Team 17's studio director Martyn Brown has been eyeing up that SD slot as a potential source of piracy. "Adding an SD slot makes a bunch of sense for downloadable content given the way things are going," Brown said. "I just hope they've done something to counter the mass piracy that exists via the R4 on the Lite. It scares me that with an SD card input, that might leave it even wider open that it was on the original device." He brings up a valid point, but we guess we're just going to have to wait until Nintendo reveals more about the security features of the handheld.
Either way, we're sure the homebrew community will have a field day once it releases to Japan in November.
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
10-03-2008 @ 7:30PM
leonus11 said...
(sigh) here's where i get pissed off. EVERYBODY knows that pirating games is illegal and it also encourages others to do the same thus reducing the amount of money the DEVS make, and yet they STILL DO PIRATE GAMES! on top of that people use excuses like "well i don't have the money to pay for it but i still wanna play it" or "well it does have other perposes" but i bet if ONE OF YOU guys were in development of a game you'd also be pretty pissed off if people pirated YOUR games. sheesh! people these days only think about themselves i swear. if you don't have the money to pay for it, then TOUGH COOKIE! don't play it at all! i swear people KNOW that they pirate and yet they cover it up with lame excuses! >:O
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10-03-2008 @ 9:32PM
Bones3D said...
Having been in the software development business throughout the years myself, I'd say you'd have to be a damned fool to enter the industry and somehow not expect your work to be pirated in some form.
Piracy isn't black and white in nature. It's a very fluid grey area ranging from those too cheap to pay for software, to people looking to try your product before buying into it, to digital pack rats who are addicted to archiving warez for the sake of archiving warez with no intention of ever actually using the content.
Aside from that, piracy is an inevitable side effect of the tried and true principles of supply and demand. If you have rampant piracy of your product, you may be doing something your target market doesn't agree with. For example, are you over charging for the product? Was the product over-hyped before release? Is the product too aggressive with its registration or DRM implementations? Or is the product itself so bad that the consumers feel ripped off after buying into it?
Perhaps the problem isn't with those who pirate the works of others, but with the content creators themselves and their warped perception of entitlement. Just because you make something doesn't automatically guarantee that you should profit from it. In the end, any item or concept is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. If that value turns out to be "nothing", maybe that is what you really should be getting for it.
10-04-2008 @ 1:04AM
Bluebreaker said...
"Perhaps the problem isn't with those who pirate the works of others, but with the content creators themselves and their warped perception of entitlement. Just because you make something doesn't automatically guarantee that you should profit from it."
If I bring a product or service out to market that I worked a year or two on I would hope someone would pay me for it's use regardless of what kind of "value" people assign to it. You (and the reviewers) may think it's trash, but as long as I and my team worked on it you don't get a free ride. No warped perception about that.
Stealing is always wrong and against the law.
10-05-2008 @ 10:35AM
Erik Stroud said...
I agree with Bones3d. Piracy will never be stopped, maybe slowed down, but not stopped. It happens in the anime industry, it happens in games, movies, mysic, etc. So, no sense complaining, just be glad you have the fans you have. They will always buy your games.
10-03-2008 @ 8:23PM
erico316 said...
by upgrading im taking about firmware .if the ds had first ware from the beginning there would be no reason what so ever to upgrade to dsi.we would be able to access the store from the ds with a quick and easy firmware. upgrade like sony had done with the psp.second the reason nintendo came out with the dsi was to try to steal the the spot light the psp had been gaining in japan which had out the ds so far this year.
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10-03-2008 @ 9:30PM
SephFinale said...
I hear all this talk about "DS vs. PSP", and it's just another stupid fanboy war. My belief? The DSi is meant to take down the iPhone before Apple can get a grasp on the handheld market.
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10-03-2008 @ 9:35PM
Kefka said...
