Nintendo to beef up piracy measures in 3-D machine

By YURI KAGEYAMA

TOKYO -- Nintendo's president said Friday that anti-piracy measures will be beefed up in its planned handheld game device with 3-D technology in a move to guard against software theft.

Nintendo Co. ( NTDOY.PK - news - people ) President Satoru Iwata was otherwise tightlipped about the machine, which the Japanese game-maker said in March will be shown at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles next month.

It's set to go on sale sometime in the fiscal year through March 2011, according to the Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games.

The problem of piracy is serious, especially in Asia and Europe, and contributed to the recent drop in game software sales in Europe, Iwata said at a Tokyo hotel.

But he declined to go into details on the planned measures, saying such comments will merely give "hints" to the culprits. Iwata was also concerned people were becoming more tolerant of piracy.

Iwata acknowledged people were already worried about the possible health effects of 3-D gaming, such as on children's eyesight.

He promised it will be easy to turn off the 3-D function on the new machine, allowing people to play games, with or without 3-D.

Nintendo's earnings dropped for the fiscal year ended March 31, battered by a price cut for the Wii home console and sliding global sales despite some signs of recovery in year-end sales, sending Nintendo stock tumbling on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Nintendo shares closed Friday down 9 percent at 27,800 yen ($302).

It is forecasting sales to fall 2.4 percent and profit to slide 12.5 percent for the fiscal year through March 2011.

The company expects to sell 18 million Wii machines during the year following sales of 20 million for the previous year.

Iwata noted Japanese media reports on Wii sales' losing momentum following the earnings report Thursday. But he stressed that 20 million and 18 million were both good numbers and a "high hurdle" as a sales record to beat.

"I'm not pessimistic, and this is not a pessimistic forecast," he said.

Website http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/05/07/technology-specialized-consumer-services-as-japan-nintendo_7585210.html

I am glad to hear it'll be harder to pirate games that should help with the rampant piracy that plagues the current DS and it's interesting to learn we will be able to turn off the 3D function on 3DS to prevent eyestrain.

I hope whatever DRM they implement does not make users jump through hoops.

I am willing to place a ban bet here that if 3DS were to release in Japan a few months first. It will be fully hacked before reaching US shore.

Of course it's cool to talk about the future console, but Nintendo is not taking a proactive rule in this. What about the Wii and DS? Why not have proactive firmware updates to deter CURRENT piracy issue?

as the current owner of both DS and Wii, I see too often that people around me are pirating and doing so openly and easily

they should just make it so that if someone tries to add their own circuitry the motherboard fries itself.

They seriously need to do something about those piracy issues.

Nintendo will obviously be doing as much as possible to curb piracy on its next platforms. The GameCube was pretty secure, but starting with the GBA pirating software became easy. Back in the 64 days people pirated software to play on emulators for PC's with the 3DS it will be impossible to play a game in 3D on a PC. Not to mention Nintendo probubly has a new format ready for the marketplace one hopefully harder to crack then a flash card or slightly altered dual layered disk.

Up untill this generation Nintendo didn't really have to worry about piracy. Its suprising that the PS3 is the hardest platform to crack since PSOne and PS2 were so easy. Nintendo slipped up this generation but I'm sure they have learnt their leasons, I bet next gen will be really secure.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate, and suggest that while Nintendo should do their best with anti-piracy measures at the beginning of the generation, the reason they've left it unaddressed on the Wii so far is because piracy fuels word of mouth from a handful of very prolific pirates, and the resulting increase in sales offsets the potential losses incurred by those few pirates, from whom it was doubtful if they would ever have ever paid for the proper product. In that, it doesn't pay to erect anything more than a little wall to keep the most casual forms of piracy from occurring - anyone sufficiently motivated should be allowed to breach that wall in the name of word of mouth advertising.

Maybe the 3DS will indeed be harder to crack, but pirates always find a way.. it might take a while, but they always do...theres´no "really secure" like Joel said.

the ps3 sw sales are almost the same as the wii despite half the install base. piracy must be a key piece of this equation. sony appears to controlling the ps3 so far. half the people i know that have a wii don't pay for games