90% of DS Owners are Pirates

Mr E

I smiled at this... http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/01/31/90-of-ds-owners-are-pirates-not-bloody-likely/
Another case of statistic-pulled-out-of-nether-regions.

In a recent chat with Scotland's The Sunday Post, John Hiller of the ELSPA (Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) warns retailers that the R4, a popular DS flashcart capable of running pirated and unauthorized software, could ruin businesses and the gaming industry. In the scaremongering piece, Mr. Hiller throws out an unsourced statistic: "In America it's thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s."

90% of DS users in the States?? Considering the number in circulation, I'd say 15-20% is pushing it...

AlmightyCushion

Are you sure that guy isn't a comedian because that's one of the funniest things I've read all day. If he's not then he's most likely a simpleton. I doubt it's even as high as 15%.

Killaqueen!!!

I can see the attraction for pirates..it does get lonely out at sea all the time. I wonder what the figure is for a PSP..

witnessmenow

thats probably a bit excessive!

zilog_jones

Ha ha ha, oh wow

Cardinal

I wouldn't be surprised and TBH at the prices they charge for DS games, they deserve it.

daedalus2097

Cardinal wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised and TBH at the prices they charge for DS games, they deserve it.

Eh?

Okay, I know I'm not in the States, but I know I reckon around 20 people with DSes, two of which have R4 carts. That's about 10%, and they'd be people like myself who are actually into that end of it. The amount of kids I see with them is huge, and I doubt very much the average 8 year old is pirating games...

sprinkles

Americans are far too dumb to cop on to something so illegally brilliant such as the R4 (for homebrew only of course). 90% is waaaaaayyy off the mark imo. Nintendo may as well just stop selling DS's :rolleyes:

Cardinal

daedalus2097 wrote: »

I know I'm not in the States

The carts are a lot easier to come by in the US, so it follows that most people would have them.

sprinkles wrote:

Americans are far too dumb

Sad that people continue to think like this. Your average American probably has a better grasp of the free market than Irish people. They know that something is only worth what people are willing to pay, and if things are over priced, they'll do something about it. Unlike Irish people who just sit back and accept it. Makes sense that they've all copped on to R4s.

djsim

Pirating on the DS, well I never............:D:D

Retr0gamer

Maybe he means 90% of the DS's audience are grog swilling, sea chanty singing, peg legged, parrot keeping swine of the high seas?

Star Lord

Yarrrr, that he might!

Mr E

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Maybe he means 90% of the DS's audience are grog swilling, sea chanty singing, peg legged, parrot keeping swine of the high seas?

What if you don't drink, can't sing, you're athletic, and hate animals?

norrie rugger

I can categorically demonstrate that the level of pirates is decreasing

red_fox

Mr E wrote: »

What if you don't drink, can't sing, you're athletic, and hate animals?

Then you're one of the 10%

Noelie

Perhaps he wrote the artical about the PSP, but sony paid him to replace PSP with DS.

sprinkles

norrie rugger wrote: »

I can categorically demonstrate that the level of pirates is decreasing

Are you saying that the increase in carbon emissions is killing pirates! Someone get Al Gore on the phone

sprinkles

Cardinal wrote: »

Sad that people continue to think like this.

*cough*joke*cough*

Cardinal

Racism is funny now?

Royale with Cheese

Racism's always been funny

sprinkles

Cardinal wrote: »

Racism is funny now?

sorry Mr. FunPolice, I'll refrain from making any un-pc comments in the future...

As I think of it though - where's you statistics that the Americans have a better grasp of the economy that us Irish. Judging by the fact that they're now hurtling towards a recession I'd say we've the upper hand!

FruitLover

120% of game pirates are child-rapists!!

Cardinal

sprinkles wrote: »

sorry Mr. FunPolice, I'll refrain from making any un-pc comments in the future...

As I think of it though - where's you statistics that the Americans have a better grasp of the economy that us Irish. Judging by the fact that they're now hurtling towards a recession I'd say we've the upper hand!

Oh, you think we'll be fine do you? Where'll we be when the American multinationals pull out and we can't even drop our own interest rates because europe wont let us?

You should refrain from such comments. It shows ignorance. You wouldn't be so quick to defend someone had said all blacks are stupid instead of all americans are stupid, would you?

AlmightyCushion

FruitLover wrote: »

120% of game pirates are child-rapists!!

