This thing will be cracked within 3 months of its release. All they are doing is cutting out the middleman... who will probably find a way to make their flash carts still work.

Demonbird

Nintendo prints money, who cares about piracy? Why would we pirate games if we are spending that much for a DSi anyways?

shittorainbow

Piracy is not scary, Martyn, not at all. It is, in fact, like sex: it's tempting, you're a bit scared on your first time, you may even do something wrong but when you get the experience it just feels better and better.

Mayu-mayu

I'm not so sure... Much like with the PSP, I'm guessing that piracy would be more dependent on firmware hacking.

Then again, as we've seen with the Wii and PSP, said firmware hacking isn't too tough in most cases. So it wouldn't surprise me to see direct SD card homebrew/piracy within a couple of months of the DSi's release.

MrPerson

Well obviously it isn't going to be as easy as dragging and dropping ROM files onto the SD card. Nintendo will have measures in place to prevent that...

It's possible that someone could hack this, but at that point it's no different than the R4 and goes above the brain of your average consumer. I'm sure piracy will still exist, but it's not going to be any more widespread than it is now.

x3sphere

The introduction of the SD slot on the DSi will prove extremely interesting in the future development of the M3/R4/etc. projects. If those OSes can be re-engineered to not require a cart to work, then woe be to their manufacturers. However, I'm sure the DSi will still need to read something in the DS cart slot to work properly. The SD slot will probably work with the M3/R4 as additional storage.

Lemon Goo

@PhilipVanLuke:
Keep in mind though. They are letting you download full games to play. It does have access to the full DS processing and gaming power.

KuromanKuro Live and PSN

It could encourage it but on the other hand releasing a new DS with extra security is one way to try to block the R4 and pals. Seems like they haven't had much success so far in slowing down piracy with their current firmware revisions.

[wiki.pocketheaven.com]

doobymoo

@Brian Crecente: I think you should check some resources. A lot of other places are saying it's got two cameras. The inside one is .3 and the outside one is 3.0

[www.1up.com]

[news.cnet.com]

Deft_One

@Poo_and_Weeeee: Spain != Europe?? you have to be kidding me!!
Dude, less games and Kotaku and JUST a bit more geography and studying.

IGC

I don't put anything past the talented hackers who manage to find a way, however I doubt this will be a large concern.

daschupa

Well, you could pirate anything that's got a hole these days.

Xavior

Pirates are going to pirate no matter what you throw their way.

TRT-X

@HikariOblivion: Fricken hell, ignorant Americans no doubt who think of Europe as consisting mainly of the UK.

headcrab

Those who are stupid enough to buy a DS in the first place, will be too stupid to know how to pirate games anyways. So it's all good.

7raczyk

I don't know, COULD IT?

I'm more worried about whether or not cyclo will still work.

xybur

@mshimer5: thank you for covering that point. Its true so much of the time the people who complain about megapixels don't seem to understand the importance of the lens and indeed the post-processing in the devices they use.

This camera from what I can gleen is more about uses for gameplay (might be wrong?) and if this is the case then it could be very exciting indeed. For all that devs have not necessarily capitalised on the unique interface for the wii - they sure as hell have for the ds. Now they have a new toy to work into their game design this could be a great time indeed.

elronathon

Fuck I thought this place would keep the lid on that, now Nintendo's going to do a full revision on the new DS!

Brlito

@photoboy: Exactly, I think the paradigm you just described is easy enough for anyone interested, but could potentially take more steps than existing methods. Other than copying the necessary shell files on a Micro SD card, the R4 is no more difficult than finding ROM images.

All this makes me really wonder about the "Secure Digital" name of the SD.

tkshredder

Anything that allows storage = yes.

휘성

In order for pirating to become rampant, it couldn't be rampant in the first place. I think the SD slot just poses another route for pirates to play.

The real atrocity is the battery life.

William Killer Shatner

I don't think this will make piracy easier than buying a flash card. The DSi isn't going to run roms out of the box from the SD slot, so in order to get the DSi to boot roms from there it will require a hack to the firmware. Once you've hacked the firmware you need to flash it, which on older DS models requires shorting a contact in the battery compartment. Plus you will need some sort of flash card to perform the first firmware update or someone will need to crack Nintendo's encryption to sign a firmware update as legitimate.

