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]

http://kotaku.com/5520462/nintendo-blames-ds-piracy-for-50-sales-drop-in-europe?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kotaku%2Ffull+%28Kotaku%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

I had no idea piracy was such a problem on the DS. Hell I didn't even know it was possible to pirate DS games until recently.. Hopefully 3DS will solve this issue.

A 50% drop in sales all because of the effects of piracy must really be damaging to developers/publishers.

Nintendo, you're late. PSP already took the crown for blaming piracy.
Try the claim it faster with your next generation handheld.

Those damn frenchmen!!!
(i'm not to blame, all my games are from the US... cheaper $$)

(the big site I know of is spanish... and it just has about everything.... it also has consoles &PSP)

Piracy is growing on DS, yes but I don't think that's the main factor in the reduction of DS software sales. Iwata himself has said that, also. DS software just hasn't been as compelling recently. There hasn't been anything like Brain Training or Nintendogs released in ages.

R4 and such seem to be quite common nowadays. Though, i can't recall big game releases that had the potential to keep the software sales up.

So ppl decided to start pirating like crzy for no reason whatsoever in only last few months?? Give me a break Nintendo.

How does a piracy option that's been around forever suddenly cause a giant decrease in sales?  That doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Nintendo are right to be worried about piracy but really, when was the last system seller from them that wasn't Pokemon? There hasn't been much from them since Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros.