All the dreadful "me too" games 3rd parties are releasing for the DS, the world does not need shedloads of Nintendogs clones, chocking up the channels and retail with rubbish and disapointing customers by selling them shlock they regret ever shelling out for does the industry more harm than any hardware such as this.

This also serves as a good way to home brew games and try them out on a real DS. Pity it's the mal-use of the item that will probably see it made illegal and then people who only wanted it to make and play their own games will suffer.

IF I had time, I'd love to port some games I made for PC onto the DS. Pity I don't, really...

If the public find a way to steal games they always will.
I have been there twice when a thriving market was destroyed by piracy. It happens very quickly out of the blue and it can easily destroy your business.
The first time was audio tape to tape copying which killed the full price 8 bit game market and bust the company I was working for, Imagine.
The second time was the chipping of playstations which decimated the market and led to the company I was working for, Codemasters, making 90 people redundant.

This could be curtains for the DS as a platform.

Au contraire Bruce, I recall a lot of my 'friends' trundling off to buy Playstations once the rampant piracy kicked in, simply because they could get hold of games for free. If anything I think this will most likely boost DS hardware sales - software sales on the other hand are another matter…

I sent an email to MCV earlier this year telling them that these and similar products were (and still are) freely available to purchase from Amazon.co.uk. When I originally emailed, Amazon themselves were stocking one device - now they are only available through third-party marketplace sellers.

Finger on the pulse there MCV! If ninty actually released anything in EU within a month of the Asia or US release I'd not have one of these little beauties.

"Its sale is currently not illegal (though its use is) ..."

No, it's not. There are certainly some illegal uses, and it sounds like these retailers are too dense to promote the legal ones, but I've had an M3 (same hardware, different distributor) since it came out, and I have zero pirated games on my 1GB MicroSD card.

Even Wal-Mart sells one of these things: search their site for the Datel Games'n'Music, which is aptly promoted for some of its legal uses: homebrew games, released by their authors for free, and playing MP3s. That's most of my 1GB right there, but it also plays videos, runs PDA-like programs, and even runs Linux.

The M3 and R4 turn your DS into a fully programmable computer, and while that may be more than Nintendo bargained for, it would be hard to argue that it's illegal. "But everyone knows..." has never been a persuasive legal argument, especially when it's wrong.

Hi Bruce,
No Bruce, what killed Imagine was spending shed loads of money on those 2 mega games and putting so much of the companies cash into building hardware, many other companies managed to make tape software pay just nicely thank you, don't blame Imagines financial mismanagement on piracy as it wasn't, it was self inflicted.

As for the chipped playstations excuse, well the psone was the most chipped console of all time, it crushed all before it and many software companies huge off the back of it, clearly it didn't have that much effect, if codemasters got rid of people then I'm SURE that was the reason rather than just dumping people they didn't rate or downsizing a department amnd setting an equivalent up somewhere cheaper.

I have an issue with chipping for piracy, it's chavvy and you can buy just about everything used 3-6 months later at a boot sale, additionally time is what most people are short of not cash so they simply aquire games they barely play. however the region free thing I have no issue with, it's amusing that the "global market" is something that companies talk about but when it suits them is something they try to twist and manipulate to suit their agenda, ie region protection.

If Nintendo pulled their finger out and moved games into the pal territories quicker and at a lower price (US prices are way lower than the UK, sales tax or no sales tax) then there'd be far less call for these devices, as it is Nintendo will make money on the DS anyway and these devices will not damage the DS market so don't cry too much for them.

Personally, I dont see what all the fuss is about?
When Action Replay released thier import/cheat cartridge on the super nintendo, it was a matter of months before Nintendo took them to court and got it banned.
They took CEX at Rathbone place to court and won their case against them selling import software.
They took Microsoft and Sony to court over rumble technology and won and Sony have managed to put the much loved Lik-sang out of business with similar tactics.
The R4 is just the latest gadget to get a bit of media attention before Nintendo get the lawyers in.

