This issue has been rumbling for while and drew a lot of debate on here a few weeks ago. Yet still, Amazon has plenty of R4 listings online.

MCV - i think its time you put the question to them.

"We expected that the piracy suffered by movies and music would make its way to games"
Right on the ball there Kim. Not like games have been pirated since the 8-bit era eh?

The only company to have had any success is Sony with the PS3, this has become a bitch for the pirates to crack and they are still no closer. The security on Nintendo's consoles is as about as good as a British Airports. The Wii is being updated all the time but still they get round it.
Still annoyed with simplygames for leading the way with the ****ing halo round their head.

Heres something, maybe Simply Games should stand up and say "Yes we made a mistake so here are all the profits from the piracy we have help to promote by selling the R4 cards" - give it to charity or help to fight piracy.

Come on SimplyGames prepared to make a real stand???????

“Since the appearance of these cards we have noticed a downturn in the sale of our DS games,” explained Steve Pooler, owner of Birmingham-based indie Joypads. “It is frustrating as we could make decent margins on the DS. Sadly this has now been eroded with the growth of these cards.”

So, thats it then, these cards are soley to blame based on purely annecdotal evidence - we can discount the ecconomic downturn, quality of releases, the mid-summer lul, possible competition, nope it's down to these cards.

I'm not sure it's a "revelation", more of a claim based purely on annecdotal evidence.

What I'm having trouble understanding is, are they having trouble selling and sales are down or just selling at the right price if margins are being squeezed?

A quick look in a couple of multiples shows a lot of buy one... offers including a £20 B1G1F offer on the brand new space Invaders extreme, Tescos seems to be selling many DS games at a fair old discount and the machines been out long enough for used prices to start to soften so maybe this is contributing?

I don't believe you can put all the blame on these cards for lower sales particuarly with the credit crunch (thats been going on for a year now), economic conditions and time of year to factor in, are we comparing the sales in summer to sales in winter or sales this summer verses last summer?

Or have we just decided to blame these cards for tougher trading conditions?

Spot the difference:

"Violent video games are entirely to blame for the rise in violent crime"

"R4 Cards are entirely to blame for poor sales of low quality NDS games"

Okay, so maybe its not the root of all evil, but you'd be nuts to say this isn't a problem for retail. Wake up. This needs sorting...

Well piracy hasn't killed the industry in 30 odd years, it certainly wasn't the cause of the 1984 crash and if anything, speaking from an independent point of view, it's the supermarkets and mega chains that are damaging retail with their constant price slashing and undercutting, not piracy.

Maybe it does but will it stop it - they will get them somewhere. Stop downloading thats whats needed. Caught downloading then your are blacklisted full stop from broadband. Can it work? Well its started here. ISP's have been told to block all ports for Torrents and users caught are being fined and cut off from having broadband.
This way it will help not only DS sales but Wii, PS2, Xbox, PSP etc
Shut the pirate sites down, shut the newsgroup sites down, many of which are hosted in the UK.

That's not to say piracy isn't in part to blame, but I firmly believe it's not at the top of the list of industry bogeymen.

Amazon (US) actually received threat of legal action if they didn't remove such products from their site way back in November. Although it was only sent to the US office instruction was passed down globally and all territories were told to remove the offending lines with immediate effect. At this time, there were around 6 different variations of the card, all of them pretty much doing the same thing. Amazon were selling some serious numbers at the time. As instructed though the UK site removed the lines from sale.
However, here we are six months down the line and new updated versions are once again available on the site. If you look closely, it isn't Amazon who are actually selling them, it is a few unscrupulous marketplace sellers. I imagine that this is a complete oversite by Amazon and that they don't actually realise that they have these items on there. I'm sure if they were to be probed, we would see an instant removal from sale.
As for Indies moaning about declining sales...it was a different story when these cards were readily available and they were clambering over each other to get hold of stock to retail themselves.

I think you're spot on with what you're saying. They are market place listings, but there is no way they could pull the excuse that they didnt know. Its one of their top selling lines and they are making good commission from their sale through marketplace. We should not let them make that excuse!

Why is it "unscrupulous" to sell a PERFECTLY LEGAL piece of electronic equipment? Not everyone bows down gutlessly before the industry's bullying.

