Nintendo convinces eBay and Amazon to ban DS flashcarts

Dang it, replied wrong the first time.

That's not a good price, a quick google search can find you a DSTT for $6 with free shipping.

slightly different, as DVD is a standard format. R4 is operating off of a proprietary format, so its much easier to target legally

You can get an R4 card with a 2gb micro SD card for $35 on Craigslist. Really convenient and cheap! cut out the middle man ebay and amazon and help your local seller.

@madhat

I bought it in early 2008 or late 2007. I dont remember.

R4DS are all clones these days and you can get better carts like Acekard for $12 shipped.

I've never bought a flash card on ebay or amazon. Thanks for not hindering me at all, Nintendo.

Actually your deal wasn't so good.

I got an Acekard 2.1 + 2GB microSD + USB Card reader + shipping.... all for $23.

Got it from stuffsfromkids.com

I don't know if they still have this offer. It's been working amazingly the past 2 months...

Like I said, got it a long time ago.

Exactly what rights do users have to proprietary formats again?

Downloading games you did not pay for is not a right, it is theft. You are depriving the person/persons who made the game of the compensation for their time and effort. God damn it! I hate this generation!

The R4 is not just for piracy. You can run fan made homebrew games with a R4. That's the rights that are being offended here. Let's keep it real though. People buy it for piracy not homebrew.

Actually, the "person/persons who made the game" receive their "compensation for their time and effort" usually before the game is ever released, through the magic of a paycheck. But far be it from me to wipe the foam from someone's twitching lips.

Piracy ain't theft. When you steal, you steal the object itself. Piracy is making a copy.

And then again, developers have a fixed salary. Whether the game sells a million copies or just ten thousand, the amount they receive is the same. Sakurai (Brawl fame) himself said so in an interview.

Yeah, they get paychecks. Then the studio can't afford to develop more games, though, because it's not making money off the ones it has out, and then, WHOOPS, said developers and programmers are on their asses without jobs.

And companies should be rewarded for having poor business models why, again?

You're an asshole, you know that?

THIS is exactly why I don't get all the press surrounding this issue. I've known about these for years (and their predecessors for the GBA), never bought one, and if I had it would've been for homebrew not for piracy. You guys bring attention to it here at Joystiq, and you've now given anyone who likes to pirate games a way to pirate DS games, a system that many people wouldn't think you COULD play pirated games on.

... ... Thhhhhhhhhhhhffffffffffffftttttttttt !!! ... ....

The sound of sarcasm flying over your head.

LOL

Sarcasm doesn't work on the internet without a tag or italics or something. Basically something to compensate for the lack of being able to detect sarcasm in a persons voice, like in real life.

@ cloud858rk

"Sarcasm doesn't work on the internet without a tag or italics or something. Basically something to compensate for the lack of being able to detect sarcasm in a persons voice, like in real life."

If we use your statement as a marker for the Norm. Sarcasm or any form of emotion doesn't work when its written or printed say in a book. It completely inhuman to think that humans have the ability to discern written dialog and only truly understand it in vocal form.

lol, yeah hardcore gamers...

They kept them alive during the N64 but abandoned Nintendo during the Gamecube era, pretty much. If Nintendo truly cared about "hardcore" gamers, I'd question their judgment. Hardcore gamers were never part of their demographic unless you consider the early years of gamers to be hardcore.

Nintendo has always made money off families. Not angsty individuals who have to call their hobby "hardcore".

LMAO @ massmass' reply.

THE best rebuttle against TEH HARDC0REZ!11! I've read yet!

"Nintendo has more money than god and they're worried about this little piece of plastic? They're only hurting themselves by turning off the Homebrew community and hardcore gamers." No, they actually care about OTHER DEVELOPERS.

Yeah, it seems like eBay had been axing R4 auctions for a while already.

And monitors! Can't pirate if you can't see.

@atastysammich

Go ahead and ban me monitor. Seein aint never stopped me from wearin an eyepatch and sailin the four seas like a real pirate ought!

What do you mean there's more than four seas? Arggh... guess only havin one eye kinda made me miss the other half of the map. Yargh. Well 'ey, least now I gots another three seas to sail!

They are all just buying time until they can stream all software to us and nobody actually owns a damn thing.

I think you need to put down the bong.

You NEVER put down the bong.

Why would people wait until the recession is over? They're more likely to do it now than ever before. You can get a flashcart and a MicroSD card for the same price or less than one DS game.

Agreed, I'm just saying for the sake of the game developers. It's the same with movies and music just because it's so much cheaper, I understand. But they don't produce those things to give them away.

The only real problem I have with it as that so many companies are laying off so many people, and I understand that a lot of people that pirate games probably wouldn't buy them regardless, so they just wouldn't play the game, because those games are so damn expensive.

Maybe if they lowered the cost of games? You know... 35 dollars for a DS game. and 50 - 60 for the others is pretty steep if you think about it. With the hardware being so expensive cheaper games would be nice. Maybe they'd get more sales then, and piracy would slow down a bit?

I don't know! I just know I don't want the video game industry to start falling apart. I love my games

Maybe when games arent $90, yes, NINETY OR MORE bucks where i live..

Ugh.. that's horrible

I completely understand pirating then... that's freaking obnoxious

The hardware here is about $385 american dollars! Only one Nintendo DS costs this much.. It really is an absurd, to buy for a reasonable price only the second handed ones or used ones, that costs much as a new one in any other place in the world (a used costs about $205 american, and i´m talking about the DS Lite). Being a gamer in a country where the taxes rules, is outrageous =/ The people works 145 days per year ONLY to pay taxes, the rest of the year is for themselves..

"those carts can be used for homebrew, which is completely legal and doesn't hurt their business in anyway."

OK, what are use basing this on? While the act of a developer at home making a game with his own Intellectual property is not illegal. Circumnavigating the proprietary format and not being a license SDK(Software Development Kit) holder for Nintendo thus hacking into the DS is. They wont prosecute for the homebrew apps out there but the developers that have the license for the SDK would have to sign alot of documents. Which not being a lawyer I would have to assume would roughly translate into:
if(SDK reviled to public)
{
Nads + saladshooter = YOU;
}
The only way that homebrew would be legal on the NDS is if Nintendo made a gateway/public SDK ala XNA for 360. Which on a side note, THEY FRAGGIN NEED TO DO, the ndsi was the perfect place for that.

"What are the R4 producers to do now?"

Well they made the product solely to profit, the ds cartridge not being a open format and if it was a true game they would need to pay nintendo a license fee, they would also have to buy the cartridges from nintendo to "print" x copies of the game for retail. But now these "R4 producers" are not licensed and make their own cartridges which is patented product. They now allow millions to download illegally pirated games which cause published to lose money and no longer fund developers to make games for that market. (see PSP)

"This is really akin to the MPAA getting Amazon to stop selling blank CDs because they can be used to store pirated music. "

This doesnt really add anything to the argument because this statement is akin to Kitchen knives being used for cooking and preparing food. But because wives can kill there cheating husband with them,they shouldn't be sold on amazon.

Yes, copy protections that will be cracked almost immediately after the pirates get their hands on it.