FTA "Since April, Nintendo has seized more than 91,000 counterfeit Wii discs globally."

How does Nintendo go about seizing property??

@Serro: Luigi's vacuum cleaner.

"But shouldn't Nintendo be responsible for making consoles that can't be modded?"
Oh, please.
@debloon: Win

The last time Nintendo did stuff to prevent modding, we got the Gamecube's proprietary discs. I can deal with the modders.

I think their actions are quite reasonable really. If it was my $762 million I'd be fairly peeved.

That $762 mill could be used for development of more (and better quality) titles for the people who always pay for the legit copy of a software.

I don't think we will ever see a console that cant be modded however. It's just a matter of time until someone cracks it every time.

hmmm not surprised. I know 3 friends who have pirated games on their DS's. And 205GTI is right; the money could be used towards making better games.

"Nintendo and its developers and publishers lost an estimated $762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products."

Somehow I doubt they lost that much... most of those folk probably wouldn't have bought most of those games. It's usually not the people that have the money to buy games that do this, instead it's the people who don't have the money.

That's cool they want to stop piracy and all and get back some of their profits ($762 million). It sucks for the mod community and others who participate, but hey, it's illegal.

It's pretty dumb when they pull out numbers like $762 million. They're assuming that these people who pirate the games would have actually bought the games had they not had a modchip.

The fact that modding is illegal is stupid. You purchase a piece of hardware and should be able to do what you wish with it. If one chooses to purposefully use that to circumvent copy protection and steal games, then that person should get in trouble. However, mod chips do have legitimate uses such as homebrewing and importing. I am of the opinion if I want to buy a Wii and turn it into a table lamp then that is my right. This is akin to arresting the makers of BitTorrent because some people use it to steal movies.

Thats a lot of cash. Modders better watch out for the Nintendo special forces. They won't give a second thought to jamming those mod chips up your ass with a wiimote. Nintendo's hardcore

I think the newest Wii is essentially unmoddable. I don't know how they figure out this whole "we have lost millions annually".

If you take away a modders ability to steal, it's not like the motherfucker goes straight and narrow. They usually burn every single game they can get their hands on, regardless of whether they'll play it or not.

A friend of mine bought a modded PS2 in Iraq, got a bunch of games. It stopped working, he hasn't touched a console since. They really aren't losing that much money.

@whitey9: While that is true they're afraid of what happened to the Dreamcast. It was so easy to burn games for that almost nobody bought games and it died.

In the long run, this doesn't really affect much. It's a waste of time and effort on Nintendo's part, because even if you arrest a few dealers, people can still mod their own systems, purchase modchips directly from the makers, etc.

And what the earlier commenters said is indeed correct; most of the time, pirates wouldn't buy the games they download anyway. However, because they downloaded them, if they're good, then they will tell their friends about how good the game is, and their computer-illiterate friends will then go out and buy the game, because they trust the opinion of a guy who has access to all games and would be able to say "hey, this is worth buying."

Piracy should be looked at as free marketing rather than a drain on the market. Look at Halo 2. That sold what, 9 million copies? More? Yet the French version of the game was leaked a week or two early. San Andreas was also leaked early, and sold considerably well. Madden sells out the ass every year, even though it gets easier and easier to pirate.

@soulscremereturns:

Umm, since when? Homebrew is 100 percent legal, mod chips are 100 percent legal. What most people fail to see is this, allow me to break it down..
You can own a gun, as soon as you shoot someone or kill someone its illegal. Same with mod chip, home brew is 100 percent legal, pirate software then you have a 24 hour buffer to destroy that media, unless you own it.

This is stupid, and screw the war on drugs and illegal guns, get those mod chip makers, just goes to show how tax payers money hard at work.

The current chips for the wii doesn't do any homebrew now outside of gamecube homebrewing, so for the wii itself it is mainly about pirating the games..

It does play any region game though, but when they already have the ability to burn stuff with it, why buy all the games?

762 million? And Nintendo gets these numbers how exactly? Do they go into chat rooms and listen to people claiming they'll "just get the mod" and add the list price of the game to the number modders have stolen from them? Do they know exactly how many people that claim to play modded games actually do so? How did they get the numbers of modders who would have purchased the game if a mod hadn't been available versus those who would have never bought the game? Are they also investing in and implementing mind-reading technology?

The Chiip is a Wii modchip you can build from absolutely legal parts purchased for about 80 cents.

I think a big selling point to the non-elementary school DS crowd is the fact that piracy is so simple on that machine.

This reminds me of the whole Napster/Metallica thing, but on a much much much much smaller scale.

Also, isn't that whole "If you own the original, it's legal, or you have to destroy it within 24 hours" thing an urban legend? That just doesn't sound right to me.

So far, the only console that has not been hacked is the mighty PLAYSTATION 3. I'm actually quiet surprised... I thought by summer, it would be hacked for sure, but now coming to 1 year anniversary, and still no ISO loader, no Homebrew, no nothing.

I guess SONY learned the hard way from the PSP.