To my understanding, although I could be wrong, these devices are in breach of the DMCA and the EU equivelent as they circumvent copy protection?

A US court ruled exactly that hence why the likes of Amazon received cease and desist orders from Nintendo's lawyers. They haven't pursued any UK companies as far as I know but it can only be a matter of time. So to call them "PERFECTLY LEGAL" is probably a bit wide of the mark.

I don't see how you can tell ISP's to ban torrent traffic - if they do expect a few lawsuits and negative stiries to follow, if they are blocking or choking them it's because they've set themselves up as a low cost ISP and are suprised when people actualy want to use the service they have paid for so to avoid investing money they throttle traffic. Banning torrents prevents the thousands of legal torrents out there and goes again one of the rules of natural justice, that innocent people should not pay the price for those who are guilty.

Secondly banning internet users on a copyright (business) holders say so is incredibly dodgy as is demanding fines and reparations without a conviction - unless the party is found guilty it again goes against natural justice.

Your going to ban newsgroups are you? Well there's 3-4 major providers for starters all of whom have servers and payment services well out of the reach of most legal systems and are little more than traffic carriers.
You could block the ports, you could investigate every packet to see where it was heading, coming from and what posting or group it was concerned with but that would be a major privacy issue and a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The fact is that retails facing a tough time for a multitude of reasons and fancies a scapegoat, no figures have been supplied to support any part of this arguament to place the blame for these condition soley at the R4's table so I suspect we'll be burning witches next.

These cards have a legitimate use, that of allowing homebrew games and projects to be run on the target machines:

The courts agree it's all legal as well:

http://www.xboxer.....html

I don't see how you are going to come down on it, those nock off nigel adverts are a joke, in every office I've been in the bloke with the Divx'ed films is the most popular guy in there, the money would be better spent coming down on organized crime and piracy and making games more affordable and opening up other revenue streams such as extra maps etc that the player has to pay for even if they have a used, loaned or discounted copy of the game.

They do not circumvent copy protection. The hackers of the ROM files do that, the R4 itself is legally bulletproof. If not, why hasn't anyone been prosecuted for selling them?

US laws are not UK laws, but it'd be interesting to see this alleged ruling anyway. Got a link, or did you just hear it from a guy down the pub?

Companies decide not to fight the case as it'll drag on for years and the only people that'll make any money is the lawyers, the likes of Sony etc. will just pay money and kick off court cases to tie up competators and products for years until they run out of cash or the products time passes.

If chipping's legal then so are these.

I believe there has been chipping cases in the US and the big companies won - it happened a few years ago and chipping in the US is very much more underground than over here, I need to go and find the links. The laws in the US are very much in favour of the big companies.

How about this:

Nintendo partner with the makers of these cards and offer legitimate downloads tied to the card's identity so it cannot be shifted to another card. You register your card with Nintendo, who offer you downloadable games for £10 a pop without a box or printed instructions. No manufacturing required, no thousands of boxes, no wasted paper, no travelling, no environnmental issue. The card can store as many games as you want, if you delete one, tough buy it again. Get time based demos of new games, get homebrew stuff, turn your DS into a PDA - the possibilities are limitless if ONLY the industry would work with them.

Retailers get in store systems for downloading the games and installing them, so can offer a legitimate service.

Isn't it about time everyone embraced this technology and found a way to work with it?

I completely agree with bluejonny.

While not condoning the use of any form of pirated software do people not think that the current price of DS games has had a huge impact on this. WHo in their right mind thinks that a DS game for £25-£30 is not expensive when you can normally now pick up most Xbox 360 and PS3 titles for around the same price or just a fraction more. If the games were offered cheaper or, as per bluejonny, at a download fee of say £10 I think these cards would all be legit or not used at all.

Also from a legal perspective surely if you want one of these cards to hold all of the DS games games you have store purchased, rather than carry about 20 DS games cards then that is perfectly legal the same as making a backup copy of a game or DVD incase they get damaged !!!!!

Making games more affordable I do like that argument. There are too many other people in the chain that depend on game sales. The company that makes the box, paper, ink, drivers that deliver, people that pack.
Do people think that a magic machine makes the game then beams it across the world direct into the store at a total cost of £1???? There are many other businesses involved.