Next, the code in DS games will contain memory calls to the DS card slot, so even if you could get the DS to boot a ROM from the SD card, the game code would be making calls to load data from the empty DS cartridge slot. Someone could release a patching tool that reroutes all references to the SD slot, but it's a pain in the ass patching roms before you transfer them and trivial for each new game release to break.

I could see flash cards getting firmware upgrades to read ROMS off the SD card, but I don't see the SD slot being an easier entry to piracy for your average user.

photoboy

Could The DSi Encourage Piracy?

...I certainly hope so :( Nintendo's been a little TOO successful lately. Nothing like a visit from good'ol Mr. Failure to give a company some perspective in consumer loyalty. Seriously, announcing a new product with dropping the price on its predecessor? Does Nintendo want me to bring the jar of Vaseline to my own anal-rape event?

okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under)

@Slothboy: Please stop.

MCWHAMMER

@PhilipVanLuke: That would limit the functionality of the SD slot though, sacrificing some of it's utility. I'm getting ahead of myself and thinking the new SD slot could be used to encourage downloadable content expansions to games.

[ZTF]

@Poo_and_Weeeee: Actually, it is in Europe. But it's not part of the UK.

HikariOblivion

@Brian Crecente: .3!? i thought it said 3. wtf nintendo, my PHONE has a 2 megapixal camera and its smaller and cheaper than this.
w/e, keeping my Lite, i still play a lot of GBA games...

aspasticninja

Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me!
How I love my DSi
I get SD cards at Best Buy
Downloading games makes Iwata cry
A pirate's life for me.

Slothboy

All I know is that the battery life looks like it will be lower across the board, so DS Lite it is :D

PSP-2000 w/ Extended life battery + DS Lite = getting close to 24 hours of portable gaming on a single set of charges.

Ken

It wont be any easier than it allready is, come on nintendo isnt totaly stupid, the arcitecture will be designed to keep the SD slot totaly seperate from the game playing hardware. it will only have physical access to the MP3 player and the camera. there will be no physical way for the main Ram to have access to whats on the SD slot.

PhilipVanLuke

I think Nintendo will have thought of this and put in measures against it. Obviously. They've been complaining non-stop about the R4 for years.

It'll get cracked though of course, but like whats been said already, piracy on the DS just now is v v easy.

Spidery_Yoda

@UmayHelle: .3 isn't that crappy? Really?

Brian Crecente

I'm tired of everyone crying over how crappy the camera is or what not. Everyone is quoting the megapixels as evidence that it is a crappy camera. I got news for all of you. If you put a 300MP camera in the DS with that lens, it would still be a crappy camera. If you put a 300MP camera in any of your cell phones it would still be a crappy camera. MP is not everything. All of these mini cameras in the DS, cell phones, iPhone, etc., are just as crappy as each other, because the lens (the most important part of the camera) is crappy. So who cares if it is .3 MP, it will be just about as good as the best cell phone camera.

Now on topic: I would be surprised if Nintendo didn't do something to the DSi to disable the R4. However, I would be just as surprised if a hacker doesn't figure out a way to play pirated games on the DSi within weeks of its release.

mshimer5

@hibikir: It's actually still pretty easy to get a flash card in the US. A quick search on Google gives me hundreds of listings, and I know a bunch of private stores around my area that sell them.

[ZTF]

Encourage piracy? Nah.. well, maybe. Depends if there's a PSP Firmware 1.00-esque wide-open exploit.

But it may block the exploit the current flashcarts use to boot, now that they have Nintendo's attention.

HikariOblivion

@TheFamous1:

Because they've actually gone crazy.
See: this year's E3.

sanzen

I just want to know why they even bothered adding in a camera if it's .3 MP. What the hell is the point? My cell phone has 3 MP.

TheFamous1

Suburban Housewives?

Must be on the west coast...

Edge of Blade

I doubt it'll help or hinder the current situation, you can still get R4 carts and the like very easily and pirate away to your heart's content, having a SD slot directly into the machine, rather than going through a purpose-built DS cartridge isn't going to change anything.

I expect, in fact, that it would be harder to get homebrew software and everything running through the built-in slot than it is now to run it through the R4 cartridge.

sanzen

Fahey's comment hits it right on the head. Pirating on the DS is insanely easy already. The inclusion of an SD card slot might only obviate the need to buy an R4DS, but otherwise won't make it fundamentally easier to pirate DS games than it already is.

MSUSteve

It's the custom bios and hardware on the pirate cards that allow them to function like they do. They are not the same as just an SD card.

