Nintendo DS pirated commercial releases: fact or FUD?
By Barb Dybwad 
posted June 11th 2005 5:13PM
posted June 11th 2005 5:13PM
So this rumour has been swimming about on the interwebs this past week about how piracy groups have cracked the Nintendo DS and leaked commercial games such as Nintendogs and Super Mario 64 onto the web as playable ROMs via 512MB/1GB flashcarts. Most of the news outlets are reporting this as a done deal, though loads of folks in the developer communites are saying it's pure bunk. So what's the real scoop? Is there some evidence out there of this as reality, or is this just hype?
YYYYAAAAA HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo!
i've seen the roms out there, they've been there for a while but they are still unplayable on flashcarts using a passme/wifime/flashme
anybody can put a pirated game on the internet but playing it on portables such and the DS or PSP is completely different.
Yeah, they're real roms - however, they've been confirmed by a lot of people to work only so far with the Neoflash and the XG2005 carts. :)
Are you taking the piss? Fucking GST has been around since the Neoflash was released. There has been 10 releases and currently most are shit. If the fucking RIAA want to lay their foot down, get on EFNET quick! Hope you dont get owned.
So piracy groups want to piss off Nintendo and bring down that Nintendo anti-piracy hammer even more then they already have?
It's not a smart move to piss off a company that has a Italian, a Gorilla and a Elf with a sword as it's mascots...
Sean DL
and an intergalactic bounty hunter
:)
#4 - I'm sure the RIAA won't have any problem with you downloading DS carts. ;)
#4 - Yeah, I heard the RIAA is combining their efforts with the MPAA to lay their foot down on Nintendo DS rom dumping :D
#5 -- hahaha
But then, if you watch their march carefully enough, those cute italians, gorillas and elves are followed by illusive ranks of expensive lawyers.
There's a reason why Nintendo is one of the most profittable companies in the industry eh.
question to number 10
So your saying out of the big three nintendo is still making a profit larger then Xbox and PS2? In my opinion priacy some how increase sales for console. i remember many of my friends having a PS1 and they never bought a single game. and i know alot of people didnt buy there games once they got there system modded, and yet somehow ps1 dominated the market. sometimes i see piracy bringing profits in other ways. i might be wrong, but thats how i see it. i also some how believe that console companies will let a certain level of piracy happen so that people will buy the console thinking they can play games for free, but in the end they will end up buying the games. Nintendo did a great job of proventing piracy from happening on there system to a very small level. seeing this happen, i can see why they didnt get as much people buying the console. only kids(with parent's money) who dont know anything about piracy will be the only one buying them.
yea first off, he said ONE, others being sony and MS, dont here about many others do ya?
and MS doesnt want you to buy a console and not buy games, they lose money on the consoles
SONY on the other hand makes money on PSTwo, so why not?
Nintendo i dunno, but whatever
"i remember many of my friends having a PS1 and they never bought a single game. and i know alot of people didnt buy there games once they got there system modded"
#11:
you have to realize that companies take massive losses when selling their systems. between r&d, advertisment and the price of the hardware itself companies are basically giving away their systems - usually at a loss. the real money is made in games and peripherals. if people are out there playing pirated games the companies are essentially taking a loss even though you bought their system.
ASM is right, it's true that companies make minimal or even no profit when selling their consoles, then, they make it all back by selling games. However, I do agree with the idea that piracy in some cases does help to sell! I know many people who have bought Playstation 2's expecting to never buy another game, but by the time they have learnt exactly how to copy games, bought expenisve equipment and blank DVD's they just end up buying the game anyway to save all the hassle. I do not support the piracy industry because I feel it can be very damaging to honest and hardworking game developers and in the end outrageous prices are never really charged!
Nintendo makes more money on its gaming and consoles then Sony and Microsoft do. They do this on 10% of the market too. Mind you, Sony with there movies, music and electronics make a bit more than nintendo. Microsoft, has windows, and therefore a lot of money.
That being said, its stupid all you people who mention nintendo dropping out of the market, they have bucketloads of profit coming in.
This is partialy due to the cheapness of their console to make, and the number of big hits they make themselves at nintendo (first party like zelda, mario etc.)
They may not control the market but they make so much money that they dont care at all. While sony and microsoft pay the big bucks on advertising, all it does is increase interest in gaming, which benefits nintendo, and they dont have to pay a cent.
Back to the topic at hand, roms would not be good for nintendo, even if they make a lot of money on the sale of the DS. Money is made from all of the games they want to sell you, you spend 150 or so (over 200 in Canada) on the handheld, on time, but in the purchase of the 7-50 games plan on getting, you spend much more. (Im from Canada, so I'm not sure how much games cost in the states, here they are 30-60$ depending on how big budget the game is).
Im not sayin the DS is a cash cow, but with anticipated titles like final fantasy crystal chronicles, metroid prime hunters, (some 2-d metroid that i forget the name of), mario cart ds, bomberman ds, with the promise of VOIP being added to games... not to mention (dont deny it) the eventual release of pokemon diamond and pearl for the DS, which along with Nintendogs will sell millions of the system.