As for the downloading thing with the torrents, wonder how many use it for legal purposes?
And its not just the companies that tell the ISP who to cut off, get real mate, the governments are losing alot in tax revenue so that is pissing them off. Here they cut you off plain and simple, wanna fight through the courts? only an idiot would as you wouldnt win.

Yes, bluejonny's proposal is exactly what we need, and what some of us have been saying since the first flashcarts appeared for the Game Boy well over 10 years ago...

#19 The current law is crazily contradictory on the subject of backups - they're explicitly legal according to the CDPA of 1998, and explicitly illegal according to the CRRA of 2003. Both laws are currently on the statute books, so it's simultaneously both legal and illegal to make copies of your own carts.

copied from elsewhere about Amazon

"Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,

This message is to inform you that we have cancelled your following listing(s):

ASIN: B00180V2IK R4 Revolution R4DS Version 2 for DS Lite

We are in receipt of a Notice Form from the following party alleging that this listing violates its intellectual property rights:

Entertainment Software Association
esa-no-reply@copyright-compliance.com

We suggest that you contact this party to resolve this dispute. Please be assured that we do welcome your business as long as it complies with the Participation Agreement and Community Rules to which you have agreed.

If you would like to review the Participation Agreement you can find it on the Amazon.co.uk site, Help-->Amazon.co.uk Marketplace-->Participation Agreement. Please know that repeated violations of the Marketplace Participation Agreement and Community Rules can result in the termination of your Amazon.co.uk Third Party Seller account.

Thank you for listing your merchandise on Amazon.co.uk.



Warmest regards,

Seller Performance
Amazon.co.uk"

"We are in receipt of a Notice Form from the following party alleging that this listing violates its intellectual property rights:

Entertainment Software Association
esa-no-reply@copyright-compliance.com

We suggest that you contact this party to resolve this dispute."

Haha. 'We suggest you contact this party to resolve this dispute', and then supply a no-reply email address. That's the legal equivalent "That's what I'm saying, FULL STOP, END OF ARGUMENT.

re: costaconsole - Making games more affordable. Why not? Thats economic pressure, Games in the US are half the price they are in the UK on the DS - WHY?

I can buy a new 1st party game from videogame imports or the like, have it shipped over and still undercut my local stores by a tenner. I mean seriously, people with game stores seem to think they live in a vaccum and that they should be able to put anything on the shelves and sell it, brand new at full price. I'm trying to think who's worse, the retailers who want grey imports and these machines banned and games prices to stay as high as possible rather than use skill and immagination to sell games or developers who want retail abolished, used game sales banned and blame everyone but themselves if a game fails to sell. Both are a sign of an industry that thinks it's got a right to exist and profit as opposed to one that needs to fight and react to the changes in the market.

You know how you shop at Tescos or Asdas and they undercut your local stores so you don't go there and don't give it a second thought? Well the same happens with games except you don't give a hoot about it, because you'd rather save the money, you go to the supermarket. Those moaning about margins or competition or used games may have a point but you can bet they go to a supermarket to save £20 on their weekly shop, are using a comparison site for their petrol or car insurance or they moan if something is expensive and try other stores to see if they can get it cheaper. If other industries do it so can the games industry, just sitting there and saying you can't do anything about it is giving up.

As for governments coming down on torrents etc., frankly they couldn't care less, they've got other things to deal with, they may get lobbied by big business but I don't see them getting anything through the EU courts (as thats where this would end up) as it would be fought all the way, to blame the ISP's would be to set a preccident that the carrier is to blame and therefore all phone companies, ISPs and mail providers would become liable. Don't see that happening.

The ISPs are blocking and throttling for ecomonic reasons, they don't want to upgrade their networks and they want to sell films themselves therefore they want to stop anything in that way related even the perfectly legal BBC iplayer which kinds of demonstrates how they really feel about this.
It's just traffic to them and only of interest if an impact on their bandwith or the other products they want to sell us, I mean seriously people have been downloading roms over the internet since 1993/94 and other IP before that, they will never stop it so the industry should accept it as a fact of life, come down on the commerical piracy and concentrate on selling people something that rewards them for not buying a copied or even used version. That though requires changing industry thinking using their immagination and stopping scapegoating for the industry's own failures which frankly won't happen.

re: costaconsole - Making games more affordable. Why not? Thats economic pressure, Games in the US are half the price they are in the UK on the DS - WHY?