That's why they are pirating ds games. Gone are the days when you get a child into the back of your van with sweets. No now you need the latest ds games. What has our country become?

slave1

yeah yeah, the likes of Nintendo know that a certain portion of their customers are going to hack their devices, that's life, let's not forget there's a fair proportion out there that will only buy a DS if it's hackable, there are two reasons I have a Wii and a DS, wiifree and r4

sprinkles

Cardinal wrote: »

Oh, you think we'll be fine do you? Where'll we be when the American multinationals pull out and we can't even drop our own interest rates because europe wont let us?

You should refrain from such comments. It shows ignorance. You wouldn't be so quick to defend someone had said all blacks are stupid instead of all americans are stupid, would you?

only 20% of our exports are to the US - it will hurt us more than the rest of the EU but it won't kill us. The construction sector is booming again despite the doom mongerers claiming a downturn... yadayadayada...

in any case lighten the f*ck up. If you don't like my comment (which was in jest and not how I really think about "all americans") then I will be filing you under the narrow-minded pc fun police - the kind of people who run the H&S courses teaching you how to sit in your chair at work properly.

PS: how did I show ignorance and to what exactly?

Retr0gamer

Stay on topic lads and lighten up, the world is gone PC crazy in a very bad way.

mayordenis

Cardinal wrote: »

Oh, you think we'll be fine do you? Where'll we be when the American multinationals pull out and we can't even drop our own interest rates because europe wont let us?

You should refrain from such comments. It shows ignorance. You wouldn't be so quick to defend someone had said all blacks are stupid instead of all americans are stupid, would you?

g'way.

CiDeRmAn

Of course what they always assume of pirates is that every game in their dodgy collection they would, in fact, have bought had they not been such a bunch of rotters.
This statement is, however, nonsense.
Truth is if you aren't paying for it you download everything that pops up on your radar and still end up playing feckin' braintraining that you got with it.
The DS is, like the GBA, GBC and GB before it got a terrible attachment rate, people have two or three games in the main and rarely buy anything else.
Games are too expensive, between 40 and 50 blips for a chart title, and for that money why not just put the tenner to it and buy something for the 360.
When Microsoft are releasing games of the quality of RezHD for around €10 for download on XBLA, why buy ropey conversion of an ip thats had it for €45?
Perhaps with the advent of a Nintendo approved flash cart and the ability to DL games straight from Ninty, the price will drop and you'll see a massive uptake in the games purchased.

We can but hope, Nintendo could certainly use the money.....
Wait,
perhaps not!

Mr E

There were rumours of a Nintendo based flash card last year, combined with a download service which would allow access to a back catalogue of GB/GBC games. Don't know what came of it, to be honest.

PS - whats a blip?

To continue on from this piracy story, it turns out the ELSPA guy never mentioned any figures in his interview, and the Sunday Business Post journalist extrapolated the figure from an article about piracy in Singapore...

Journalists, eh? When will they ever learn?

http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/02/01/elspa-not-all-of-us-are-pirates-after-all/

zilog_jones

My problem with buying DS games right now is that it's near impossible to find any of the good games for sale - in real shops or online - unless the game has just been released, or is one of the really common ones that I've already got anyway (Pokemon, Mario Kart, etc.). Did Contra 4 even get released over here?

sprinkles

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Of course what they always assume of pirates is that every game in their dodgy collection they would, in fact, have bought had they not been such a bunch of rotters.
This statement is, however, nonsense.
Truth is if you aren't paying for it you download everything that pops up on your radar and still end up playing feckin' braintraining that you got with it.
The DS is, like the GBA, GBC and GB before it got a terrible attachment rate, people have two or three games in the main and rarely buy anything else.
Games are too expensive, between 40 and 50 blips for a chart title, and for that money why not just put the tenner to it and buy something for the 360.
When Microsoft are releasing games of the quality of RezHD for around €10 for download on XBLA, why buy ropey conversion of an ip thats had it for €45?
Perhaps with the advent of a Nintendo approved flash cart and the ability to DL games straight from Ninty, the price will drop and you'll see a massive uptake in the games purchased.

We can but hope, Nintendo could certainly use the money.....
Wait,
perhaps not!

Spot on Ciderman. If I did not own my R4 I'd have 4 or 5 games - brain training, Advanced Wars, Geometry Wars, 42Games pack and probably Zelda PHG. As it stands I own 3 of them already

Cardinal

That is such a lame excuse. I have about 10 DS games and I paid for them all. None of them were €45, I imported the majority of them for €20.

sprinkles

I just posted your medal - should be with you soon

I can't find the new Advanced wars for anything under €40 and the same would apply to any new releases.

