http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/nintendo-comments-on-esas-special-301-filing/0/19397/?biz=

Nintendo of America today commented on the "Special 301" filing by the ESA with the U.S. Trade Representative. The console manufacturer wants to see a crackdown on piracy, specifically in certain parts of the world. China, Korea, Brazil, Hong Kong, Paraguay, and Mexico were all named as being hotbeds for piracy of Nintendo systems.

"The unprecedented momentum enjoyed by Nintendo DS and Wii makes Nintendo an attractive target for counterfeiters," said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of anti-piracy. "We estimate that in 2007, Nintendo, together with its publishers and developers, suffered nearly $975 million USD worldwide in lost sales as a result of piracy. Nintendo will continue to work with governments around the world to aggressively curtail this illegal activity."

Nintendo outlines the problem below:

OVERALL: Nintendo recommends stronger laws in all countries against the circumvention of technological security measures. Video game pirates have developed DS game-copying devices and modification chips to target the security found in Nintendo's hardware systems and allow the play of counterfeit software or games illegally downloaded via the Internet.

CHINA: China must pursue criminal prosecutions against people involved in large-scale piracy operations. Nintendo works with Chinese authorities, who seized more than 1 million fake Nintendo products in China during the past year. But not one counterfeiter has been prosecuted.

KOREA: Nintendo supports the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, but suggests that it must be ratified immediately to address service providers who are profiting from the uploading and downloading of illegal Nintendo content. Korea is an important market for Nintendo, and Internet piracy is seriously affecting the growth of the video game industry in the country.

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA: Latin America remains a haven for piracy. Evidence supporting this claim includes escalated violence in Mexico against police conducting anti-piracy raids, extraordinarily high tariffs and taxes placed on the sale of authentic video games in Brazil and widespread corruption in Paraguay. During the past year, Nintendo assisted local authorities with more than 65 actions that resulted in the seizure of approximately 230,000 counterfeit Nintendo games in Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay alone. Despite Nintendo's efforts, the piracy levels continued to rise. Nintendo is calling for significant changes to laws and to the enforcement regimes in those countries.

Figures like this are such nonsense. There is no way their loss can be quantified because there's no way of knowing how many people would actually have bought legal copies if pirated ones weren't available.

I agree, many of these people would not have boughten the games they stole. I hate piracy... It jacks up the price for the honest customers.

If I get real bored sometimes, I go online and look for ROM and emulator websites. Nintendo has an email address for piracy, in which you provide weblinks to them of ROM and emulator websites. It was quite fun and interesting. They emailed me back saying that they were thankful for looking on the Internet for those websites and they were ready to take action.

If I were you guys, I would do the same.

BUT...I also want to mention something. My friends and I on Serebii forums need ROMs some of the times. They are pretty helpful. Why? ROMs are a complete copy of a Pokemon game cartridge with the same data and information. There are special programs on the Internet that enable you to sift through the ROM's data. We also made a startling discovery that in the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl games, we found information regarding...Pokemon being traded from the Johto region. This sparked controversy on our forums of a potential remake for the series. So yeah, even though ROMs are bad, they are good for finding secrets within some games.

video games here in Brazil is a very expensive leisure, especially when the video game has been taxed acording to the law

Here are the general prices converted to USD

Ps3 $1600
Wii $900
360 $1400

Softhware for the consoles respectively around $140, $140, $110
It Suckss

 Lol so true, our local gray/black market is called Tepito... and this happens every year...

But the main reason for this (modchip)is price, the Wii cost around $400-$450 dollars in any dept store, you can find it for $350, still is a little overpriced, and to make the things worse, we have a poor gaming culture, is rare to see someone buy original games (This is the result of the PS and PS2 era + modchips), the same goes for the original xbox and the 360...

Cue the onslaught of "NINTENDO HATES HOMEBREW!!" whiners. Fact is, most modchips are used to play pirated games, and this is just further proof.

Back in the 80's and 90's they considered every game bought and sold second hand as a loss. Here in Sweden they tried to criminalize second hand business with Nintendo games. Companies quanitified losses through piracy and other things are pure bull.

Video Games Industry is following the Music industry? Pulling numbers out of whosoever asses.