Nintendo Battles Makers of the R4 [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

eldavojohn writes "A neat little device called the R4 allows for homebrew on the DS... and as micro SD prices fall, it is becoming easier and easier to put on these cartridges binary dumps of games people don't have the right to play. Which is why Nintendo will see them in court. Note, it's not just the console maker pressing charges, it's also Capcom, Koei, Square Enix, Tecmo, Bandai Namco, and Sega. Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"
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[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Well.

I'm glad I just stocked up on a bunch of cards for my DS!

Not R4s per'se ... but if Nintendo starts throwing down the hammer on the producers of these things, they'll all probably get a bit scarse in the years to come.

[Sudo]

I love my R4.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Between Lissette and I, we have five DSTT cards, one N5, and I just got a GBA Supercard SD Mini in the mail today.

I love all of them.

The first flash card I bought was a 32M BUNG GameBoy (black and white!) card and gigantic parallel linker hardware about 10+ years ago ... BUNG was the first company that Nintendo took to court ... and they suffered a fate I'm sure the R4 people will as well.

It was very much cutting edge due to the fact that it could build a menu of all the GameBoy roms on it and it had it's own lithium battery for games that saved ... it cost me close to $200 with shipping from HK.

Times surely have changed, as the above ALL cost me well under that (probably not even half of that) and do 10x more in terms of features, functionality and ease of use.

[Cryomancer]

legit uses for an R4:
hold games when travelling to not risk getting their collection stolen (fair use SHOULD cover this, right? of course making your own backups is probably illegal to begin with)
media player
comic book/text file reader
homebrew games
emulators (opening up another fair use can of worms)
IRC / other messaging/chat
hell, you could use an R4 has a microSD card holder since microSD is so damn tiny
i'm sure there are many more

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

legit uses for an R4:
hold games when travelling to not risk getting their collection stolen (fair use SHOULD cover this, right? of course making your own backups is probably illegal to begin with)
media player
comic book/text file reader
homebrew games
emulators (opening up another fair use can of worms)
IRC / other messaging/chat
hell, you could use an R4 has a microSD card holder since microSD is so damn tiny
i'm sure there are many more

All true, all legit, unfortunately the open ability for them to run DS roms makes them an easy legal target.

Though, I'd love to see their entire defense hinge on the fact that it's actually just a MicroSD card holder.

[roushimsx]

Well, this pushed me to buy a CycloDS. Already own an EZFlash V that works awesome for when we travel, but I heard that the CycloDS is going to implement some sort of screen capturing capability? Sold!

Previously I registered no$GBA just to be able to snag screenshots of Operation Vietnam. It's neat that I can take my save files from the DS and load them up in the emulator without any problem. Gotta love being able to back up saves, too.

Wish I'd picked up the ram expansion so that I could play Quake II on the go. Silly me didn't want to spring for the EZFlash V Bundle...oh well. Guess I'll go buy the web browser...

Does anything else benefit from the ram expansion?

[c0ldb33r]

legit uses for an R4:
hold games when travelling to not risk getting their collection stolen (fair use SHOULD cover this, right? of course making your own backups is probably illegal to begin with)...

For the information of any Canadians reading this thread, we don't have fair use in Canada and its pretty straightforward that this is copyright infringement. I still keep backups on my R4 of games that I own (I don't use it for piracy - only convenience when travelling), but unfortunately its not legal

[Zing]

Nintendo once again plays whack-a-mole.

There are a dozens of these flash cards pouring out of China. What are they going to accomplish? I can't help but think these sort of things are instigated by the lawyers just to get paid. Hell, there might even be collusion between the lawyers from both sides.

[Nature Boy]

Is this truly a case of fighting piracy, or is it also an attempt to stop homebrew from stealing the market?"

'Homebrew stealing the market' isn't feasible when the mainstream public has to find a 3rd party device not sold in their local Wal*Mart in order to enjoy it's benefits.

There's no way it's anything but an anti-piracy move. Yes lots of us use it 'legitimately' with games we own to save space and blah blah blah, but many, many more use it to play games they don't own and that's all they care about.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

This is totally a matter of anti-piracy.

I'm really fascinated that Nintendo has ignored the issue as long as they did.

I suppose it's the combination of the current amount of overall profit all of their divisions are seeing and fear that if they DO make it an issue that it will draw unwanted attention TO the technology from the general public who might not have previously known about the cards.

I also agree with the whack a mole statement ... even if Nintendo squashes ONE company creating these things, there are literally a dozen or more variations of manufacturers out there creating and exporting these things by the thousands.

I'm very interested to see where it goes ... arguably the PSP managed to survive amidst the piracy that it has openly faced since year one, and even with the thousands who employ these cards in their own DS usage ... I don't think it's coming close to making a dent in Nintendo's wallet. (Not a crippling one anyway.)

[calthaer]

I personally love the Apple ][ emulator I now have running on my DS to play Bard's Tale.

This oppression = teh dumbness and su><0rz.

