You have no way to know if it would have been more or less successful without piracy.
Or I'll do with my media what I please once I've purchased it, and if that means throwing multiple games on one flash cart, I'm going to do so.
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3DS Flash Cart Now Shipping: Nintendo's nightmare coming true
- Thread starter $h@d0w
- Start date
You have no way to know if it would have been more or less successful without piracy.
Or I'll do with my media what I please once I've purchased it, and if that means throwing multiple games on one flash cart, I'm going to do so.
Waluigilicious
Member
Ok that's just horrible. You shouldn't have given in
out of curiosity what happened to your 3ds?I couldn't agree more. A new, successful flash card would be the death nell of the system. I mean GTA couldn't sell! The negatives far outweigh the positives, especially this early in the system's life.
baphomet
Member
They wont recover my digital purchases from my stolen 3ds. Because of that ive purchased everything used for the console and will continue doing so.
Since the incident, he he has bought everything used to dont give Nintendo money because they f*cked him.
It's wasnt so hard dude
Edit: Beaten
Ah,well that sucks. I'd try calling them again though. Its a dumb reality, but all Customer Service is like playing roulette, you just gotta find the right CS to listen to your concerns.
This thing doesn't bypass region lock. And lol, you don't deny the huge negative effect of this thing to the health of the platform, you simply don't care.
But it has the potential to get around the region lock.
And you all keep assuming piracy hurts a platform, while I don't think it hurts to a level where it takes precedence over my consumer rights. It isn't my job to make Nintendo platforms "healthy", it's their job to make a compelling product people want to purchase. GAF continues to amaze me with their anti-consumer stances.
iamaustrian
Member
this
it's pretty much a fact that 99% of flash cart users use them to pirate the shit out of a system. It happened to the DS and it was certainly not good.
I'm all for Nintendo fighting these devices succefully with full force.
please note: I do not accuse any poster in this thread of pirating.
Good, because I'll gladly post my library of 3DS games that continues to grow.
Where do these assumptions come from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games
Those do not look like sales for a system that was hurt by piracy.
I'm just pointing out that the perception "I can legally make a backup copy of anything I buy" is frequently, if not almost always, wrong. In the US, because you usually have to circumvent copy protections, it's typically illegal unless a special exemption has been made in the DMCA.
edit: hah, after posting this I see Mudkips already posted everything and it's been discussed. Please ignore.
Piracy hurts a platform, no other way around it. It's completely delusional to think otherwise, lol. I don't favor anti-consumer stances, but anti-platform stances are just as bad since there's potential to kill the viability of future 3DS releases. So you're basically saying you'd rather lose 3DS' future over a flash cart.
If I had my PlayStation, Xbox, android phone, iPhone or PC stolen I don't need to call customer services to get my games back.
Why the fuck should I have to go through all of that, with absolutely no guarantee of success, with Nintendo? I hope to high hell that the 3DS is hacked wide open sooner rather than later, purely so I can protect my purchases.
So you're willing to forego $200? Shit, I wish I was as rich as you are.
Well, I hope you're okay with its current library and absolutely nothing else. But hey, maybe in the future we'll be able to emulate SNES or something. Totally worth it.
I'll point you to the same figures from above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games
You have no proof that any of this hurts a platform. We end up back with the argument about whether people would have bought the games anyways. I come down on the side where the upside of region free and feeling secure in my purchases causes me and other to buy more games than our going to be truly "lost" to piracy.
You guys remember when the PS2 was modded and releases stopped?
How about when the 360 stopped getting games when it was hacked?
Don't even get me started on how games like Mario Kart on the Wii couldn't move a single unit when they got hacked.
Oh wait....
What are you on about? I'm broke and jobless.
Even more reason why I want to be able to back up my digital purchases. Last thing I want is to lose them all with no way of buying them again.
Also, flash carts or mod chips have never, ever killed a console. People using that argument are dead wrong.
peanutbutterlatte
Member
How the fuck can every casual DS owner I know who owned a R4 and pirated all their games not affect the system in some way?
It can be successful in spite of these things, but that means absolutely nothing.