Kinetic^

People pirate games on their DS 60% of the time, all the time!!!!

thebman

I have over 15 DS games. I got one of those card things but it was crap IMHO.

I found it easier to pay the money. I still won't buy games that are over priced though which is the DS's problem.

The games have maybe half the entertainment (in hours) of a 360 game and cost 45 Euro compared to the 60 Euro or less I pay for 360 games (I know you can pay more for 360 games but I'm not willing to, I'll wait for a price drop).

I stopped buy DS games when I got my 360. Before that I had a Gamecube so I bought DS games so I'd have something to fooking play! They are fun but nowhere near as much fun as Mass Effect, Forza 2 or COD4 so why is the price of the game so high when the development time and budget for their products are considerably lower?

Oh right, people will pay those prices. Well if they are seeing the number of games purchased decrease, maybe people have waken up and they need to reduce the price of games to encourage people back instead of yelling piracy at the first sign of reduced profits.

zilog_jones

brim4brim wrote: »

Oh right, people will pay those prices. Well if they are seeing the number of games purchased decrease...

But they're not decreasing. For every pirate/money-saving importer, there's several thousand CASUAAAALLS who don't know any better when buying Cooking Mama or Deal Or No Deal in their local retailer.

sprinkles

But the point Ciderman was making is that you can get a better produced game on Xbox live for a fraction of the price you'd have to pay to have it on the DS. It's robbery on Nintendo's part - if every game was €20 new then you'd see a lot more games shifted.

sprinkles

sprinkles wrote: »

I just posted your medal - should be with you soon

I can't find the new Advanced wars for anything under €40 and the same would apply to any new releases.

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-ba-49-en-15-advance+wars-70-2hkd.html

Your welcome ;O

Helix

32 million r4ds carts have been sold apparently, which is 50% of ds owners roughly

i dont know anyone who has a ds who doesnt have an r4ds

AlmightyCushion

Helix wrote: »

32 million r4ds carts have been sold apparently, which is 50% of ds owners roughly

Chances are that someone who has a d4 card will have more than one of them so the percentage of ds owners who use them would be lower than that.

Helix

dunno why anyone would need more than one r4 card?

youd need multiple sd cards maybe, but the carts themselves?

AlmightyCushion

Helix wrote: »

dunno why anyone would need more than one r4 card?

youd need multiple sd cards maybe, but the carts themselves?

Sorry I misunderstood what a r4ds cards were. You're right you'd only need the one (unless you lost it or broke it). Where did you hear 32 million? It's really high, I can't imagine that many people would be using them.

Vokes

32 million seems way too high surely? Although I couldn't find any sales figures myself.

Lots of ppl from the R4 thread in Bargain Alerts seem to be buying more than one card, as presents for friends / family.

sprinkles

Deleted User wrote: »

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-ba-49-en-15-advance+wars-70-2hkd.html

Your welcome ;O

Ah - I was searching for Dark Conflict - damn yanks!

36m sounds very high - there are other cards out there so that would put the piracy rate at above 50%

Helix

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article2933237.ece

sprinkles

I read that article before but maybe I picked it up wrong:

In the hands of the 35 million DS users around the world the R4 chip has the potential to deal a heavy financial blow to Nintendo and to the dozens of software developers that make games for the machine.

I took that as meaning - if the R4 card got into the hands of 35m DS owners then it could be a massive blow to Nintendo...

Can't find overall figures but it seems the DS has only (as if it's a bad thing) sold 20m in Europe. Link

Ah, sorry check the old reliable - Wikipedia - 64.79 million world wide.

zilog_jones

I'd be surprised if the large majority of this 35 million are in China, Hong Kong, and other countries where piracy is an everyday occurrance and if they weren't playing games on R4s they'd be buying pirate carts which in turn would be funding illegitimate business, i.e. much worse than downloading games for free off the internet - yeah sure it's still copyright infringement but no one's making a living out of it.

K.O.Kiki

Retraction: ELSPA: We never said 90%

ELSPA wrote:

[John] didn’t quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever. ELSPA would certainly never presume to comment about America or anywhere else outside of the UK.

So there you go.

<more>

don't know about that mad 34 million r4 cards statistic - (maybe Nintendo is bundling an r4 card with a new ds these days...) but I do know that in Sth Korea 800,000 ds consoles have been sold, yet only 500,000 ds games...! They are apparently the worst pirates around tho - I mean who can forget Long Jun Silver - he was some man for the games....

Antamojo

Damn all them 80 year olds and 6 year olds!

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that."