[John1v6]

Just been surfing The Register and came across this:

UK bans Nintendo DS homebrew code installer • reghardware

It appears that it is now illegal to sell or import R4 cards.

This is unfortunate as these can be used for playing legitimate legal homebrew games and legally purchased MP3s on a DS Lite.

Just to make things clear:
I am not a pirate and I do not condone piracy.
I am in full agreement with AV Forum's policy on the subject.

This ruling will of course not affect professional pirates and will only hinder those users who use these cards legitimately.

[grimm]

I agree with what you're saying. There are so many of these in circulation already, so what is the point in making them illegal now? The horse has already bolted!

[The_Wierd]

It's shocking how prevalent these are. At a recent family gathering every one of the kids in my extended family were using R4 or similar cards. All the parents say 'ooh well it's better than them losing the games', but you can bet that none of the games are real backups. The problem is that for a lot of people the games hve no perceived value because they are not real physical objects. Only the console itself is seen as having value.

As you say the horse has completely bolted as far as the DS is concerned, but I imagine Nintendo are keen to set a precedent before release of the 3DS. According to the reports Nintedo are claiming even the shape of the carts and the edge connector is a copy prevention measure, so banning anybody from selling anything the same shape as a DS cart should also protect the 3DS (assuming the carts are the same format).

[breeville]

i believe the only reason the nds is as successful as it is is due to the r4 cards

[caz2005]

Not true I say. The R4 cards didn't launch with the DS. The DS sold well enough for the fact that it's a great piece of kit with fun and original titles.

The problem now is that devs don't like the DS for how easy it is to copy games. Therefore they aren't that many developing for it at the moment and software sales are at an all time low.

This is why (I believe) Nintendo wanted to pursue (pur-"sue", geddit?) the banning of these R4 cards so that something similar doesn't happen to the 3DS.

[mbren26]

Originally Posted by breeville

i believe the only reason the nds is as successful as it is is due to the r4 cards

The R4 cars is/was not the first card available for the DS.

I bought the DS on release and had a card to allow use of homebrew within weeks. The earlier ones used to consist of a cart which plugged into the DS card slot (this circumvented the security side of things) and a old style cart that plugged into the bottom (this was the one that you put the mem card into).

I used mine to play backups of the games i owned, and also to play mp3's, read ebooks, watch videos etc.

I dop believe like yourself that the success of the DS is due to these DEV cards/carts. Just a shame that some people will only use them for piracy.

[G a f f e r]

Do you know what? As much as I love homebrew on the DS, I find I'm using it less and less for that.
I mainly play MarioKart DS.
The biggest homebrew use for me was the C64 emulator of which development is as slow as continental shift ....so it's never become as polished as it could've become.
Doom 2 is the only saving grace and most of the other homebrew I'm just not using enough.
Even the arcade stuff is being used less often.


For movies/videos I use the iPhone, books - the iphone, mp3s - the iphone, er..... telephone calls - the iphone .

So if I wanted to pursue homebrew even more, there are better alternatives out there (e.g. Dingoo for arcade emulation).

With the above in mind, Nintendo has done the only thing it can imho. It needs to stamp out piracy and if this is what's needed then so be it .
I can certainly live with no multimedia capability and only games as I have other things for the audio/video side.

It also hasn't stopped me being first in queue for the 3DS .

I'm pretty sure determined pirates will always try and find ways to circumvent anti-piracy so an outright ban was inevitable...let's see how it develops (if it improves the software library both in scope and size (which is already great) then I'm all for it).