Link I don't really have a problem with this since I don't live in the UK for one and even if I did, the R4 hasn't been supported in a while and there are a lot of better cards out there like Acekard and CycloDS to name a few. Hopefully this doesn't lead to banning other cards like the ones already mentioned because there are many legitimate uses for a flash cart devices. Opinions?
Well, unfortunately, as long as the illegal uses of the cards are there, Nintendo and international law will do everything possible to end the production of them as most people who use the cards aren't going to use them for their legal purposes. No they're going to use them to save some cash and just steal the games.
[highlight]I hope they ban kitchen knives soon too. I just don't feel safe knowing anyone can go out and buy one, then use it to stab me to death with it. Also, baseball bats are just too dangerous. It's not as if anyone actually uses them for playing baseball anyway. It's all thugs and gang members. BAN BASEBALLS AND KNIVES![/highlight]
Just R4 cards eh? Well, least it won't apply for cyclo ds cards for now... I always had a hunch nintendo was going to do something about all these pirate cards, especially since it got so popular over the last few years... Nintendo's simply trying to do what the music industry eventually did to napster. Make the product disappear so that maybe the majority of those who bought those R4 cards would go back to buying every game they pick even if they are not so sure if the game itself good or not. Believe it or not, a certain minority will ALWAYS find a way around this ban. :/
I always wanted one of these card :(. Well, I'm not losing out anyway, I'd never use it. I know people who use them for music and stuff though, so ... I dunno how i feel about this one. Also, P, they should ban cableties too, people could be strangled with them.
I hope they ban cellphones as well. I just feel so unsafe knowing that those gang members and drug dealers out there will be able to talk to each other about their sinister plans while they're on the go. Having a flash card enables you to do a lot more too like reading e-books, surfing the web, emulate old games, and run homebrew applications. It's a shame that Nintendo doesn't offer some of these things since the DS is capable of doing it but I guess the overall price of the DS would skyrocket if they did that and nobody would buy it in the end.
Except Nintendo isn't doing it out of greed like the RIAA did to Napster. Nintendo's profits, while still excellent, have been harmed by people buying R4 cards and simply downloading the games onto them for free, so the companies that make the games see no money out of it. Likewise, Napster was breaking the law by offering copyrighted music for free. However, the RIAA was more interested in stuffing their own pockets than the pockets of the musicians. Nintendo is protecting their assets, the RIAA was protecting their right to overprice everything. The problem with Napster was that legally bought CDs were a ridiculous $20 to $30 a copy. Napster shook up the status quo and forced record companies to drop prices to a much more reasonable level. It worked for a while, even after Napster was forced to go legit. Frustratingly, CD prices eventually went back up to around $20 each outside of a handful of minor labels (Nuclear Blast, for example, charges $9 to $13 a disc, which is where I think ALL record companies should be pricing their CDs.) Of course, this doesn't stop record companies from turning around and *****ing that people aren't buying their CDs when its their greed that caused the rampant piracy in the first place.
I'm going to wait until I next go to the airfield market. I'm going to see if they are still selling R4s. If they are, then it's exactly like every other ban that isn't on drugs. It doesn't work at the airfield market. To be honest, R4s can be used to trial games so that the person using it can decide what to buy; after all, it's better to get a hands-on preview of anything rather than a trailer cut specifically to make the game look better, or a front cover which can be misleading on the entire game, right down to the screenshots. I understand the good games are an epic casualty, but if you ruin the profits of companies who can't produce decent video games in the first place and therefore shouldn't be getting anything for their 'work', that's not a bad thing, right? However, since it's still completely subjective to say something is a bad game, that means every game has to be protected. So what you should be doing, really, is placing better copy protection on games. Chrono Trigger's copy protection is probably one of the best things I've ever seen. Also, if sales are suffering in an area because of the R4, don't do what Capcom did and remove the game from circulation in that area. Instead, take the price down, make a public plea and get people on your side.
In theory, that is the entire point of allowing games to be played off the R4 cards. However, many people that buy the R4 cards don't give two shits about supporting the companies that make the games. They just want their games for free. The R4 card is easy to abuse and most people aren't going to care about the legal uses of something if they can use it to save a few bucks. Still, like you said, clever use of copy protection will allow a potential pirate play the game more or less as a demo, but lock them out of most of the game.