Cool list, I'll just remind you that DS was the second best selling gaming system ever released (and that list is mostly Nintendo software which appeals to a ton of people that might not even know what is a flash cart). I'm not sure if you noticed, but the handheld market has changed quite a bit, and even without piracy some shifts have been happening lately. Of course we know piracy hurts software sales, just take a quick look at iOS vs. Android.
It means that my consumer rights being enabled isn't going to ruin the ecosystem, so my rights win out.
And because those casuals wouldn't have bought most, if any, of those games anyways. that's why they're casuals!
Them downloading a game is not a lost sale.
That's just a shitty argument, and you know it. It basically amounts to 'cry hard enough, you'll get shit'.
The Red Wizard
Member
Indeed. Building upon the DS sales figures referenced above, the best selling game on the 360 (Black Ops with 12 million) was outsold by the eight best selling game(s) on the DS (Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver with 12.67 million between them).
Piracy didn't screw Nintendo, Nintendo screwed Nintendo.
EDIT: That is to say, Nintendo screwed itself by making the 3DS region locked as region locking is one of, if not the, main reasons for flashcarts like this one.
I live in Mexico. There was a point when buying DS software was okay, then suddenly, most DS users I knew ceased buying software because of flash carts - except for big releases like Pokémon, which explains the big numbers for 1st party stuff.
Mental gymnastics. Oh brother.
If you care to provide some actual data or facts instead of hyperbole and such, we can discuss further.
So they continued to buy the games they really wanted, and stopped buying ones they likely weren't going to buy anyways? Either they're pirating everything, or they are pirating things they never would have bought. If they're still buying games, piracy isn't doing what you think it is.
What gymnastics? He says why is it all the casuals he knows with a DS have a flash cart full of games? Are we to assume those casuals would have bought all those, or that they would've bought the same Pokemon and NSMB games they all did indeed buy?
Seems far more likely my hypothesis is what happened given the immense sales for the "casual" titles.
For real. I never, absolutely never encountered someone who used a flash cart legally. People like Petrie are such a minuscule minority. There's a reason why companies combat piracy - because it DOES cost money. They'd be wasting time and money fighting piracy if it was irrelevant. This Christmas, tons of parents are buying a 3DS for their kids along with games for it. That's different from these same parents buying a DS and a flashcart for their kids, which I saw happening all the time.
No, they ceased buying most of the games - they started buying LESS software. And your lists of best selling videogames don't mean anything, lol, it doesn't prove the entire DS ecosystem wasn't affected by rampant piracy.
Linkstrikesback
Member
Ridiculous. The GBA wasn't region locked, and it had flashcards. The DS wasn't region locked, and it had flashcards, with the first working ones showing up in 2005, less than a year after the DS launched. (At least, that's what my quick google search tells me.
Look whose talking.
I've offered an alternate situation and backed it up with sales stats for those casual games these supposed casuals would be playing.
Can you prove this happened? Because the software sales don't seem to back you up.
They combat piracy because they see it as a scapegoat for poor sales. There are so many examples where companies see the opposite that they can't just be ignored.
I'm just glad that at the end of the day, my consumer rights are going to win out. Clearly.
So because X sells a lot, it means it wouldn't have sold better without piracy? Lol. Your examples are the best selling games on the platform, the ones that aren't as affected by piracy as less safe titles. You can't be this obtuse.
Take a look at this:
http://www.slashgear.com/95-android-game-piracy-experience-highlights-app-theft-challenge-15282064/
95% rate of Android piracy makes a platform with a MUCH bigger install base than iOS generate less money than a more closed, protected platform.
Dude, you could have just checked one of Aquamarine's posts in this very thread for proof on how invasive pirating was on the DS.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=77783829&postcount=375
If I believed the number of people who would've actually purchased those games was even a fraction of the number of downloads, sure.
I don't buy into that. and even if I did, NONE of that is going to change my feeling that consumer rights come first.
It seems indisputable that piracy has some kind of effect, the amount of which is impossible to measure but assuredly greater than "none" and less than "enough to ruin the system". I don't know what there is to argue here.
