14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo has had quite a big problem with piracy on it handheld console because of the wide spread of the infamous R4 cartridges. These devices permit the easy insertion of an SD card that contains pirated games leeched from the Internet. Recent reports show that the portable video game industry suffered massive losses because of this phenomena and will continued to do so if it isn't stopped.
The announcement of the Nintendo 3DS during the Electronic Entertainment Expo was extremely well received and a recent interview conducted by Computer and Videogames with Ian Curran, the vice president of THQ's global publishing division, seems to indicate that it may be all over soon for pirates, as Nintendo has looked closely on the problem and may have solved it.
“What excites me even more [than 3DS games] is that there's technology built in that device to really combat piracy,” said Curran for CVG. “The problem with the DS market in the last few years, particularly with the DS Lite, is that it's just been attacked by piracy. It's made it almost impossible to shift any significant volume. The DSi combated it a little bit, but the 3DS has taken that a step further.”
He continued to comment that this brings good tidings for the industry outfits that do want to invest in the high potential of the 3DS platform. “Therefore the opportunity for people to invest more in product development [on the system] and bring more 3DS products to market comes out of that. It's going to probably cost us more to do it all in 3D - so we want to make sure we get a return on our investment when we do it.” As Curran says, justifying the much higher 3D production expenses will be hard, given the bad reputation Nintendo's handheld consoles have regarding piracy. Nintendo needs to assure the third parties that this new iteration of its dual-screen mobile device is piracy proof to have the big library of games it has promised since the its unveiling.