Flash Carts Cause 50% Drop in European Sales

By 21.04.2010 12

Flash Carts Cause 50% Drop in European Sales on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

According to Nintendo, 'Flash Cartridges', like the popular R4, have been creating a drop in sales recently. It has had a particularly negative effect on Europe, with a 50 percent drop in sales, claims Nintendo. It's not just Europe though, with Nintendo also claiming that they globally estimate its annual losses are in the region of trillions of yen, due to piracy problems.

'Flash Cartridges,' or 'Magicoms' as some people call them, have been selling well in Europe and the United States, which suggests that many users might not know they are committing illegal activity.

One student, from Los Angeles, bought a 'Magicom' and said "If I were to buy the software through the regular channels, it would cost so much," and then went on to say "Everybody is using it, and I don't feel like I am doing something particularly wrong."

How do you feel about 'Flash Cartridges' and do you feel they are okay to use?

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Guest 21.04.2010#1

Ah yes. Every downloaded game = 1 less game sold. Smilie

 
JoshSL is offline. JoshSL 21.04.2010#2

50% is a lot, these flash carts are used insanely widely, and a surprisingly (almost disturbing) amount of people (most likely those who don't game often) think that using them to download games on is legal.

I'm not saying that piracy is absolutely completely 100% always wrong, but to say that DS flash carts aren't a big problem would be a lie.

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meeto1 (guest) 21.04.2010#3

its weird the general perception to stealing software. perhaps it exposes our true nature. most of us are thieves. if we could magically download electrical goods into our homes we would.

EdEN is offline. EdEN 21.04.2010#4

Well it does make sense. I've seen R4 cards filed with 150 DS games. Nintendo still made a profit out of said family because they got two DS Lite and then two DSi but outside of hardware profit it has been all losses gamewise... and the kids are only going to grow up to continue to pirate games since those are the "values" presented to them.

 
J4K is offline. J4K 22.04.2010#5

I'd say piracy is a big bite, but 50% seems excessive.

( Edited 21.04.2010 19:59 by Jacob4000 )

 
Satoshi is offline. Satoshi 22.04.2010#6
Image for

Yeah I think Nintendo can live with the piracy to an extent since they make money on hardware, but its the 3rd party software that take massive hits, I think like GTA definately should have sold more.

( Edited 21.04.2010 20:51 by Simon  )

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Guest 22.04.2010#7


1. Nintendogs All versions (22.27 million)
2. New Super Mario Bros. (21.39 million)
3. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (18.59 million)
4. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (17.39 million)
5. Mario Kart DS (17.28 million)
6. Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day! (13.71 million)
7. Animal Crossing: Wild World (10.79 million)
8. Super Mario 64 DS (7.5 million)
9. Pokémon Platinum (6.39 million)
10. Mario Party DS (5.85 million)

Total Nintendo DS games sold as of December 31, 2009: 688.29 million.

I wouldn't worry too much Nintendo. You're doing just fine. Smilie

 
Martin_ is offline. Martin_ 22.04.2010#8

SuperLink said:
50% is a lot, these flash carts are used insanely widely, and a surprisingly (almost disturbing) amount of people (most likely those who don't game often) think that using them to download games on is legal.

I'm not saying that piracy is absolutely completely 100% always wrong, but to say that DS flash carts aren't a big problem would be a lie.

50% is huge, but then you have to question the statistic - it comes from Nintendo.

 
JoshSL is offline. JoshSL 22.04.2010#9

Martin_ said:
50% is huge, but then you have to question the statistic - it comes from Nintendo.
Yeah it's a conveniently round number so it's probably exaggerated in some way.

But when it comes to flaunting figures, noone's more pro than Nintendo.

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EdEN is offline. EdEN 22.04.2010#10

For Nintendo it might not be too much of a big deal (they probably lost 100 million in profit in 2009 because of piracy which is a veeeery big number) but for other games and companies it can be instant death. Retro Game Challenge didn't sell as well because of the piracy of both the localized game and it's original japanese release and thus we'll probably never get RGC2 localized. Same goes for other titles such as House of the Dead Overkill (which is said to have been downloaded over half a million times) and so on.

Stealing is stealing, no matter how much you want to justify it. It speaks volumes of who you are as a person and what values you're presenting to your family and offspring.

 
Guest 23.04.2010#11

EdEN said:
For Nintendo it might not be too much of a big deal (they probably lost 100 million in profit in 2009 because of piracy which is a veeeery big number) but for other games and companies it can be instant death. Retro Game Challenge didn't sell as well because of the piracy of both the localized game and it's original japanese release and thus we'll probably never get RGC2 localized. Same goes for other titles such as House of the Dead Overkill (which is said to have been downloaded over half a million times) and so on.

Stealing is stealing, no matter how much you want to justify it. It speaks volumes of who you are as a person and what values you're presenting to your family and offspring.

Bullshit.

Name one company that produced great games that went bust because of piracy.
And a game with graphics from the year 1982 and a lightgun game are hardly games that will sell much, regardless of piracy.

I guess I must be a bad person though since I started out gaming on a pirated C64, the whole family played pirated games and my parents don't even buy music anymore, they just download it. Funny how we all support game companies and artists later on in life. Must be a miracle?

 
Trepe is offline. Trepe 24.04.2010#12

I don't understand how someone would download a pirate game and think it's not wrong. You wouldn't go into a game shop and stick a game under your coat. It's the same thing.

I as much as anybody else don't care about big companies. But I can't help feeling it's making an impact on the prices honest people pay at the till. And small companies may go under because they don't produce anything of any worth. But the small companies that produce good games are hindered in their ability to fund new projects and grow.

I understand the temptation to do it, the prices of games are pretty high. But wouldn't a games company lower their prices considerably if they knew they were going to sell 2 million instead of 1.5. Obviously they are going to put the price as high as they can no matter what, but they also want to be competative. So chances are they would lower prices.

I think piracy is also a major driving force behind large companies wanting to distibute games digitaly. They can control everything you do with a digitaly distributed game more closely.

 

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