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“DS Hack Ban Will Reduce Gamer Numbers Even Further”

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With the recent court decision to quash the sale of  DS hack devices, or “majikon”, Nintendo has been celebrating a “victory over piracy”, but voices are not unanimous in supporting the move, with some even suggesting it may hurt Nintendo more than it helps them.

Nintendo themselves claim a 3 billion dollar loss to the piracy…

Quoth a report on the subject by ITmedia:

“On the other hand, there is also a significant “majikon preservation” minority, who say ‘prohibiting sales has gone too far’.

‘There are many who are just backing up their game collections, as well as those running homebrew, so it’s not the case at all that everyone using a majikon is just intent on playing for free.’

Just how many support such views is not clear. There are also those who sound intent on justifying majikon use by whatever means, saying that the ban ‘violates the Unfair Competition Prevention Law’, and is therefore invalid.

‘There are many products with potentially illegal uses still being sold. Why have they only targeted the majikon for restrictions, and not these others?’

‘Makers who don’t publish games which make people want to play so much that they will pay bear responsibility for this.’

‘If majikon are no longer around, gamers will decrease in numbers even further.’”

Nintendo for its part is claiming a loss of 300,000,000,000 yen (or 3 billion dollars) to piracy, doubtless based on the usual optimistic arithmetic of “copies made times RRP”…

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