Nintendo, Chinese government hunts down pirates

Undeserved profits? This is about a little bit more than ROMs. (i.e your love of stealing)

I want all my games to be free, dammit! I shouldn't have to pay for anything!

"I still haven't seen any advantages that the Virtual Console offers over a free ROM."


You're right. Hell, I still haven't seen the advantages any game ever made offers over a free ISO download off the internet!





Get a job, you worthless hobo.

A worldwide police state run by Nintendo wouldn't be half bad. All of our emotions would be suppressed save for happiness, we'd wear pure white turtle necks, and we would smile a lot while playing video games (because of the forced sedative, of course). I need not say what system we would be playing.

We'd all be playing Virtual Boys, right?

This reminds me of a story that my psychology professor told us on night. Apparently these several mad people honestly believed they were Jesus and we’re somehow able to talk with each other without letting go of the fantasy. Interesting stuff!

Nah, Ninja's are too hard to manage. Ever heard of Siamese fighting fish?

Same thing

i understood most of it, nice try :)

Oh, the last "HERE" means in China, not Joystiq or somewhere else...thanks gonk ;)

Just curious, is part of this due to government restrictions (slimmed down Xbox 360 and PS3), or is it all the companies themselves not investing the time into it?

the biggest frustration is that...the government NEVER encourage gaming. It's evil, it spoils children, and, it's the child thing. Also people are so getting used to piracy, they're not evern interested in genuine PC games which only cost 69 yuan for a imported copy. But if there's a choice, I think people will be willing to pay.

we've got a quite nice EA agency here, we already have imported FIFA 08, so it's pretty quick. So I think the major point is still the attitude of manufacturers.

Now even Microsoft lower the price of Vista here, the home basic cost 499 yuan (official price), about 70 USD, and home premium cost 899, about 120 USD. Still expensive but at least they tried.

But the habit of using cheaper pirated disks is hard to adjust. It's not a problem of time...just nobody try to twist it.

Of cause, there's also this clause which states that you must be actively protecting your IP in the face of IP infringement, or you could be risking being deemed trying to get more money out of possible settlements, or something similar. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know all these technical terms. :x

I agree with you as well. Pirates are dirt (offense intended to those here who pirate) and shouldn't be given any quarter or pity. Theft is theft, no way to rationalize around it.

If Nintendo really cares that much about piracy, they could cut down on it significantly by not producing their products in China. The main reason any of these games get out on the market in the first place is because they get stolen from the production facilities. They somewhat have the idea, a cursory examination of all my Wii games show Made in the USA on every bit of it (box and manual, disk doesn't show that but I assume it was stamped here as well), but they do have extensive Chinese facilities, particularly the Wii itself.

The first step to cut back on Chinese piracy is to not produce anything you consider a valuable IP there. Since most companies continue to outsource to China, the reality of it is the cost of ongoing piracy in China is cheaper than producing the products in a nation that has low instances of piracy.