Oh, and following the suit of many people... "I am not a fanboy"... atleast i dont believe myself to be, i have a ps2 and a gamecube (which i play equaly) and i have a ds and a psp (i use the psp more often, but i think i enjoy the ds more, just not the right selection of games yet)
"you have to realize that companies take massive losses when selling their systems. between r&d, advertisment and the price of the hardware itself companies are basically giving away their systems - usually at a loss. the real money is made in games and peripherals. if people are out there playing pirated games the companies are essentially taking a loss even though you bought their system."
13: Good point, and have you looked at the price of a PS1 memory card? People who pirate games surely need a LOT of memory cards. Sony made their money!
PS2 memorey cards even more so, i forgot how much they were until i saw them on sale for 21 bucks, twenty-one dollars for eight megabytes, talk about a ripoff, but sony probably made a good amount of money off of it, because it was required to save the games, but my xbox has yet needed a memory unit :) (o im not trying to compare them, i play xbox twice as much as PS2, just talking about the memory cards)
just to compare tho, my local walmart has a 64 megabyte mp3 player for 20 bucks, a pretty crappy one albeit but try playin mp3s on the PS2 memory card
#12
It would make absolubtly no sence to do that. Companies make a tiny tiny part of their profits on the console, if atall, both the xbox and ps2 were at a loss on consoles. If they sold just the console and the games were free they would go bankrupt.
The main profits are commisions on bought games, piracy means they dont mke these profits. The reason you get so much hardware under the hood for such a good price with the consoles is because they operate at a loss in the knowledge they will make this up in software sales.
The ps3 is going to be relativly piracy free, the harddrive is now confirmed to be optional, and the disks are blu-ray. I dont know about you but i dont have a blu-ray burner lying around. Its may be simple enough to get the games off the disk, but getting them playing on the console is going to be immencely hard atleast for the first year or so of the consoles life.
"just to compare tho, my local walmart has a 64 megabyte mp3 player for 20 bucks, a pretty crappy one albeit but try playin mp3s on the PS2 memory card"
HA! So true.
Microsoft make a profit on each Xbox unit sale, actually... the fact that they were taking a loss was largely a marketing trick from the beginning.
#18 The PS3 may be difficult to hack, but Blu-Ray burning would be the least difficult issue. Anyone with a DVD-burner can burn a DVD, which the PS3 will happily play (First games will still be on DVD, a bit like all the first PS2 games were stil CD). And what about all those I/O devices it holds! (SD/MS stick, HDD slot etc. - plenty of potential!)
I do think Sony might learn a bit about piracy with the PSP, and release the PS3 with at least v.1.52 firmware ;)
saying ps3 is going to be relativly piracy free is just stupidity. Microsoft said xbox was un-piratable when i launched and look where that went.
As for a blue ray burner... you could just rip it with a blue ray drive (they'll be coming with pcs soon enough) to a hard disk and wirelessly ftp it to the hard drive of a modded ps3 when it finally comes around.
I skimmed over the other comments so forgive me if someone already mentioned this, but the ROMs are indeed real, and they are indeed playable.
Brief history:
1. NDS came out. Hackers were left scratching their heads for a while. Then they figured out some nifty tricks.
2. The first ROMs started to make their way onto the 'Net. Roughly the same time, a device called a passme was developed. You stuck a legitimate game NDS card into it, then stuck it into the NDS card slot, then stuck a GBA flash cart into the GBA cart slot. The GBA flash cart had the NDS ROMs and a program called "Magic Key." The passme allowed NDS code to run from the GBA slot. For a time, it only allowed homebrew games to run, untill...
3. The NEO Flash came out. It's still the same procedure: install Magic Key, load the NDS ROMs, stick a game in the passme and stick the flash cart and passme into the NDS. The key difference here is that the NEO Flash allows commercial NDS ROMs to run (as well as the typical homebrews).
I was skeptical at first, since I've used other passme's in the past, until I was able to use it firsthand. I must say, it is awesome. Now I don't have to buy my g... err, I mean, I can make more sophisticated homebrew games for the NDS and expect them to run.
NEO Flash --> http://www.neoflash.com/ (Duh.)
As for the ROMs, if you can't find them, you don't deserve warez.
#18+#20
If you consider that the majority of ps2 games, atleast the desirable ones will be on blu-ray it seems unlikely you will be able to burn many of the games to dvd. Also consider that the data rate of reading a blu-ray disk is rather alot faster than USB, or even alot of hard drives, it may well cause compatability issues when playing a copied game.
Im not saying the piracy wont happen, sony will want to get blu0ray burners into peoples home pc's, and people will get them, but it will take a bit of time to seep into the market.
Regular rom dumps do not work but only the hacked that is pirate patched - nuked roms work on the pirate flash cards.