Up to 90 percent of North American Nintendo DS owners are believed to be using the infamous R4 chip to play pirated games, according to the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association.
John Hillier, manager of ELSPA's Intellectual Property Crime Unit, told The Sunday Post that the R4 chip, which bypasses the DS's security system allowing users to play pirated games illegally downloaded from the internet, is hampering Nintendo's software sales and "risking the future of the games industry" by putting legitimate retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers at risk.
"The implications are massive. In America it's thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s.
"Crucially, the R4 has shifted the balance of power in the piracy industry to the consumer - and that is hugely worrying. Takings from Nintendo DS games in the US are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact [in the UK]. That's why we intend to stop trade in these chips wherever we can."
Use of the chip is not only rife in the US. As previously reported, the R4 has already become one of the most sought after items amongst Japanese consumers in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district.
Nintendo says it is closely monitoring the situation.
What absoute b******s. 90%? Where the hell did they get that figure from? I doubt 90% of DS owners know that the R4 exists, let alone how to use it and how to get ROMs.
Yes, but did you know that exactly 94.36482362% of the statistics that ELSPA produces are based on a mixture of ridiculous assumptions, complete fabrications, and whopping exaggerations?
and what are they gonna do. unless the r4 chip is made illegal they're always gonna have this problem. they've had it forever. i remember seeing hookey gameboy cartridges when on holiday as a wee boy and wasn't some chinese company releasing a vii console recently. as far as i can see the only company trying to do something is ms by stopping people with chipped xbox's from connecting to live and that ain't much of a deterent for some people.
That's utterly ridiculous. No one in the US has even heard of this R4 chip. Whoever gave that stat was (a) lying to push and agenda (b) abusing statistics with abnormally sadistic intent or (c) still lying, but owns stock in whoever makes the R4. What rubbish.
Thats got to be b******s. Although I do agree DS games are a tad overpriced, Ł20 a pop sounds about right, they can't cost anywhere near what a current gen game costs and they must sell by the bucketload considering how in demand the DS is.
(My mate got Ł109 for his from CEX before xmas, he bought it from Ł90 or whatever in the same shop a couple of months before!)
That is figure is 100% bogus, thought up to garner headlines and sow panic about software piracy on consoles. I'd have a hard time swallowing 9% of systems having the chip mod. Absolutely ludicrous.
And since when was the DS having trouble selling anything?
Please be sure you read the original 'Sunday Post" article carefully. http://www.dcthomson.co.uk/MAGS/POST/news2.htm It never mentions 'North America', it mentions America, which is equivalent to saying Eur-Asian.
Its really refuring to those South and Central American countries where not only are these systems rare, but piracy of every form of media is rampant.
Does anyone think that using a pirated game is worse than going into a shop and stealing a game, its the same thing but piracy seems to be more accepted even by me and perhaps it is an acceptable way for poor people to play games I mean who can deny poor people the right to media anyway, I say good on them to the poor people but shame on you if your loaded you misers!
What absoute b******s. 90%? Where the hell did they get that figure from? I doubt 90% of DS owners know that the R4 exists, let alone how to use it and how to get ROMs.
Indeed.
Mind you, I've always thought those old people who buy Ds's looked a little... sinister.
Playing kiddies computer games to look interesting and cool, eh? Bah, secretly they're running pirated game cartels! Next thing you know, it'll be paedophilia references!
¬_¬
90%, my bottom.
We sure we haven't made a mistake here? Maybe missed the decimal point to make it 9.0%? Or perhaps got the numbers the wrong way round? 0.9%? A more feasible figure to me than 90%
Anyway, I've heard almost nowt about this R4 (reminds me of a Sinclair C5, for some reason); thanks for generating enough interest to make me go find out what it is and what it can do.
The biggest b******s they're spouting is what the R4 does. It's just an adapter to let you run code from a MicroSD card instead of a DS card. That code could be any code. There's a lot of amazing homebrew that you couldn't run without this type of thing such as Colors (an amazing drawing program with pressure sensitivity).
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