Tyrannical

@hibikir: Spain != Europe.

Poo_and_Weeeee

COme one Kotaku, the camera is no that crappy! And i think it will only make them worse. All someone has to do is to figure out how to boot a DS game off a Normal SD card and kiss DS game sales goodbye. But imore hope some one gets GBA Emulator and Games to boot off a SD, that would make up for the lack of a GBA slot.

UmayHelle

But but but only people who wouldn't buy the games in the first place pirate, so it doesn't make a difference right?

*roll*

mva5580

At least in the US it's not all that easy to get a flash card compared to Europe. I took a trip to Spain last summer, and they were selling R4s and DSTTs at news stands! I saw at least 30 stores that advertised the carts in their storefront, all in one city.

hibikir

@TRT-X: And it seems NOT having DRM will stop them. Galactic Civilization 2 anyone? No?

Eranmane

"I'm sure the device will have a wider appeal, but most people I know who have a DS Lite tend to already have a phone and MP3 player with similar functions. Many manufacturers tend to be chasing the nirvana of having 'one device to rule them all' and I'm not sure that the DS's screen resolution - and camera resolution - puts it into an area where it can compete, say, for web-browsing."

Thank you, super awesome all knowing Team17 guy.
You understand completely.
Now go and PAY the W:A maintenance team. I mean, I know they offered to work for free, but they're too cool for that.

Eranmane

@Mommar:
That makes sense, but Spain != All of Europe would have been more clear.

Mommar

Man, whats with the piracy scare? If people are going to want to pirate, nothings gonna stop them. SD slot or not.

Altima NEO

There's not particularly a lack of sales for the DS; it may not be something they're all too worried about, heh.

Poojipoo

@Edge of Blade:
How would that be a West Coast thing? There are suburbs and housewives all across the country.

Mommar

@headcrab:
Yeah, don't let the hyperbole go too far. It takes a special brand of clueless/stupid to think Spain isn't part of Europe. I'd wager this person is in the single-digit minority here.

Mommar

My god, people, the EXTERNAL CAMERA is THREE megapixels. The INTERNAL one is .3. -_-;

Kia

OR you could look at it another way to meaning you can now sell your games online and not get fleeced by Gamestops used games business, which likely costs any developer more money than straight up piracy.

Laho

@tkshredder: I'm not sure I follow. When a rom image of a PSP game is ran off a MS there doesn't seem to be much of a problem. likewise, when I run other types of roms from the PSP is doesn't do anything but play the game. Except when the PSP crashes and I have to restart it. I don't think it would be very hard for someone to make a DS rom run on an SD card. But it doesn't really matter, it will be hacked and more functionality will be added. That is the way the cycle works. The only way around it would be to make a completly new item and then never release it. Then again, I'm sure that would be hacked before it was even off of the assembly line.

Cochese

Its /so/ already cracked

DiGiC

@xybur: lucky you. i have a g6 lite, so with no gba slot on the DSi, i wont be able to even use it. i guess now is a good time to upgrade to an m3. er....i mean piracy is wrong! homebrew all the way!

bigman88zz

@IGC: What I'm saying is Spain isn't the whole of Europe. Spain is one country of many.

Poo_and_Weeeee

Yar har fiddle-dee-dee - you are a pirate!

Toastbusters

Game companies don't encourage piracy, why would they? They will probably attempt to block piracy as much as they can but at the end of the day you can only do so much. The SD expansion slot is a great idea, not innovative, but very useful and will extend the life of the system.

rudeskata

nintendo has to be a little more pro-active and not rely on litigation afterwards. hearing about some average person getting sued for $100,000 doesn't increase good will. i picked up a wii last night and 2 hours later it was playing DVDs. let's see a little fight, ninty, but with some forethought.

mister_shh

@mshimer5: My cell phone has a camera that's more or less equivalent to that. Looks fine to me. Then again, my eyesight isn't all that great. Or at least, I can enjoy something without it looking equal to or better than real life. :P

I think the camera will actually have more application in non-gaming ways, believe it or not. I can see it being used for 3 things: There's the potential that it could be used as a price checker in some stores (take a picture of the barcode, get a price!); translation, as in, if you go to Japan, perhaps you'd bring along a DS card that would allow you to take pictures of symbols for translation; and finally, other types of identification. Whether it be for an encyclopedia application, or using a landmark to identify your current location, I believe these are valid uses.

... Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not against these applications. Also, I don't believe they're the only ones we'll see. I just think they're possible, and would likely be real applications (although likely Japan-only... how many grocery stores have wifi or DS Download stations outside of Japan? :P)

The thing I'm interested most in over this is the DSiShop thing... I wonder if we'll get some downloadable GBA games that way...

Takara_Kitsune

@Slothboy:
No, keep going. Get in at least three more verses before lunch!

Demonbird

@

Cochese

I bought a Edge for the sake of the homebrew stuff and developing DS games myself. I've actually bought 3 DS games in the past month. So no, not all flash cart users are flaming pirates.

CecilTheDarkKnight

Remember when Flash Carts cost an Arm and a leg?

When it was an exclusive club for the technically endowed?

I sure do.

Trygle12

@mshimer5: nonetheless... it's still pretty crappy. my iphone camera is pretty crappy. my webcam is pretty crappy. my canon powershot sd600 is pretty crappy.

now what nintendo seems to be doing (at first glance) is to take up pocket space of today's consumer (as opposed to living room space). my pockets currently consists of my iphone and ds or psp (so nintendo already successfully takes some of my pocket space). if i want to have a camera for general application, i'm going to pull out my iphone... not the dsi (if i had one). if i want music, it'll be the iphone. it doesn't have to be the iphone either. it can be an mp3 player or some pocket camera/cellphone camera you have. if i were playing a game, it'd be kinda lame to have to turn it off or take the time to exit the game to boot-up the camera and snap a photo of something that may not be around that long.

the point is... unless the music functionality and camera can be integrated to add to the gaming experience, i see little point in nintendo going this route, however, i can see potential in integrating a camera with a game for the ds (of course, at that point, you're ostracizing the pre-dsi owners).

i guess we'll see how it goes.

phrequency

1 - Maybe with a firmware hack, like the PSP.
2 - But why bother when you can crack it wide open for the cost of a game? Homebrew isn't easy on the Wii yet.

fuchikoma

Hmmm...

I still play GBA games, I don't take pictures. MP3 files on my DS don't really do much for me either. Slight reduction in battery life. My DS is still in excellent condition, no "upgrade" for me.

captainapplesauce

Could The DSi Encourage Piracy?

Could eating the wrong kind of fruit turn you gay?

Could reading Kotaku make your brain rot?

These are the questions we need to be asking.

kiigan

how can it open the doors for rampant piracy when you can already play 99.9 percent of ds games with a card? how much more open to piracy can you get? will it be able to play pirated games that haven't even been created yet?

moominsean

@Tyrannical: The system would only access certain files that the DSi could read, probably like mp3s, jpegs, whatever format DSi games come in. So I agree, they'd need to like put a chip or mess with the software in order to make the SD card homebrew/pirated games-enabled.

Besides, it's easier for people to just buy an R4. However, I assume the American Club Nintendo is Nintendo's attempt to keep piracy lower over here.

DMC-Man

@okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under): So you're saying Nintendo should fail because...they're successful?

Jonn

@Brian Crecente: I wish people would stop complaining about [insert any gadget here] having a "crappy camera" or "only [number] megapixels?!". If you're the type of person who likes to take good-quality pictures at a moment's notice, you carry around a real camera with you, you don't rely on a device. The megapixels in devices are good enough to take pics on the fly.

Seinosuke

I Have a DS lite, and a Game 'N Music card. I have NES, SNES, and Gameboy ROMS already. How is this new DS going to contribute to piracy any more than the rest of the previous DS's?

Mikebrown

Think about it this way. Nintendo will sell more hardware and brain trainers. Game publishers will sell more games via the game store (I really hope there are goddamn demos). R4 team will sell eventually sell new cartridges once it's cracked. Everybody is happy.

Fabrice

I'll gladly hang out with my Lite, they can have fun with this lil' project of theirs.

Jayl3w

@Demonbird:

Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me!
We don't have to sail the seas
to find the precious ROM's we need
"Use a DS Lite?" Oh please...
A pirate's life for me.

Slothboy

For better or worse, even if they fix the new DS for the current generation of "homebrew" devices, like the R4, which may or may not even be possible, people will find another way.

Luziphir

@kiigan:

1) Encourage, no. Enable? Yup!

2) Only if its a banana.

