dang...that's pretty bad.  It's a shame so many people buy pirated games without thinking twice.

I won't say I'm much better with movies, only buying the movies I really like, but with games, I feel I need to actually support the companies that make good games, and if I occasionally buy a crappy game, well that's the risk I took.

I can see why Nintendo and others aren't strong China supporters...even if people play Wii there, Nintendo wouldn't know it, and Nintendo does need money to stay afloat. 

yeah... there's piracy in America, though not so bad and obvious.  I was showing my friend the virtual console games i downloaded on the Wii, and he's like "What?  You paid 5 bucks for these games?  I bought a video game station in a mall for $30 that's got like 40 nintendo games on it."

 you know the kind of video game station i'm talking about?  where it just directly connects to the TV and has a couple of old fashioned controllers?

but at least thanks to consumption in US, Japan and Europe, we actually get these great games.  otherwise nobody would be making any profit, thank god.

Brasil is the same... but here nobody sells VG without modchips, in early days of gamecube it was almost impossible to find one in the stores, my uncle had to import one and some original games to play... but excluding some intusiastics like him that buy some original games to help the company, I can easily say that 99%+ of Brasil played games are piracy... and loads of times its easy than the original one, cuz u can play regionfree... same think to movies, in my cousin Xbox360 he only uses pirated movies because of the region protection... please, don't put all the fault on us, the bigger problem is that here there is no oficial release of nothing, torrent is the easy way to find stuff, and works perfectly... I like original thinks, but I have less than 10 (half-life, pikmin, the sims 2, and some more) original CDs here, more than 300 pirateds... EDITING: in Mexico they are with a good anti-piracy policy, MS is selling some original X360 stuff there with some success... now they are trying to make it in Brasil too, the big problem is that they are selling X360 Premium for R$3000 (U$1500), so everybody only buys from e-bay...

To all those who are condemning piracy I say:

 Annual per Capita Income in China = 1740 USD

 Annual per Capita Income in Switzerland (where I live) = 39'000 USD (I think USA is roughly the same)

And besides that, the guy in China probably works like 60+ hours a week, while I earn my money doing 40 hours a week.

I think regarding these numbers its easy to say, that almost everyone of us would be pirating when he/she would live in a rather poor country.

I know those multi-game cartriges, but the point in the cartriges is that you can't make a pirated copy at home with your PC:s CD or DVD drive. It's in one way understandable, that in China (or Brazil, as it was also mentioned) there is a lot piracy. Most of the countrys population is so poor, that they can't buy legal and expensive product. Of course theres always the elite who can afford, but it is the minority. Piracy is not so much of a problem in most of the rich countries, but it's still unbelievable, that how can you sell pirated software in a store in the US. If people wouldn't have that much money, it would be like China when it comes to piracy.

I've never had a modded system or have played any illegal games, but I completely agree with the concept.

To make someone pay a premium for something like a videogame console, and then have it "regionally locked" to where you can't play games from certain areas on your console is absolutely ridiculous.

You bought the console, and if the game you want to play is specifically for that system, then you should be able to play it!

To me, it's almost the same amount of ridiculous-ness as Sony's DRM software (You know, the software that illegally installed on your computer and left it open to security issues?)

To place a limit on WHERE you can play your games is a blatantly wrong.

Fine, piracy is "wrong", but if it wasn't for it, many poor people in many countries would not even have the same OPPORTUNITY that we have to distract ourselves from our crappy lives with videogames. 

Nintendo has a very bad history in China due to widespread piracy.

 They recently praised the US government for doing more to crack down on China's government for promoting and allowing Piracy to run rampant through their nation. China is responsable for the piracy of millions of games and the loss of millions upon millions of dollars in software sales.

If you look at Nintendo's history in China they released the I-Que I believe it was called. That console required consumers to go to a legit Nintendo retailer and have the game burnt to a cartridge directly from Nintendo's servers. This made piracy a little more difficult and the fact that Nintendo used cartridges further complicated matters for pirates.

 The Wii however is far easier to pirate and in China people are so used to buying cheap pirated products they wouldn't likely support Nintendo or any company in the matter who tried to charge them the regular rate. Do to the security breach in China Nintendo will likely hold off all together or come up with a new I-Que idea to try to prevent piracy. Maybe a Wii with a 160-gig hardrive where all consumers are forced to buy games from Nintendo's online store rather then inserting a disk!

I have said for a while that companies need to start selling movies and games in China for $5 to $10 regardless on whether they can make a decent profit in order to get people choose legitimate sources for their movies and games; at the same time the government needs to crack down on pirates in order to give legitimate sources the opportunity to thrive.

Was at a local "swap meet" (PC market) here in Australia, and the chipping guy (there is at least one always) claimed to be doing Wii mods. Didn't look into it.

I would definitely consider modding my Wii - for DVD playback at least.

But... there is every chance Nintendo could do something to "detect" these mods with a BIOS update, and do something very unpleasant... lock out multiplayer, cancel Wii points, disable my VC - or even prevent all multiplayer.

All Wii modding will do is help Nintendo/Wii dominate - it definitely helped the PS2. As long as it doesn't become too rampant that is - Im sure Nintendo can do something to prevent it in future versions.

each modchip works in stealth mode (WiiKey for example)

iam not afraid

btw you are right: modding supports the domination of a system ! i know 2 people who bought a wii because it is easy to mod !