@SovMish: Yea the PS3 has been hacked, and a company says that they have a mod chip capable of downgrade a PS3 hardware but its still in development...

how is it possible to claim anyone has lost X ammount of dollars due to pirated software? how do you claim to have lost what you never had? and most importantly how do you determine you "lost" that much?

on a side note, i think theres alot of people who pirate software because they don't have the money to play all those games and ironically, they wouldn't be playing them at all if it wasn't for piracy.

And people wonder why Osama Bin Laden hasn't been caught yet.
Yep America, You can go back to bed now. Your Government is working around the clock making sure your kid can't mod his Wii and play all those pirated games.

I cannot sum it up
oh wait...

CRACK > ISO

I woulda wrote shit loads...
but I ain't from America
I am disgusted

what ever happened to those games that loaded and said:
"say no to drugs"

seems the games industry doesn't give a fuqqing pinch about how our societies turn out....

AS LONG AS IT DOESNT HURT THEIR QUARTER EARNINGS

I can guarantee next time they'll be cracking down on ROM owners

While I think mod chips should be legal (it's your console after all), Nintendo has a legitimate gripe with counterfeit games being sold. Check out ebay sometime and have a look at all the dodgy shit from Hong Kong for the DS.

Seriously Homeland Security is doing this shit? Woah I feel fucking safe right now.
God bless America

"$762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products."

Bullshit.
There, I said it. It's the same with music and movies (though movies to a lesser extent).
To claim every pirated version as a legitimate loss is just damn greedy, not even half the people who download something will buy it.

If Nintendo wished to reduce the amount of modded Wii's all they needed to do was not region lock the system.

I will be modding my Wii this winter so I can play US games because Nintendo Europes scheduling department is run by morons.
Nintendo could stop me by employing capable staff at their European office who will ensure games are released quickly and also by ensuring big Japanese titles are released without region locking.

I'm not saying that this would stop piracy all-together but it would certainly remove the temptation for a lot of people whom' like me want a mod-chip for legitimate reasons.

I owned 1 N64 game (could not pirate) and I was the ownly owner in my group. Sony had the playstation, people bought 5-6 games, pirated about 8 more. Everyone had one. Hence the failure of the 64. Pirating games gets the system out there, people fall in love with games and buy legit version of their fav games and game they think are worth it.

The old "We lost x millions" is a fraudulent argument. Even Microsoft admitted to be accepted globally you have to be able to be pirated, without piracy you dont sell as many. Nintendo learned that making piracy of their games too difficult or impossible made them lose out, nearly going bankrupt. Why do you think the Wii was so god damn easy to mod straight up? And now, after its popular and established they are removing the very easy mod step?

Ahh well Ode to Australia, land where we are always so screwed by international companies out government made it mod chips legal. We have professional chains of stores just dedicated to their instilations. Reason? We pay twice as much for every game as anyone else does, just because we are in Australia.

They claim to have lost $762 million in sales. But really, most of these people wouldnt have bought said games in the first place. So really, while these people get to enjoy a game they otherwise wouldnt have bothered with, Nintendo wouldnt have gained ALL those sales anway.

Still, just going after modchip shops is a going a bit far. I can understand shops that sell illegal copies of games, sure, but just chips themselves?

Just because you don't know what their method for determining how much money they lost in sales is, doesn't mean they don't have a valid method. Of course, that also doesn't prove they do, but its reason enough to not jump to conclusions.

People always try to pull the "they wouldn't of bought it anyways" or the "free marketing" argument, but the truth is - those aren't things a business can rely on to sell their products, merely poorly founded unproven excuses and not guarantees. A business has the right to legally protect their products. This was all carried out through unquestionably legal means - unlike the tactics used by some other organizations.

As for the "America's Tax Dollars at Work" argument, give it a rest. The government is made up of many different sections that carry out many different tasks. This happens to be one of the tasks that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responsible for. Good for them, they did their job.

@Altima NEO:

Wrong the pirates and their enablers constantly admit that if they couldn't pirate they would have to buy the items they pirate.

Mod chips violate the warranty and end user agreements of the hardware. Import players guess what you got software utiliteis or you could buy the foreign hardware like every import orientated website tells you to.

Could you honestly explain why there are ds mod chips or other hardware that claim to remove the ds region coding? There are ps3 modchips and the ps3 is supposed to be region free as is the xbox 360.

You got this thing called renting and trading. Funny how piracy enablers never mention those two alteratives that are more guaranted to not get in trouble with any laws as well as get a more high quality product.

You also seem to be unable to admit that counterfeighted goods are lost sales. Funny that when you actually dig into how corporations tally their money lost to thrift, piracy, counterfitters you actually see they are underestimating the losses by a huge margin.

Console makers need to just bite the bullet and make their systems region free. Modding your console to play legit imports is fine, but if you didn't even have to do that, then the only reason to mod would be to play pirated games.

