Nintendo is apparently beefing up anti-piracy measures with their upcoming hand held behemoth: the 3DS. The VP of THQ’s Global Publishing said: “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.What excites me even more (than 3DS games) is that there’s technology built in that device to really combat piracy.”
With the current generation of console and hand held systems piracy has become huge due to the wide variety of possibilities on said systems from pirating the latest titles to running emulators and more. It might be true but in a way it is a bold claim – hackers are persistent. A professor of mine once put security this way: “There is no such thing as 100% safe with computers. It’s not a matter of being impenetrable but ‘how long until someone figures out how to break it?’”
"You didn't say the magic word!" - we think this might be the technology
And what about this extra blurb from Ian Curran? “I actually asked Nintendo to explain the technology and they said it’s very difficult to do so because it’s so sophisticated.”
We suspect the technology involves the 3DS exploding in a mini-fireball, or perhaps a stern warning but no reports confirm that just yet.
I suppose we’ll see what happens when the system finally drops. People have found a work around for every firmware update released to block pirates with the PSP and Wii and so on and so forth. At this point it almost sounds like a fun challenge for the pirates out there. I mean they are a bunch of resilient bastards – how many times has someone tried to shut down The Pirate Bay?
Tags: 3ds, anti-piracy, antipiracy, nintendo, shenanigans, THQ