Scisca said:
DS was hacked, 3DS is not. For DS you just had to buy an Acekart for 15-20 Euro, a memory card and you were set - you could play every single DS game for free! I'd never buy my DS if it wasn't for that. DS games were (and 3DS are today as well) unavailable in my country and I also found them way overpriced. I've just purchased GTA: Chinatown Wars to support R*. This factor has a significant impact on the hardware sales and let's not ignore it. |
People overestimate the effect of hacking on sales of the devices. Neither PSP nor DS sold a lot of units, because they were hacked. Yes, some units were moved, but not much.
Let's just assume 10% of DS-owners hacked the system (and that doesn't mean they wouldn't have bought the system without the possibility). That would mean around 15 million flashcarts were sold. That wasn't happening, just for logistic reasons. These flashcarts were sold through small businesses. No one was big enough to handle amounts, like big retailers can. So it would surprise me, if more than a million flashcarts were sold. No way it could reach 15 million. And even with that number, and even if we assume every owner of a flashcart bought DS only because it was hackable (I didn't for example), that wouldn't explain the decrease in this gen.
Similar for the PSP-hack, or the Wii-hack. That'S the same as an iPhone-jailbreak - some people do that, but the vast majority does not even know it is possible. No sorry, hacking is in no way an explanation.