More systems should be like the DS/GBA and PS3/PSP, and let you play games you bought legitimately regardless of the region you bought them in.

umm.. i'ts highly improbable that nintendo's engineers could make an "unmoddable" system. give hackers something to play with, and they will find a way to break in. whether it is by a hardware or a software means. If nintendo could make a system that's hacker-proof. then they should be hired to make electronics for the government...

it also seems like the majority of people posting missed the multiple articles about nintendo changing the circuit board layout of the Wii to prevent early mod chips from working. it isn't just NOW that they are working to stop the modding... they've been doing it all along.

@Yetanotheruninspiredscreename:

Violating warranties is the owner's perogative, and EULAs are still a legal grey area. The 360 is region locked depending on game, and the majority of games are locked to specific regions. www.play-asia.com has a 360 region compatibility list.

@defferoo:

Also the recent wii discs have firmware updates up on them that brick a modded system. Hehe!!!

But shouldn't Nintendo be responsible for making consoles that can't be modded?

Yeah, and what's with those ass-backwards buffoons forcing us to use grid power? Shouldn't they be responsible for generating perpetual-motion power for their consoles?

This kind of things are only PR, dont you remember PS2 and SONY, SONY didnt care that there where tons of cheap mod chips, cause they already sold 70 million consoles, mods boost sales of consoles, even the PSP still sells well because the homebrew...

@Yetanotheruninspiredscreename: Which is why the mod community has a tool called Brick Blocker which blocks the updates from running in the first place.

All this money spent on anti piracy could be spent on making games. The fact is: people pirate all the time. People who pirate won't suddenly start buying games when they can no longer pirate, they will simply stop playing games altogether.

All this DRM nonsense adds costs to the consumer. It's a losing battle. Hardware makers should just start making their shit region free and stop artificially setting higher prices in different territories. The ability to play games from any region is the number one reason people get into console modding in the first place.

@Roflcopter444:
What do you expect them to do, catch "terrorists"? That's a laugh, they're about as efficient at catching them as they are at spending our tax money. If only we could, you know, spend our money on stuff that is needed, like paying off national debts, lowering the poverty level, getting drugs off our streets. Nah, instead copyright protection is their #1 priority.

Seriously folks, that "24 hours to delete it" thing is a bunch of bullshit. It's illegal no matter what.

"But shouldn't Nintendo be responsible for making consoles that can't be modded?"

Almost anything out there today can be modded, it's pretty hard to make something that can't be modded these days.

@RJG:

"The ability to play games from any region is the number one reason people get into console modding in the first place."

Hmmm, I don't know about that. I think it's about 50/50 to be honest.

Well, I do think that if piracy wasn't possible, people who do piracy wouldn't buy as many games as they are currently pirating (they will pirate tons more than they really want or that they would be able to afford). However, in many cases, people who start pirating stop purchasing games entirely or don't purchase nearly as many, but would probably purchase some games if things were different and purchasing games was the only way to get games. The numbers about how much they lose due to piracy may be overinflated nonsense (and even if it wasn't would be wildly inaccurate as it doesn't seem likely they can get a real accurate measure of how much piracy is taking place due to the fact they conceal their actions due to it being illegal), but that doesn't mean they lose no money due to it.

Somehow, I am not surprised that a bunch of people who wander the internets (or kotaku in particular) would defend piracy...

I swear, you people would fight for anything anti-microsoft, nintendo or sony........

I remember a few years ago that someone finally cracked the Game Cube (or actually noticed that it was there). The exploit was to send commands to the drive that said the disk was legit.

So what does Nintendo to? They leave the same damn exploit in the Wii! If Nintendo isn't going to even try to protect their system then they will have piracy.

If game companies weren't so anal about keeping things localized they wouldn't have these problems. It's about time schools in certain European countries introduce english-classes. Are they worried that english is going to take over their own language or something? I say down with region locking! It's because of region locking that people have to wait months, even years sometimes before they can go out and buy games they've been looking forward to. Completely unacceptable.

@Gantz: how is it possible to claim anyone has lost X ammount of dollars due to pirated software? how do you claim to have lost what you never had? and most importantly how do you determine you "lost" that much?

That's pretty much commonplace in any company or any financial analysis. "Losses" tend to be defined as the eventual value of an object as opposed to the cumulative value invested into it. IE: say the eventual object in question is a $10 wrench and it starts off as a $1 piece of iron. Something goes wrong in the first step of processing that iron and it's no longer any good. You'll never see the official line as having lost a $1 piece of scrap iron; it'll be losing a $10 wrench.

@dead_red_eyes: I'd say that most people BEGIN modding for region free games, but end up converting after the fact for the free stuff.

I don't think game developers and hardware manufacturers realize that the vast majority of players who invest in modchips and the such AREN'T willing to buy the games they "pirate" in the first place.

In fact, half the people I know who bought a PS2 Slim bought it simply because it was easily moddable. Really, this is just another way to generate sales.

I know this sounds crazy, but I have a feeling it's true.

There is so much more to crack down on. The DS flash card stuff is going crazy. <_<