Nintendo Blames DS Piracy For 50% Sales Drop In Europe
Nintendo has been cracking down hard on sellers of R4 cartridges (and similar devices) lately. Want to know why? The Japanese company is blaming them for a 50% drop in sales of DS games in Europe.
According to a report on the Asahi Shimbum's website, Nintendo reckons sales of the devices - which allow users to circumvent the anti-piracy measures built into the DS - "was largely to blame for a nearly 50-percent drop in sales in Europe in recent months", and that the amount "lost" to pirates each year was "in the region of trillions of yen".
The company arrived at this conclusion having conducted a study last year, in which ten "websites based overseas that allowed people to illicitly download game software" were tracked. Nintendo claim that it found "that software had been pirated a total 238 million times".
Apparently the biggest culprits behind the European drop were Italians, Spaniards and Frenchmen.
Iffy logic or not - a copy pirated does not directly equate to a copy not bought - you wanted a reason why Nintendo takes DS piracy seriously, here's your reason.
Console game makers fight 'magicom' piracy craze [Asahi Shimbum]
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