Nintendo's biggest threat: R4

[iritegood]

As an experiment The Times obtained an R4 chip and downloaded free of charge on the internet ten new Nintendo DS games – worth about £400. The games, one of which had gone on sale only the day before, worked perfectly. The entire process took less than half an hour.

We're just conducting an experiment! We swear! Just ignore Bill in the corner playing Contra!

I'm just wondering how they found the ten latest games. They must've been paying attention to the scene.

 

[cracker]

Anyways, nintendo i think MIGHT be releasing that new DS with free demos downloadable online, and full games downloadable also. Maybe a MEM PAK for a other wierd slot can be plugged in acting as a memory cart, for more games. The downloadable games cannot be kept on your compy, and it would work pretty well. DLable Nes games and offical homebrew support might just make pirating end, and the DS more popular. Think of the advertisements- Get FREE demos ONLINE! Buy game in the comfort of your home! Tons of free homebrew games! People could buy more MEM PAK carts and put games on there. I would totally get that new DS. I would then buy a few MEM PAKS and put all my homebrew, and startt gettin games at the prices they sell to retailers. 10 bucks a game, pirating will not increase so much. Since the reason to pirate IS the price. 30 bucks a game? pfft, 5 games is as much as a console. The prices never drop also. Really, nintendo, use my new plan ! I know you are LISTENING.


The PSP has had downloadable demos of games for a very long time and that didn't persuade people not to pirate games.

I don't see Nintendo (or any game system manufacturer) allowing access to the ability to running homebrew on their system.

Some reasons for this are:

1. If people are playing homebrew then they have less time to be playing commercial games which equals less money for the company and the developers
2. Having to make the system homebrew-proof for things they don't want it to be able to do (flash firmware, etc) without crippling it totally
3. If they open up the system to homebrew then there will be the risk of people running arbitrary code to defeat #2, brick people's systems, etc
4. People would bitch at them if homebrew x didn't run or if it caused their system to stop working, etc

When you think about it, Nintendo is making money from flash carts, I wouldn't have bought my DS Lite if it wasn't for flash carts.
Not that I pirate games or anything, I use my R4 just for Homebrew, betas, and music

.

A lot of people seem to think that the game system manufacturers make out like bandits on the sale of the hardware. In reality they take a big loss on hardware for a long time after it has been out because of the cost of the R&D and the initial prices of the manufacturing costs and components are a lot higher at the launch of a system. Over time the costs come down but the money they make off of them then wouldn't be enough to keep the company going I'm sure. The real money is in the software -- especially 3rd party titles where the system manufacturer doesn't have to do a damn thing because the developers and publishers do all the work and then just pay the money for licensing.

 

[OSW]

lol yeah! and you know, even if it was for "experimentation", that is still illegal! nintendo could get times for that haha.

and honesty, about 35% of my time on DS is spent with homebrew. They fail to mention that these devices can legitimately run homebrew too.

Homebrew ROX!

 

[NonStopInTheMix]

hmm i think that the constant stupid releases by nintendo has contributed to the rise of flashcarts. nowaddays most games are so freakin expensive and worthless in gameplay value that people ultimately have lost faith in nintendo's ability to come out with quality games. I have a m3ds simply (yeah yeah R4 clone, copy, brother etc) but ive also bought mario kart ds and zelda becanuse i felt that i owed it to nintendo to buy just those 2 games.

overall nintendo better make downloadable demos that can be EASILY ACCESSED by everyone so that people will know for sure exactly what they are paying for... youtube video reviews dont always work nintendo, you have to play the game to feel like buying it.

as a sidenote: not to be a R4 hater or anythign but ive been in the flashcart scene for quite a while.. since GBA. and my question to everybody out there is:

"what happened to supercard?"

yeah they were like the pioneers of flashcarting before the R4 came along and stuff so why has nobody mentioned them? and why hasnt nintendo gone fater them all these years? its kinda funny since im a M3 and a SCDS user that the R4 always gets so much more hype and legal trouble than the predecessor it was based off of.

but in conclusion, Nintendo, you can only stop /slow down R4 by blowing up their factory or releasing better quality games

NO MORE HORSEZ, DOGZ, DIDDYKONG RACING, FLAWED LEGO STARWARS GAME, etc.

 

[War]

I've even started to notice in my school that people are talking about R4s. The word is spreading fast.

 

[Playset6199]

I have a whole lotta mates who had DSs' before me, and now that I got my R4, their interest in DS games has suddenly piped up again. What a coincidence.

 

[mini-frizz]

Good point.. the difference between the GBA and the DS is that on the GBA you used to be able to emulate the GBA 1:1 and play games perfectly, so all you needed was your computer.
Now with the DS, people do kind of the same thing, except that they have to buy a DS console to actually play the games... see what I mean?
Still doesn't justify piracy, but at least Nintendo makes more profit off console sales.


