Is the war being lost by DS pirates?

By admin

May

26

2009

The sales of Nintendo DS games were seriously impacted by the popularity of R4 cards and other similar piracy devices according to information released in July last year by MCV.

eBay, Simplygames.com and Amazon were the three major retailers that highlighted as providing a direct channel for consumers to buy these harmful cartridges, although that fact that Nintendo were ‘monitoring the situation’ was all that it could say.

These cards were then removed from the virtual shelves of all three of these websites less that 12 month later and the extent of the ‘aggressive’ fight against the menace of the R4 cartridge was revealed by Nintendo.

For Nintendo, however, this was not the end of their piracy issues as a simple search on Google offers users access to the R4 cartridge through a huge number of alternate websites, and the latest victim a heavy piracy has been GTA: Chinatown Wars.

There are also hundreds of files holding the latest release from Rockstar available on many of the torrent website, with thousands of download having taken place with many of these files.

Even though the latest anti-piracy news is great for the industry there is still a long way to go before piracy on the DS is stamped out altogether.

Nintendo may look at the alternate solution for tackling piracy that Sony have taken by moving to DRM and removing media formats, although many retailers have serious concern regarding consoles becoming digital-only devices.

It is still unknown, however, as to the plans that Sony currently has for PSP’s without UMD as are the plans it has for console and game retailers. The opportunities for High Street retailers in terms of in-store promotions, accessories and points cards, and the kind of margins they can expect are just a few of the current grey areas cause by these plans, although what to expect from the future of video games could be indicated by the failure or success of this new PSP.