For one thing, the R4 is not the only device like this available there are lots made by dif people.
Seccondly, the majority of console users are not aware
of this and dont know how to get such things working, or
where to find media for it.
Thirdly, nintendos catridge based systems have allways been hacked appart this way and its never had much of an effect to Nintendos huge profit.
I think emulation i s a bigger issue than these cards, at least one must own a DS to be able to use it.

You know what At least it makes people buy the DS. I would never consider buying a DS until I seen the R4. And now I recommend it to my friends and family so its all word of mouth. Its a portable device and I dont like the idea that you have to buy these expensive games for it and have to carry all these little games with you. Next gen portable gaming should have harddrive and you have to buy games of nintendo website with key gens, if they wanna get rid of piracy.

Mr Jolly, as I was the director of Imagine in charge of sales perhaps I have a better idea than you about what happened. Certainly no meaningful money was put into hardware, just some hand soldered ROM boards. The project never advanced enough for actual product to be even planned. And sales were massively impacted once audio tape to tape copying caught on, which caused problems for lots of publishers. The industry's answer was budget games, selling them so cheaply that they were not worth copying and they dominated the market till the consoles came along.

When the Playstation chipping explosion happened I owned All Formats Computer Fairs, so I know exactly what was happening at grass roots. One gold disk supplier I know was delivering several tons of disks per week per customer for cash to private addresses all over England. He used to bring several tons of golds to every fair and sold them in a couple of hours to customers who brought hand carts with them and paid cash. The pirates were selling the games door to door with a regular weekly round and every workplace had a dealer who could get you the latest games very cheap.

We have a problem that most people think games are cheap and easy to develop, so they have no moral scruples in stealing IP. But they are stupid because who then is going to pay the wages of the people who create the games they so love?

Even more stupid are the people in this industry who think it is OK to download movies, music and games using bit torrent. They might as well get a shotgun and shoot themselves in the foot.

Piracy is a massive problem and when it appears it sweeps through the industry like a plague. You can be merrily trading away one month and the next month it is difficult to sell anything.

None of which justifies MCV and the Times referring to the R4 as a "piracy drive" when it's just an SD card reader for the DS. (At least MCV mentioned "third-party software", though without the distinction bet******gal homebrew and pirated third-party games.) But I do wish the less scrupulous retailers would get a clue and start promoting these devices the way Datel is promoting theirs, pushing legal uses and not even hinting at illegal ones.

Personally, I dont care if R4 gets banned. I already have mine. And will never buy another DS game again. It sits pretty with my Xbox 360 with its cracked firmware, my Wii and its G2C key, although I wont be getting a PS3, even if it does get cracked.

Only thing I buy these days are blank DVD-Rs.

I too think the device is interesting not for it's potential for abuse in terms of piracy, but instead for opening up another set of hardware to open source coding. The capability to get a PDA with decent touch screen support and reasonable battery life on the high street for under £100 is not to be sniffed at. The fact is that this device by itself does not allow piracy, in order to pirate a game you need to get a dump of the original...if Nintendo want to go after a device it would be far better to aim at that end and instead embrace the added potential that open source offers for their console, particularly with the increased attempt to market it to all ages of gamer from the traditional market of tweenties through younger children and business people and OAPs. Surely the fact you can do business related activities on the DS as well as train your mind with titles such as brain training would serve to further promote it for some of those markets.

if rd4s was so bad, then Nintendo wouldn't have licensed it. the article is just dumb

r4ds should be legal if your downloading foren, retro games that cant be bought and home brew.

How come there are so many up and runing rom sites that are up and running think about that.

nintendo needs to stop with all of this money making crap and start making awsome games.Thats not me crying thats my wii.

my solution is that nintendo should make its own rom site for games at cheaper price.

If people copy your games go have a cry ITS YOUR PROBLEM!

Make it illegal, and people will still do it. A MAJOR use of these cards is for homebrew games, such as Tales of Dagur. To make these cards illegal, would wipe out two industries, not one, I'm surprised the article didn't mention homebrew at all, another thing we can do? Is teach our kids proper morals, and to just really look down on the people who do this, people DO care what you think of them, If you know HOW to apply peer pressure and have the morals to do it properly, it is a powerful weapon.

Save the Homebrew front. Take the responsibility as your own, not the government. That's the way it SHOULD be.