It would be nice to see DS Fanboy show just a little restraint and scepticism when discussing the DSi - I know it's a bit silly to suggest that given the name of the blog, but seriously - that first paragraph makes you look like the cringe-inducing die hard Ninteet sucking type of fanboys. Kinda makes a lot of the regular fanboys like me want to shuffle away and pretend we don't know you. :P
From another perspective, is the whole DS Fanboy staff (and yes, I'm aware that there isn't really an office) really that super happy about the DSi? I and most people I've talked to have been pretty meh towards it - a pair of super low quality cameras, so far undetailed SD card support and a few other tweaks, at the expense of the GBA slot and some battery life. Shmeh.
Essentially I'm just wondering if it's standard policy to act as if Reggie gives you a handjob with every announcement, no matter how good the announcement actually is.
Anyhow, as for piracy - As others have said, piracy is already simple. If Nintendo take decent measures to protect the SD card slot from non-legit content, I can see it becoming a lot harder. I wouldn't be surprised to see the SD capabilities crippled for the sake of anti-piracy.
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10-03-2008 @ 11:04PM
leonus11 said...
that may be true in a sense, but it still doesn't give anybody the right to pirate, let alone create something they know very well will be used to play backup copies. it clearly states in every booklet on every NDS, PS3, 360, Wii, and PSP that "you do not reserve the right to make backup copies of the said game". so if it says that and people still pirate then what happens? well the said company or DEV team/group will take legal action. as i said before, just because its been going on for a VERY long time does not give anyone the right to pirate the said game, let alone create a device or a program that allows for ISO's, roms or any of the sort to be played in a illegal manner. it matters not if homebrew is legal or if the companies game sucked ass. THEY made the game. THEY took time and money out to make the game. not you or anybody else. making a game, hyping the game, or people feeling as if they got ripped off does not justify the fact that the said person commited an act of crime, no matter how small the crime is. you may have been in the software development business is not an excuse to think that what pirates do can justify a bad development team. its either you pirate or you don't and you pay for it and live with it. there are others who pay for a game only to find out it sucks and they continue to pay for games. pirates do not have the right to get away with free games while others like myself have to pay for the games. no one is better then anyone. point blank. we're all equals so don't go thinking that its ok to pirate a game while we pay for it. pay for it or don't play the game at all. plain and simple. no ifs, ands, or buts about it. no excuses either
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10-03-2008 @ 11:25PM
Jiang Lei said...
Piracy is already absurdly easy. I gave it up when I sat back and realized that the game developers I liked most got less money for making games, it didn't make sense to me. That's the only way to "reconvert" people, technological obstacles to piracy will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS be overcome, and in many cases they make the pirate's 'product' better than the legitimate one.
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10-03-2008 @ 11:26PM
TurboFool said...
I'd agree with the others on the point that piracy's already easy enough, making the SD card no major advantage, but I have one sneaking suspicion: I bet you Nintendo's managed to block out the R4 and its ilk with the DSi. More than any other reason, considering the relatively minor improvements (if you call them that), I see this as an excuse to get people to buy new hardware that's incompatible with the devices Nintendo's been fighting so hard over in the past few months. It's a matter of time before the devices get replaced with compatible ones, but I still won't be surprised if I pick up a DSi and slip in my TopToy and it fails to load.
Either way, though, I'm sure Nintendo's got pretty strong protection build in for the SD slot. Even if it could be used for pirated storage, it would still require some sort of device in the main slot, providing no real advantage over current setups. Heck, if it has the same 2GB limit as the Wii, then the R4s and such would be better since they support SDHC.
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10-04-2008 @ 12:27AM
aj said...
Since they ("they" being "the industry") keep making games and making money, so piracy really can't be that big of a deal.
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10-04-2008 @ 1:16AM
Bluebreaker said...
Nintendo has always been very tight fisted with it's property, ESPECIALLY against pirates. Why do you think they didn't want to go to CD's vs cartridges on it's home systems in the first place.
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10-04-2008 @ 4:49AM
PestName said...
A thing I'm noticing at all the pictures of the DSi is at the left edge you can see something sticking out, I wonder what that is.
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10-04-2008 @ 8:18AM
FreekyWiggle said...
yeh, i saw that. im thinking it might be volume control. the "power" button moved from the side to beneath the D-Pad, so they mightv moved the volume from the bottom.
