90% of North American DS Owners Are Pirates, Claims ELSPA
By Chris on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 2:48 AM PST In Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Nintendo, Portable
There’s an attention grabbing headline for ya. (And I didn’t even need to mention banana peels to do it.) The UK-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association claims that 90% of DS owners in North America play pirated games. This is with the help of R4 chips, which are capable of playing downloaded DS games.
“In America it’s thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s,” said John Hiller, manager of the ELSPA’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit.
Yeah, uh… not so much.
While the R4 chip is extremely easy to buy online, to suggest that 90% of DS owners in North America is absurd. Sure, I have no scientific data to back that up, but I’d be surprised if half that figure even knew what a pirated game was, let alone was willing to make the effort to buy an R4 from a shady looking site and subsequently find websites that host DS games.
It’s also worth noting that R4 chips allow the usage of homebrew games, which is exactly why a number of people I know own them.
But really, does ELSPA see the people playing DSs? Are 12-year-old girls and my friend’s mom playing pirated games on DS? Somehow, I think not.
via Game|Life
I can see moms playing with the R4. My girlfriend wanted a DS and when she got it i recommended R4 to her and set it up for her, then her bro wanted one of them and then her mom!
I know quite a few American DS owners and they all have an R4 or other similar means of playing downloaded ganes.
For the sake of discussion, let´s assume there actually are 90% R4 modded ds in north america - how are the software sales figures ? Does every evil pirate (who maybe likes to play homebrew stuff) really “steal” every game ? Or do people with modchips sometimes do still buy games ?
I have a modchip in my Xbox, i love XBMC and some emulators (yeah i´m evil for not buying a new SNES, and i´m evil too for not using an Xbox360 with LiveArcade and playing the 0,01% of games available on a machine that uses as much energy as a couple of SNES put together (does anybody know how much power a SNES uses ?)). Still i do have quite a few Xbox Originals (about 20), and that is only the rest that survived the upgrade to Xbox360. I bought my first Xbox modded, just in case you were wondering if i bought them before i bought my modchip.
And a lot of my games (80%) are from a canadian videogame exporter (i live in germany), i guess i´m the worst kind of evil since i don´t respect publisher rights to restrict content to a certain area of the world (and stripping the english version out of some games - even if they have spent far more money on the english syncronisation).
I really feel bad, poor, poor videogame industry. Software sales for consoles must be .. hey wait.
I think it is really important to point out, that stealing videogames is bad for your carma. But if they overdo it (and in my opinion there are more cases of them overreacting then being sensible), customers might not buy anything anymore out of protest. I would not buy an audio cd that won´t play in my car radio if it would be as cheap as a dollar - the music industry already has me on an “i record from radio or copy from a friend” trip. I prefer to go to a concert once or twice a month and be absolutly happy about it, at least until they make me sign a document to never hum the melody or get thrown into jail.
Oh BS, I highly doubt that 90% of ALL DS owners pirate DS games! For instance, I know about 20 people myself, who own DS’s, who don’t even know you can purchase an R4, let alone download and play games on it..
You have got to be kidding me. I am pretty into technology and never even heard of the chip. My kids know lots of people with DS’s and none of them have it. I guess we know the entire 10% that has no clue??
Come on? Maybe say 10% or something in that area. 90% of the people out there are not cheats to begin with. AND look at the figures for the game sales. You mean 10% of the people are buying that many copies of each game? The figures do not add up.
This is the first time I have ever heard of this R4 chip.
I own 5 Ds’s and none of them are modded.. I think I just blew the statistics right there.
I have about 10 Ds games (all bought legit) and I’ve been thinking about buying a R4 chip to store all the games i own on a single chip for easier carrying. It’s a pain in the ass to walk around with so many DS cartdridges and the r4 chip would be a godsend.
I can bet you a lot of people have done the same thing, just becuase people own the Chip doesn’t meant they pirate.
well, I believe that the industry is hyper-exagerating again. They claim 90% is using pirated games? How do they get that figure? ( Rhetorical question )
I think this such BS.
But how can one differentiate between Pirated games and original?
yes i think many do pirate but there is more that dont know how or even know about the R4 or other similar devices. I like the CycloDS.
I also didn’t know about this chip. I may be one of the few in my area who actually buys there video games. I don’t own any illegal video games. Besides DS games aren’t that expensive compared to the non-handheld consoles so if you have to pirate it maybe you shouldn’t be playing games in the first place.
Save the pirating for the hundred dollar software like Photoshop and Windows.
Good job - they obviously educated a lot of people that such a chip is in existance.
I have a DS, and I would *NEVER* pirate a game. I believe games should be cheap, or even free, and homebrews are great, but piracy is the wrong way to do so.
This is the first time I’ve heard of this chip.
No interest in it either; I have all the games I want for the DS.
We live in an age were many millions of people get away with stealing (6 million in the UK alone) . And they think nothing of it. They get all their entertainment for free. They download games, music and films at will.