[TonyTheTiger]

I happen to love my R4. One of the best purchases I ever made for a handheld. And, yeah, it is a game of whack-a-mole when a company starts to go after the #1, then #2, then #3, etc. But it might be more of a scare tactic than anything else. If you manage to kick the crap out of the toughest guy on the block that might be enough of an incentive to get smaller guys to go out of business.

Stopping this gray market stuff is like trying to catch a bunch of snakes. It's a hell of a lot easier to go after the big dragon.

This is totally a matter of anti-piracy.

I'm really fascinated that Nintendo has ignored the issue as long as they did.

I suppose it's the combination of the current amount of overall profit all of their divisions are seeing and fear that if they DO make it an issue that it will draw unwanted attention TO the technology from the general public who might not have previously known about the cards.

That's probably a big part of it. Sony had the same dilemma with the PSP and Nintendo is currently having the same issue with the Wii. The seemingly sneaky way of mandating system updates in new games appears to be the best they can muster. At least then you're guaranteed a good number of people would have updated before realizing that the update killed a potential exploit. Of course the cat and mouse game ensues with the anti-exploit, then the anti-anti-exploit, and so on and so forth.

I'm very interested to see where it goes ... arguably the PSP managed to survive amidst the piracy that it has openly faced since year one, and even with the thousands who employ these cards in their own DS usage ... I don't think it's coming close to making a dent in Nintendo's wallet. (Not a crippling one anyway.)

Nintendo's ace in the hole is that they make a profit on each DS. So even if someone buys a DS with no intention of ever buying anything else for it outside of an R4, Nintendo isn't actually going in the red on that customer. It's not a particularly happy day when that customer isn't consistently supplying the company with revenue (and certainly not a happy day for any third party publishers) but at the very least Nintendo has less to lose than Sony. I'm wondering if maybe Nintendo is doing this because third parties are pressuring for it.

[Cryomancer]

No way, taking out the king just means the other companies now get to fight for the top spot. Won't slow em down at all.

Besides, reading this, it sounds a bit more like they are trying to get them illegal to be sold in Japan. I don't think the governments of Japan and (I assume?) Hong Kong would relaly wanna get together and go over their big plan to shut down one company because Nintendo says so. Most likely, they can get it to be illegal to sell in Japan, but they will continue to still be produced. That's my guess. Perhaps I am wrong. I guess we'll see.

[rkotm]

it'll go on for years like tengen vs nintendo. even that had an undisclosed ending. I love me M3 card. mm. damn microsd spring, through.

[skaar]

Because piracy never kills a console.

Like the Dreamcast.

Woof.

For the record, I've got a few of these and I mainly use them to consolidate games into one cart. Also I seem to have developed a problem actually OPENING games when I buy them. More and more I buy the game and download a copy to play these days.

I don't see the DS dying anytime soon. Poor sega.

[TonyTheTiger]

Combating piracy in principle makes sense. Sometimes it's the methods that turn out to be ass backwards like how a number of PC games require weird online activations which in the end only make people who bought the games legit seek out exploits.

What Nintendo is doing here doesn't necessarily look like an awkward move. Regardless of how some more resourceful people might make use of an R4, it would be pretty naive to think that a vast majority of the cards are not being used for software piracy. To Joe Schmo who hears about a $40 piece of hardware that will allow for some pretty neat stuff, especially if it requires no soldering or permanent modification, he's really only going to care about "So I can play games for free." And, truthfully, I don't blame him. After all, it's usually the #1 selling point. Nobody types out "Play MP3s on your DS!" in bold print.

The problem, in addition to the aforementioned ones in this thread, is that Nintendo has nothing to hold over people's heads like Microsoft does. For that same Joe Schmo, to have something like Xbox Live hanging over his head might be enough of a deterrent. I'm not sure Nintendo could start banning people from the DS's and Wii's online even if they wanted to considering how it's set up. So Nintendo really has no other options. The company as a whole can either keep it's mouth shut and hope it doesn't spread or they can try to sack the quarterback.

[Flack]

If history is any indicator, I have to disagree with some of the responses in this thread. When Nintendo sued Bung I believe they won a $7 million dollar settlement. Not only did it squash Bung but it also single-handedly killed console copiers. A lot of these places operate under the guise that "it's not really illegal" and when a court determines that those things really are illegal, people will close up shop. Once places realize they stand to lose $7 million (or whatever) and aren't covered by operating in a "gray area," they'll shrivel up.

Of course I don't know what Nintendo's worried about, if this thread is any representative of the general population, absolutely nobody uses the R4 for piracy ... (eye roll.)

[roushimsx]

Of course I don't know what Nintendo's worried about, if this thread is any representative of the general population

Oh come on, the Digital Press forums are rarely representative of the general population.

Because piracy never kills a console.

Like the Dreamcast.

Piracy didn't kill the Dreamcast, Sega and Sony killed the Dreamcast.

[TonyTheTiger]

Piracy didn't kill the Dreamcast, Sega and Sony killed the Dreamcast.

But it certainly helped.