Beyond that, I'm fine with this cart existing because i don't think the piracy that will come from it will damage the system's viability to the point where developers will think twice about making games for it and region-freedom is a wonderful thing that would be tangibly useful to me.
I don't know if i'd get one of these, though, because I'm assuming you'll have to worry about aforementioned firmware revisions and that sounds like a hassle.
Beyond that, I'm fine with this cart existing because i don't think the piracy that will come from it will damage the system's viability to the point where developers will think twice about making games for it and region-freedom is a wonderful thing that would be tangibly useful to me.
I don't know if i'd get one of these, though, because I'm assuming you'll have to worry about aforementioned firmware revisions and that sounds like a hassle.
We don't know that though. We do not know if the number of sales gained through an open platform is more than those lost to piracy, nor how many "pirated" copies turn into sales. e do not "know" the things you are claiming as fact.
It's this, mostly.
"Pokémon and Mario sells a lot so piracy is a non-issue!" is a terrible argument, lol.
Sigh, you keep on saying 'consumer rights', 'consumer rights'.
That's just a buzzword that you keep on throwing around. Lets be frank, the solution you are seeking would hurt Nintendo's profitability, and you do not have the right to just pretend that what you want will not cause rampant piracy on the scale the DS suffered though.
A customer that only buys hardware and no software is not a customer Nintendo, Sony, MS, or any other platform holder would want.
peanutbutterlatte
Member
Well they shouldn't even have an option. It's clear you're not to be persuaded if your arguing facetiously with facts and numbers.
No. It's that none of this trumps our rights as consumers.
Perhaps to you. For me it is something I believe in protecting.
Linkstrikesback
Member
Riddle me this then. Do you think that, despite the 5m+ drop in sales from diamond/pearl to heart gold/soul silver, that not a single one of them pirated it and would have otherwise paid for it? Because as far as I can see, that's exactly what you're saying.
Or that it's strange, that despite the fact that there were nearly 100million more DS units in circulation by the point black/white came around, that sales for the most well known handheld franchise still went down?
As an Android user, it's impossible not feel like I get the short end of the stick compared to iOS users. I could say "but guise, Gunman Clive sold better on Android than on iOS so piracy doesn't matter!", but that'd be beyond silly.
If you don't like Nintendo's policies, don't give them money, period.
oh, you're arguing that the flash carts might have been a net positive for game sales?
that's pretty bold
I don't know if consumers have the rights to illegally aquire games, or do you believe so? Piracy is hurting the software sales, period.
You want to know why there are so few third party games on the 3DS right now? The ones you can find develop them because they believe Nintendo is going to do whatever to stop it. If the carts get widespread, enjoy no more games.
PSP is as good as dead in the west, yet still supported by companies in japan because they still have people willing to pay for it.
I really don't think any company is willing to call people who pirate "customers" in any way.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
I like how you keep talking about the DS yet conveniently forget about the psp you know the handheld whose software sales suffered greatly because of rampart piracy inspite of it's hardware install base.
Riiight.....
It's just so naive, lol. Companies are willing to spend a ton of money fighting piracy, even if piracy doesn't make them lose any money. I believe it, yup. The dramatic decrease of DS software was just a terrible coincidence. iOS making more money from games than Android despite its gargantuan install base has nothing to do with the 95% piracy rate, absolutely not. Somehow, territories where piracy isn't an issue sell much more software for way longer (see DS and PSP in Japan).
Man, piracy sounds almost desirable!
Man, piracy sounds almost desirable!
I'm simply saying that we do not know that to be the case. I know I purchased more games because I could store them all for easy accessibility on a cart, and felt safe I wouldn't lose carts traveling.
Send a pic of your collection to Nintendo so they can stop this unfair witch hunt against piracy.
You understand I'm not arguing for piracy right? I'm saying the fear of piracy won't cause me to say "we shouldn't have this thing that helps protect my consumer rights". Flash carts have uses other than piracy and I'm not going to deny people that for fear of piracy.
There are examples on both ends of the spectrum, but how can you be certain that was caused by piracy and not indifference to the software itself?
If only that would work?
Stop treating your customers like criminals and you'll make more money.