3) Obviously. :)

Bonkerjerks

@mva5580: An anecdote, I know, but the only people I know who pirate are people that wouldn't game without piracy. Music, I think, is a different matter. All the music pirates I know would buy the music they download. People that pirate things tend to not be the kind of people I hang out with, though (not because I filter for them; we just tend to have different interests), so I don't have that many data points.

shimage

@kiigan:
What was your purpose of posting? Unless you have something to say on the topic, please refrain from posting.

I don't quite know how hacking works, but I do know this: if there is a device on the market, it will be hacked. Period. An SD slot or not, it will be hacked to play all the old NES games, and ROMs of current DS titles.

Lazlo

@TheFamous1:

That WOULD have to be a pretty shitty camera then.

Noble-Asthmatic

@aspasticninja: Don't get too over yourself about your camera phone. Although this has been said often enough before, some people don't get it: The pixel count of a camera says absolutely nothing about the quality of the photos, heck it doesn't even always give you an idea of the kind of CMOS sensor used. You can't judge the quality of a precision optical system with one number.
I have a cheap mpeg4 camcorder that boasts with something rediculous like 10 MPixels.

The truth is simply that no solid-state optics camera is going to be able to rival even some of the cheapest of normal Point and Shoot cameras.

3 megapixels is definately more than enough for any solid state camera on a handheld device.

Kotakufan777

I think the idea is that if Nintendo starts to move towards downloadable content for Wii/DS, they will be affected more by piracy, as the Wii's Virtual Console and DS games now have.

I suspect that they have new protections in place.
I honestly hope that its better than the gamecube->wii protection, because the wii was hacked easily because of Nintendo leaving holes from the gamecube era.

Dantarion

@Dantarion: Why do you hope for more protection?

The Wii and DS hacks have also paved the way for a bunch of "homebrew" software development, which, to me, is a wonderful thing.

scrapeape

@shimage: But you see, this is the fundamental problem with this argument which is exactly why I posted this comment.

How can you POSSIBLY know that those people wouldn't buy it if they couldn't get it for free? All we ever do, for whatever reason, is take it on some sort of ridiculous "goodwill" from pirates when they say "I wouldn't buy it anyway, so what does it matter?"

Give me a freaking break.

It's all of these people who say this, or accept this answer, those are the people who will start pirating console games when it becomes easy to do. And then they'll show their friends how to do it. And then those people will read about it on the Internet. And then all of a sudden you've got a million people pirating Halo 5 or GTA VI but hey, they wouldn't have bought it anyway, right? As I said before, give me a freaking break.

People pirate because it's FREE, and because there is no accountability for what they do. When people use this "they wouldn't have bought it anyway" excuse, I just want to punch a hole in the wall. How you can POSSIBLY quantify that is beyond me. How can you possibly know who would and wouldn't pay for something when their other option is free?

Apply that "logic" to ANY other consumer product in the world, and you tell me how well it works out. How many people would just buy a car if there was a way of stealing one without risk? Or groceries? Stealing Cable/Satellite TV?

It is such an unbelievably stupid cop-out answer to a problem that has no solution, and that's why people use it.

I can't wait until console piracy is as easy as PC piracy is. I really can't. Then all of you people who use this excuse can watch console game sales all of a sudden magically dwindle when it's easier to get something for free rather than paying $60 for it, and tell me those people wouldn't have bought it anyway.

People who use this "reasoning" are blind. Totally blind.

mva5580

like you can pay someone to mod a PS2 or other consoles, people will start offering mods for the DSi.... essentially, they'll just pop in their flashcard, open up the DS and flash the DS with some custom firmware that allows people to run .nds though the SD card slot.

however, for people who already own a flashcard, it will be irrelevant.

Magapower

@mva5580: I've always seen the problem in the reverse, but for exactly the same reasoning as you. The games industry assumes that every game downloaded is a lost sale. This is equally as difficult to quantify and frankly is is just as implausible if only for the reason that few hardcore pirates would have the income to actually purchase all their ill-gotten gains. There are those who claim they wouldn't have bought what they downloaded anyway, and it's reasonable to believe at least some of them are being honest when they say that, but I've no doubt some are simply saying that as an excuse too.

It's unlikely the reality of the situation will be especially near either extreme. I do think though that the industry wastes a lot of time and effort on people that aren't their paying customers. It's also clearly a case of management overriding the advice of their tech people since no one who actually understands current encryption theory would advocate it as a viable protection mechanism for use in the way DRM works.

MattB

Im with you Fahey, it doesnt really make any big difference does it?

