Aww thanks.
Some data behind my concerns:
Nintendo of America has worked closely with DtecNet to monitor the extent of piracy throughout the world. Here is a small sliver of the extent of Nintendo piracy for the last three years (taken from Nintendo Special 301 filings):
Illegal P2P downloads of newly-released Nintendo (1st-party) games:
United States, 2010: 2,534,189 downloads
United States, 2011: 5,218,448 downloads, out of 45 titles tracked
United States, 2012: 895,978 downloads, out of 36 titles tracked
Worldwide chart, 2011:
(Note: China is undertracked)
Considering how the nature of DtecNet's tracking only accounts for a fraction of the total piracy for recently released Nintendo games, you can see how ridiculously pervasive piracy can be for these systems.
While I'm not equalizing one pirated download to one lost sale, it is impossible to deny that there are loads of people all around the world who would pirate a game at launch when they would otherwise buy it new, especially when it's easy to do so.
If Gateway hits DS levels of piracy for new software sales, it could potentially cripple the 3DS in the vulnerable North American market. Worst case scenario, it could lead to a premature death of the 3DS in the USA, similar to the PSP.
I just wish Gateway could have taken this into consideration and only made their product anti-region lock. Piracy ex post facto isn't really that harmful, but mass piracy of newly-released games really can ruin it for everyone.