Well... The DS is currently being emulated at, let's say, %35. In a year time, probably and if it keeps the current pace, it will be around, let's say again, %65-%75, if not higher. It's a matter of time before it reaches said 1:1 emulation. The same happened with the GBA: there was a time were most games run at %50 speed. I remember playing Wario Land 4 on VBA about 6 years ago, with frameskipping and stuttering. But still, anyone now can now download a GBA ROM, VBA/No$GBA and play the game at full speed with no troubles at all... and sometimes even better than they would in the actual console.

I'm pretty sure there are ds emulators that allow most games to be run at 100 percent spped nowadys. I think what costello was trying to say in stating that ds games cannot be run 1:1 when emulated, is that a mouse is not a good alternative for a touch screen, so the ROMs are too difficult to control on a PC. He wasn't saying ds games don't run at full speed with emulators.

 

[iffy525]

Nintendo has its eyes on us AND the scene.

there could be a spy among us...

 

[xalphax]

i explained my flashcard to friends, but they think its "too much hassle" so they still buy ALL retail games.
i only know one other person in my environment who owns a flashcard too, all other people still buy all their games.
i just buy the diamonds. bought phoenix wright, trauma center, zelda: phantom hourglass etc.

bottomline: oh noees... nintendo is going down... fast.... they will be bankrupt by the end of the week!!

 

[Nero]

Nintendo has its eyes on us AND the scene.

there could be a spy among us...

Shh.... You'll ruin my cover!

Just kidding.

Seriously... The ONLY person I know that owns a Flashcart is my brother, not including GBAtemp.
Is it really that well known? Everyone needs to stop spreading the word about Flashcarts!

Maybe remove GBAtemp from Google so people won't be able to look it up? Dunno.. Just an idea.

Side-note: I

Homebrew.

~Nero

 

[myuusmeow]

Then we lose the ability to search when the search is down, lose almost all hits, there's no good to removing GBATemp from Google.

 

[enigmaindex]

n00b alert, ppl will come here!! g00gle R4, gbatemp is third on teh list!!!

Oh no, im just waiting for those MySQL errors i got when Super Mario Galaxy (Japan) got released.

Anyway, it's not like the R4 is going to make Nintendo bankrupt with in the next week, they are just scared like any big corporation would, they see a threat and think "Oh no's we are going to lose money" and so and so forth.

I still buy the real Wii games, i don't have it chipped yet and i don't plan to get it chipped for a while either, and i only buy 1 or so games very 2-3 months for the Wii so it doesn't bother me.

But on a lighter note, i think this '.gif' below belongs in this topic. =]

 

[Rayder]

Meanwhile, DQ4 sold 360,000 copies in its first week. Yeah, Ninty is hurting real bad because of flashcarts.

 

[Talaria]

When you think about it, Nintendo is making money from flash carts, I wouldn't have bought my DS Lite if it wasn't for flash carts.
Not that I pirate games or anything, I use my R4 just for Homebrew, betas, and music

.


A lot of people seem to think that the game system manufacturers make out like bandits on the sale of the hardware. In reality they take a big loss on hardware for a long time after it has been out because of the cost of the R&D and the initial prices of the manufacturing costs and components are a lot higher at the launch of a system. Over time the costs come down but the money they make off of them then wouldn't be enough to keep the company going I'm sure. The real money is in the software -- especially 3rd party titles where the system manufacturer doesn't have to do a damn thing because the developers and publishers do all the work and then just pay the money for licensing.

I am pretty sure i read somewhere that the DS lite was cheaper to manufacture than the original DS phat. So yeah i think Nintendo is just making big bucks from the system.

 

[Rayder]

Nintendo ALWAYS makes money on their hardware. It's "other" companies that sell them for a loss.

I'm surprised more Nintendo fans don't already know this.

 

[juggernaut911]

dude... that sucks... we should petition R4!!!

so they stop doing that... whatever it is...



OR: we make a spontanious combustion firmware, to destroy teh R4 forever!!!1111! o ya!

 

[GBA_Temper]

dude... that sucks... we should petition R4!!!

so they stop doing that... whatever it is...



OR: we make a spontanious combustion firmware, to destroy teh R4 forever!!!1111! o ya!

Bro come down

..What ever you decide to do I am with you 100% all the way

 

[Sonicslasher]

.....everyone know that bush isnt leaving iraq till he gets his r4....that was kinda random...

 

[nephdj]

Well... The DS is currently being emulated at, let's say, %35. In a year time, probably and if it keeps the current pace, it will be around, let's say again, %65-%75, if not higher. It's a matter of time before it reaches said 1:1 emulation. The same happened with the GBA: there was a time were most games run at %50 speed. I remember playing Wario Land 4 on VBA about 6 years ago, with frameskipping and stuttering. But still, anyone now can now download a GBA ROM, VBA/No$GBA and play the game at full speed with no troubles at all... and sometimes even better than they would in the actual console.

VBA worked fine about 1year after launch, wasnt a issue at all

zophar has a nice list of all the emu's back then

 

[cracker]

Nintendo ALWAYS makes money on their hardware. It's "other" companies that sell them for a loss.

I'm surprised more Nintendo fans don't already know this.

I'm going to need a bigger flash cart.