HELLSRIDER

Nintendo will combat piracy by making the DSi take photos of your pirate ass and sending them to Reggie.

hagridore

Hell of course it will! A friend of mine is already dreaming of ROMs on his SD cards... OK he has already his R4 and a DS.

Garo

@7raczyk: Fanboy trolling AND a complete failure to grasp reality all in one post. Enjoy those vowels while you have 'em.

I have a co-worker who figured out the R4 and he doesn't even own his own DS. It's his kid's.

beeporama (brian.j.parker)

@okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under): And you're saying that you would rather have Nintendo fail based on something they can "blame" rather than as a result of the business decisions you disagree with? Hope instead that Mr. Failure comes visiting in the form of the new hardware failing to sell.

I love the sense of entitlement that Nintendo owes you a price cut every time they do something new. Protip: if you don't like it for the price, don't buy it.

beeporama (brian.j.parker)

Hey. Nintendo may be onto something here. By allowing standard SD cards to be used, and when homebrewers figure it out and create their own DS lite hacks to run emulation...It's now unfair competition against R4 and M3! They'll be out of business in no time!

ChaiThai

@MattB: Oh I get what you're saying, as always the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Look, my main issue is having to hear people fundamentally argue FOR others who are stealing things.

Yes, it bothers me to hear companies endlessly play the piracy card as the be-all-end-all as to why PC games don't sell as much as console games. I get it.

But as someone who just has a hard time getting past morals, ethics, and just doing what is right, I have an infinitely more frustrating time having to listen to people in whatever way they can defend the act of stealing something that they know they should be paying for.

mva5580

well...and you can hate me...if I get one..i'm going to use the SD for GBA...

Vecha

I hope so

mpar

@okenny :) ...building...

Come on man. That's a bit much.

synapticflow

@TheFamous1: They have two cameras. The one on the outside is 3.0 MP and there's one on the inside where the microphone is on the DS Lite that's 0.3 MP. Apparently that inside one will be used for games somehow

robbo_the_hood

@beeporama (brian.j.parker):

Yep, I'm definitely a fan boy with my 0 PSPs, Playstation 3s and entire arsenal of Sony products. I have witnessed simply just too many people that own a DS to ever have a thought for a second that they would be able to figure out such a portable gaming system. Your co-worker doesn't technically own one, thous proving my point a bit more.
P.S., half of this is sarcasm.

7raczyk

Honestly, It shouldn't. If anything they'll add some type of hardware level modification that makes flashcarts unusable. Then that'll get hacked. Then it won't matter.

GexX2

"a feature that was some worried that the DSi might make rampant DS game pirating even easier."

uh... english please?

sn1per420

Eh, as things move towards digital distribution, piracy will become easier and easier. Eventually all games will be downloaded, free to play, and ad supported, giving pirates no outlet for...well pirating. That or next-gen, the licensing fee will be even steeper because of MORE over-advanced hardware that is sold at a massive loss, and so the licensing fee for the games get a bump upwards, so console games will be 70$, which will drive people away from them. This will drive them closer to downloadable games, and eventually the companies will adapt by releasing games on download only, removing the per-disk licensing fee.

Talleh

@last_dread: ridiculous* i know i know, please ignore other errors

last_dread

WHY THE FUCK IS IT STILL SQUARE?
im sorry to shout but honestly this is fucking rediculous...i had the old ds and it was uncomfortable and fat...sold it for 50$ and got a lite crimson for 150..it was lighter but it just doest fit in my hand, it bothers my goddamn palm if i play for more than 10 mins. Fuck nintendo

last_dread

@mva5580:

I used to pirate games quite a bit. Buying games just seemed financially irresponsible when you could easily get them for free. I told myself I couldn't afford to buy games, and I'd start buying games when I graduated from university and had more money.

Then, a few years ago, a friend of a friend was busted for large-scale piracy and ended up being arrested. I started thinking about what I had been doing and stopped pirating games.

Guess what? I started buying games, and I haven't stopped.

My excuse had always been that I couldn't afford to buy games, and that I wouldn't be playing them anyway if I hadn't pirated them. But I realised that this was nonsense. Even as a student, I could easily afford a game or two per month. If I raided the bargain bins for older games, I could afford more.

Pirates are just talking bullshit in an attempt to justify that they are cheapass bastards. They need to be called out on it every time the start sprouting their crap.