10-04-2008 @ 9:01AM
magicianoffear said...
Nintendo can count me out for this "update". There is no reason to buy this if you already have a DS lite. I for one want/need the GBA port for backwards compatibility a whole lot more then I want two cameras and MP3 playback (I already have an MP3 player). The downloadable stuff might be cool but overallI just can't justify this one. Also why have they removed all the branding from this version? No double squares on the top not even a Nintendo logo, guess they want casuals to be able to use it in public and not feel like a nerd.
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10-04-2008 @ 9:34AM
Morose said...
as much as I like the DS lite, I gotta say... I'm not impressed by the DSi, and don't plan on buying one. I can see the appeal of an SD slot if you play homebrew games, but there are already ways to do that with the existing hardware.
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10-04-2008 @ 11:33AM
chibi_wings said...
i agree. no matter what Nintendo does, the pirates will find a way around it. The DSi isn't any more pirate friendly then the DS.
As for piracy itself, I stand in the "don't pirate side". and it is not because I think all stealing is wrong, but rather because it's stealing something that is not necessary for life. If you steal because your life depends on it, then it is not morally wrong. However, if you steal because you desire something you cannot afford, then it is wrong. Desire has never been a justification for any action. If it was, everything could be justified (example: "oh I murder that person because I wanted to/ they made me angry"). Yes the murder example is a bit extreme, but it just shows that using desire as an excuse leads to trouble. Hence, if you can't afford a game, don't buy it, a video game won't deprive you of your life, nor are you an desire driven beast that cannot prevent him/herself from being a slave to it's desire, and hence cannot prevent itself from pirating the game. Hence pirating is something that one can be morally accountable towards, and thus, there is no justification for pirating games.
Oh, but you say you need to try it out to tell if you will like it. Read a bunch of reviews, see what a lot of different sources say about the game. That should be more then enough to tell you if you'll like the game. If you do happen to buy a game you hate, trade it in, sure you won't get a refund, but you will get some store credit. I'm sure the majority of us are intelligent enough to avoid horrible games at least 75% of the time. For your children, likewise, research the game, and make sure that it's worth the money, if they happen to want a game that is horrible, try to give them suggestions for another one. If all else fails, buy them the game, and then trade it in. One horrible experience should be enough for them to understand that these types of games aren't worth buying. (I did this with my brother and it works, he is a lot more careful and listens to my advice).
But it basically boils down to what you consider morally acceptable and not. If you think that stealing a game isn't wrong, my rant isn't going to change your mind. I'm just putting it out there for some food for thought. Because I really think that every human being isn't a slave to desire and has enough forethought to understand why it is important to support the game developers, and buy your games.
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10-05-2008 @ 10:32AM
TryToGuess said...
Well even if ones life depended on it, stealing ranges from swiping a millionaires wallet, to taking from someone even more needy than you since in an extreme situation that person is probably too weak to defend his/her meager resources. I'd say stealing to survive is at best a grey area thing. But semantics aside, nice post.
10-04-2008 @ 5:58PM
HotLimit said...
Worried, and rightfully so! The DSi will no doubt have something that makes the old R4s defunct, but they'll make new R4s and probably have some good piracy options with that new SD slot.
Even so, I'd still use the SD slot primarily for storing photos.
HOWEVER, one interesting option with that SD slot would be to store save games. Lets say you play a game for 50 hours on the R4 and you decide, hey I might as well buy the real thing. At that point you don't want to start your game over so you don't bother to buy a real copy. (and that, 'oh just buy it to support the company' stuff is BS, if you buy something, you want to use it)
If you could load saves from the SD slot onto a real cartridge, it would be a really cool addition and at least get some pirates to buy real stuff after they've 'tried' out a game long enough. At any rate, I don't know if that's possible because of real saves being made directly to real cartridges.
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10-05-2008 @ 2:59PM
leonus11 said...
@Erik Stroud
as i said before. it stilll doesn't dismiss the fact that you commited an illegal act. if i sat there and made a game and worked my but off to make it and took time out to make it, then you will get no free ride. if you were in the same position, you'd do the same.
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