So is it only games that are overpriced in the UK? Nope its everything. Also dont forget at moment sterling is still very good against the dollar - that too plays a major role.


"As for governments coming down on torrents etc., frankly they couldn't care less, they've got other things to deal with, they may get lobbied by big business but I don't see them getting anything through the EU courts (as thats where this would end up) as it would be fought all the way, to blame the ISP's would be to set a preccident that the carrier is to blame and therefore all phone companies, ISPs and mail providers would become liable. Don't see that happening."

See the news last night?

I agree piracy is bad for the industry, look how Nintendo operate though they starve the UK of it's goods to create hype and panic buying, they did it for the wii console now they do it on the wii fit and mario kart ar eyou suprised why people go for piracy, why are UK consumers held to ransom for such goods, If the market is so vast in the UK then Nintendo shouldn't starve it and cause people to go for piracy. They have themselves to blame for this culture

@ RevStu

If you were to take a rom file and put it on a blank cartridge without the R4 ROM, I doubt very much whether it would run. No expert mind...

Personally, I always understood that without the permission of the copyright holder, you, as an individual, were not allowed to backup anything, for any purpose.

Nope, wrong. The 1988 CPDA explicitly permits backups.

Oooh, MCV has turned into tantrum central and lo and behold, it's the indies again.

CostaConsole, I have been a developer for 21 + years, you know, one of those people "you" rely on to make your living. Or do you think games magically appear on discs for you to sell?

RE:Torrents: Go to the makers of Euphoria and notice their downloads and how many of them use Torrents. Torrents were a perfectly legal invention developed to share software without unneccessary strain on the server as those who had downloaded could contribute to the sharing. Many legitimate sites use legal torrents to prevent a bandwidth meltdown, demos, patches, tutorials etc...

Now just because you are so blinkered to not be able to see how/where it all started, don't throw the "ban all torrents" argument to the people on this site, who know a damned site more about the development side of the industry than you ever will.

Re: Circumvention of copy protection. The R4 does not, and cannot circumvent any copy protection...

Re: Flash Cards in general. Flash cards have been a cheap and accessible way for people to get into the industry by letting them learn to programme systems they wouldn't normally be able to. I got a job as a Gameboy Colour programmer through having learned the machine with a flash card. Official dev kits are £1000's and you have to be an official developer to get one. Flash cards were £100 and anyone could get one. It's all panic, panic, panic with you people, simply because you don't understand anything other than "where have my profits gone?". You want everyone else to bow to your wishes yet you'll quite happily smack the people who keep you in a job. Remember, the games industry doesn't need indies, the indies need the games industry!

And I have said this before... I can guarantee that 99% of you are writing these posts on your "copy" of window, whilst listening to your "downloaded" MP3's or CD's you "copied" off a mate and you'll all no doubt go home to watch that movie/US TV show you borrowed too.

Oh and I presume all you "sellers" actually "pay" for the copy of the game you take home to play... or do you take it home for a couple of nights and then sell it as "new"? Yes, that's right, we know that trick, selling used as new and Indies have always used that one. Give em £20 and if it's good enough, take it in the back, shrink wrap it and then put it on the shelf as new, for full price.

Perhaps if we ban the sales of blank recordable media and PC's, that would solve all the problems, you know, while we're all in irrational mode.

Now I understand that "selling something" doesn't require people to be the brightest bulb in the box but for gods sake people, if you are going to argue on the site of a technical industry, at least try to make an effort.

Lmao, I love this, some game developers truely do believe they are gods but are so ****ing blind.

"We dont need indies, indies need us" What a lame comment. So you think you could just rely on the big chains yeah? Let me tell you something, I worked in the financial sector for many years, we represented some rather large companies and we advised them on certain issues and one was get a supplier, developer, farm whatever and getting them to soley rely on the big chain and cut out the independent wholesalers, retailers....then we got them to **** them over big time by forcing them to drop prices even more. Would love that to happen to the big headed fools like you.......it will one day.

Or do others in the retail games industry have to say a prayer each night thanking us for people like Lee and some of the crap they churn out.