insightful)
flash carts
/standard rant about Slashdot editors
Re:Nitendo DS (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you could actually take a few minutes to look up online what the good games are which aren't. Or just grab a top 10 list from someplace. Just the same concept of using rotten tomatoes to avoid dropping money on bad movies.
I don't think ignorance is really a valid excuse anymore. At least 90% of any media has always been crap.
Missed one (Score:5, Insightful)
Pocket Gamer takes a look at how piracy affects the Nintendo DS console, along with the reasons so many gamers turn to piracy to play their games â" including the slew of inferior games, availability of flash carts and industry greed."
Which sort of leaves out the obvious. People are cheap, and given the choice between having something for money or for free, many opt for free.
'Industry Greed' (Score:1, Insightful)
Ah yes, that old yarn never gets old. Whenever we want to justify our theft we don the Robin Hood costume.
Re:Free mod points! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well it is expected... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus the release of the DSi. Not only will it lock out R4 cards for classic DS games, but Nintendo has added significant upgrades to the protection on DSi games. They've even added region coding to round out the new protection bundle. (Thanks a lump, ya bunch of pirates!)
I doubt these changes will completely eliminate piracy. As you said, there are always those who will make the effort. However, it may stem the rather rampant degree of DS piracy and bring it back down to reasonable levels.
I imagine these protections are particularly important for the DSi since it has downloadable titles that can be saved to an SDCard. If Nintendo failed to encrypt these games like they did with the Wii, everyone could give their friends copies just by swapping SD Cards.
Re:well it is expected... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kind of naive the way you blame pirates for the excesses of the industry. As if any kind of "lock out" can stop people in it for the thrill combined with nearly endless freetime, or an audicence of many people who are willing to pirate because they just want nice things for free.
On the other hand, such lock out can easily prevent honest customers from exercising their rights (first sale), and create difficulties for them that they just won't easily resolve. May even drive some to piracy to avoid all the headaches.
Region codes have nothing to do with piracy, they exist solely to support price discrimination by region and prevent first sale doctrine. There's a reason Australia's otherwise-draconian DMCA-equivalent explicitly allows disabling DRM to eliminate such structures.
My solution to the crap the industry pulls is more on the stop playing games side than the piracy side, but it's pretty easy to see how this goes.
Way to drink the flavor-aid.
Re:Missed one (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. But rather than focusing on the needs, wants, and desires of those who would never give you money and will get it for free no matter what you do, the companies would do better to make better products.
Though I've always wondered how even the most pro-piracy people could claim 'slew of inferior games' is a justification to pirate...if it sucks, wouldn't you /not/ want to waste time playing it?
Re:well it is expected... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a very wide spectrum. I know very few people who modded their Xbox 360s, because if they get caught MSFT disables them from playing online - a pretty severe punishment. Most consoles are similar - they require you to hack hardware (i.e. soldering) with expensive mod chips that void the warranty.
The DS, on the other hand, is ridiculously easy to pirate. A 15 dollar cart from dealextreme, a 10 dollar microsd card, and a 1 hour bit torrent download can get you 50 of the most popular DS games - built into your DS. It's more convenient, far cheaper, and you can play games even before they come out. It doesn't void your warranty and isn't traceable.
I personally bought the DS because of its ability to be hacked, but not for pirating. I run a lot of homebrew on my DS, including a very capable Nintendo emulator, an e-book reader, and a few open source games.
Re:Missed one (Score:5, Insightful)
Small game size does not mean piracy... (Score:3, Insightful)
People pirate X-Box 360 games, PS2 and Dreamcast games, and emulate Game Boy Advance and Super Nintendo games. From a 750kb ROM to a full 4.9 gig ISO file.
Anyone with a 'decent' broadband connection can leave a torrent or PSP program on overnights and grab any game they want relatively easily.
Size has never stopped most people from pirating games before who want to pirate.
People segmented PC games into .rar/.zip files and shared them on IRC or USENET well over a decade ago. Those games were ten times the size of a single DS game and that was then.
I purchased Golden Sun I and II for my Game Boy Advance when they came out but only opened them for the manual, the games are sitting in a box never used. I downloaded the ROMS that same week and played them off of an emulator. Full screen, my own controller, save states, etc.
Yes piracy sucks for game companies but for keeping old cartridge games alive I use ROMS always. And I own the original game at least.
Re:well it is expected... (Score:5, Insightful)
True. But morality and legality never have been identical and never will be. One more case study of how the best we can only hope for is a crude approximation.
But then again, pretty much everybody is committing hundreds of "crimes" per day, the justice is all in the enforcement.
There's nothing immoral with ROM dumping a game YOU own and playing it on your computer, no matter what industry propaganda may claim otherwise.
Re:DSi's effect on homebrew (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of people who use flash carts use it for piracy, plain and simple. Trying to deny this is just naÃve. They may also try a homebrew app or two, but they would never have bought the thing if it wasn't for piracy.
Furhtermore, Nintendo has absolutely no obligation to support homebrewers.
And I say this as a homebrew developer myself.
Re:Size doesn't matter... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for the "LARGE ISO's". IMO there aren't any pirate-worthy games for the PSP; I use it entirely for homebrew. It's a wonderful little machine, if a tad uncomfortable.
Re:well it is expected... (Score:2, Insightful)
That all depends on whether you believe all game developers either never dump their own bought games or are hypocritical pirates. We could also pretend that things like the Wii Virtual Console aren't a big financial hit, when certainly piracy is a significantly cheaper (although a more complex) option.
Perhaps the answer is more along the times of, if it's trivial enough, even average Joe will do it. But, average Joe doesn't buy many games anyways. And as trivial as DS flashcarts are to use, it's not like you can buy them at the corner stop or that there's zero risk. The Wii Virtual Console succeeds because it's easy enough. The Nintendo DS succeeds inspite of piracy because honest people already pretty well put all their money their entertainment money into the same entertainment, regardless of their piracy of that entertainment.
Now, perhaps that removes the motivation to work harder, find a second job, etc to feed one's entertainment addiction. But, given copyright is a governmental monopoly intended to better the public at large, and it seems very clear that copyright holders can thrive even with extensive piracy (although probably not with 30%+ population piracy), I'm inclined to believe that work should be done to decriminalize/de-law-suitize many current practices of the populace at large since punishment would be arbitrary and non-constructive.
Re:Nitendo DS (Score:2, Insightful)
A problem with user scores is that many will just vote 10 or 0 purely on the hype they feel for a game (or even vote for/against it purely out of console fanboyism).