Marlor

@last_dread:So..they are supposed to change the shape of the system just to make you happy?

Foxstar Sixtail

Admittedly, SD cards are a bit cheaper than microSD, and not needing the SD controller in the "flash" cart would reduce the cost of that somewhat too, but we're not talking about huge differences here. Once cracked, price is really the only difference between an R4 for the DS and a new R4 for the DSi.

The R4 should keep working on DS games in the DSi anyhow; any attempt to stop it would break existing games. On the other hand, the R4 in the DSi might be limited to DS Lite functionality/capabilities.

guspaz

@phrequency:

They probably chucked the cameras in because they only cost a dollar or two and are another selling point to get people to upgrade.

It's another bullet point to go on the box, and it's virtually free. Why not do it?

I'm sure there will be some games that use the cameras... but they will probably be along the lines of "DS Lipstick Trainer". At worst, there will probably be an optional feature in a few games to have a picture of yourself associated with your game profile.

I doubt the camera will become a necessary feature for many games.

Marlor

@robbo_the_hood:

I've heard that they are both 0.3MP. The 3MP thing was apparently a misprint by Wired that got picked up by the media.

In any case, with a lens that small, the images are going to be rubbish no matter what the resolution of the CCD is.

Marlor

I agree that pirating is too easy as is, so it's not something that should be taken any more seriously.

Ryodestined

"Counter the mass piracy"...? Oooh, I'm sooo scared.

+ Watch video

;D

(Favorite scene in that flick.)

Fortyseven

@TheFamous1: I would imagine that they plan on incorporating the camera into the games somehow. Like how the GBA had e-reader that could scan cards and add content. That's really all I can think of, because even cheap modern cell phones don't have cameras that crappy.

It does seem like a stretch. The last thing the DS needs is more gimmicks.

anabbeynormality

you know, it's actually pretty easy to prevent people from using the SD to run games... it's called REALLY SLOW/LIMITED SD ACCESS!

afterall, you don't need that much data streaming if your just storing pictures and music...

Ultrasinc

@mshimer5: Hmm my LG Viewty takes pictures that are not that crappy... :p But I aggree it's more about the lense :p

BanZZaï

With all the DRM crap that's been flying around lately it's kind of refreshing to see Nintendo not eschewing features like this because they could be used for piracy. Probably because they realise how unsecure the original device is so they're just going "what the hey!" and putting in stuff like an SD card that can be used for legitimate purposes.

I still have no desire to buy the DSi though, so long as they don't try and shoehorn the camera into games and I can still play everything on my Lite I'll be fine. I can already get the browser, the DSiWare doesn't seem especially interesting, the battery life sucks, it's less attractive and the camera is as good (bad) as the one on my 5 year old phone.

Odin

@BanZZaï:

The pictures on my Viewty are actually pretty awful. They look fine until you zoom into 100% and see the insane amount of noise reduction which has had to be done to get a high-res CCD to work with such a small amount of light.

What's the point of a 5MP camera if you can't take advantage of the full resolution? The quality probably would have been better if they had used a lower-res CCD. That way, there wouldn't have been all the awful, smudgy noise reduction smearing the fine detail.

With a small lens like phones have, 2-3 MP is really the sweet-spot. The lenses on the DS (particularly the one on the hinge) look even smaller, so 1MP would have been optimal.

Marlor

Hah, an R4 (or similar) will come out for the DSi by December next year. You can bet on that.

surft

@Jonn: In so many words? Yes :|

okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under)

@DMC-Man: All they'd have to do is save their homebrew app with an .mp3 extension, basically.

dowingba

@Kotakufan777: It tells you nothing about the quality of a photo? I beg to differ.

dowingba

@mva5580: Since you post this same thing in every thread, I'll post the same response:

Why do you hate video games so much? Because a hatred of video games is the only reason you'd want more piracy to happen.

Also, it's only "console" people who defend pirates? What?

dowingba

@Talleh: Digital distribution only makes piracy harder. If every game can call home for key checks, @guspaz: I think it's unlikely that hackers will manage to run DS games off the SD slot anyway. Nintendo will have some kind of technical measure to prevent them from doing it, and even if it could be hacked there wouldn't really be much incentive to do so. Most will be happier with the R4 solution.

Kotakufan777

@robbo_the_hood: I'm gonna have to assume that's not true. First and foremost because it doesn't even make sense to have two different camera chips in the device.

dowingba