Nintendo Wii Fanboy

http://gprime.net/flash.php/youareapirate

All "silliness" aside, I think that modchips are OK. Sure, they can be used to pirate games, but many people use them to run homebrew apps like xbmc and emulators.

Pirated games destroy the industry; there's no question there.

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Slightly off-topic, but isn"t this site supposed to talk about a slightly more important thing at this time, something like, oh i don't know...THE BLOODY WII FIRMWARE 3.0, don't get me wrong I'm a fan of this site, but news comes along too slow as compared to something like http://www.gonintendo.com
Seriously though, I think Piracy is very wrong, but modding things for homebrew apps is okay, if the homebrew app isn't about piracy

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Region locking games is ridiculous, I support using modchips to circumvent region locking but I'd rather use a software based solution like Freeloader for GC.

Pirating games is wrong m'kay....

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Not sure how I feel about the whole 'mod chip' thing...allowing homebrew play is OK, as long as that slippery slope does not lead to piracy.

PIRACY IS STEALING. Plain and simple. I don't understand how so many can think it is OK to do, but would never steal anything from a store. Those are both the same thing.

The additional 'benefit' of piracy is a lack of funding for developers to make new and exciting places for all of us to explore.

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The only reason I would hack my Wii is to add features (like the blue glow) or play imported games. I've had a copy of the new Naruto game almost as long as I've had my Wii, but still way to PLAY it. I'd rather just get a swapdisc like my GC freeloader, but Datel is slow getting it out (which mostly just makes me worried that they're having a lot of trouble). I mostly don't want to mod to insure compatibility with future updates.
Also, I did consider getting a mod chip, but they're all "partially compatible" with imported games at best, and most sites about importing only seem to care about NTSC>PAL, one even saying that they don't have info on NTSC-J>NTSC-US because no-one cares.
Of course, when I finally did find a list, Naruto shippuden was one of the few games that did NOT work for NTSC-J>NTSC-US.

So, yeah... still haven't seen any mods that are worth it to me.

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It's absurd. Gaming consoles seem to be the only piece of hardware where it is illegal to alter it even after you have purchased it. I understand the fight against modchips, as they mostly used for piracy, but the chips themselves are not a real violation.

If a company wants to fight modchips, they should implement better security into their product, rather than attempt to get laws passed to protect them from their own consumers.

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I've always thought that if the company's really wanted to stop piracy, they'd either 1. make fool proof copy protection, or 2. require registration on every game sold. Both are highly unlikely. Honestly I think the overseas modding and hacking is a bigger issue, than in the U.S.

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To add a mild bit of controversy:

Piracy is NOT stealing, and it's not comparable. Piracy is copyright infringement. Stealing involves removing a physical item from someone's posession. Copyright infringement is "just" making a duplicate of said item without permission from the original creator.

However, in both cases it can be seen as a lost sale for the owner/creator. Then again, would the item have been purchased if it was impossible to copy/find a copy?

I've downloaded a few things that I would never purchase, as well as stuff that was impossible to purchase(Mainly classic games that weren't getting re-released anytime soon, and buying a copy off eBay just sends money to the seller, not the original creator) I personally don't see a problem with it. Hell, I've got a decent pile of legally purchased games and movies, as well as music.

Back to the original subject: I'd mod my Wii for imports if I could, or get a bootdisk. I have a few GC games that I can't run on my Wii now, so I'm keeping my GC out for those and the GB Player. I'd also mod it for nice addons like media center stuff and movie playback or other fancy features. I wouldn't mod it for "backups" though, I prefer buying my games.

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@#1 not being a jerk and not trying to start a fight but i have to ask... do you not think that emulators are a form of piracy? like i said not trying to be a jerk because i have macmame and nestopia running on my laptop, but i sure don't own all 1500+ roms in cartridge form.

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I am reminded of one of the BEST gamecube fighting games ever, Naruto Gekito Ninja Taisen. Great Japanese fighting game that took YEARS to be brought over to the USA. During my Nintendo Fanboy Gamecube promoting years I would talk endlessly about how it was far superior to most fighters at the time.

The FreeLoader was a great middle ground that avoided modding and secured the need to play excellent games that might never come to the US. Naruto eventually came over, but what about games like Treasures' Nintendo 64 "Sin & Punishment"? (Did you know that the game is entirly voiced in English? The menus are the only thing in Japanese, and yet it still was never brought over.)

Theres only 3 types of people when talking about modding:

Homebrew crowd who enjoy tinkering with technology. It is more of a personal curiosity rather than theft with this crowd.

Importers who are hardcore gamers that want to play any/every game of interest without that pesky region locking.

Piracy lot. The ones who simply do not want to pay for anything. This is the crowd that the companies fear most because if the Piracy lot have the motivation to pirate games that means this was once the crowd who had the motivation to pay for a lot of games. (Which in turn is the reason why they no longer want to pay and resulted in them pirating games)

Honestly, the safest crowd to help which results in more profit for the company is the importers. I hate region locking. The PS3 has at least gotten that right.

(Throwing tantrum for wanting to play Hajime no Ippo: Revolution & Naruto EX)

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I think Nintendo just drew the line last night with the V.3 update. I can't personally testify, but I think the new update kills modded consoles and neuters the GCN Freeloader disc. I'd imagine that this also puts the kibash on any future Wii Freeloader, too.

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I love how everyone here is going piracy is bad, but in the next breath go "But I'd like to play emulators and region locked games". Those are still forms of piracy, albeit subtle differences, but in the end your still hacking something beyond what the manufacturer intended it's use to be, and those protections are there to protect the manufacturer.

Piracy isn't just about money, it's about intellectual property and who controls how it's being used. Emulators I think are good example here, you didn't purchase a ROM, so why shouldn't that be considered piracy? Region locked games are that way for a reason, I don't agree with the practice but the practice does exist and I'm going to honor it instead of breaking it, but there are real market implications about selling something region free that companies probably don't want to get involved with. If the company's bottom line is hurt, consumers get hurt in the process as well.

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Any discussion concerning mod chips and piracy eventually leads down the dark monochrome path of moral grandstanding as people scream their brains out trying to argue for their personal agendas, often throwing around words that each side has a different and biased definitions for.

[see also: religion, politics, console war]

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I want an external mod chip that won't allow pirated games, but allow games from multiple regions to be played.

Or Nintendo might come up with this:

http://madiart.blogspot.com/

Related Comic:

http://madiart.blogspot.com/2007/04/wfgn-13-make-petitions-not-mods.html

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My stance is that pirates wore eye patches for night vision.
What caused the great game crash of the 80's? Crappy and pirated games. So much putrid junk that the worthwhile games costing $50 could not sell compared to the scrap bins of $2-5 junk.

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@11

Playing region locked games has nothing to do with piracy. The entire point of region locking is to prevent people from skirting various country taxes, getting a region-timed release ahead of time, preventing regions from under cutting others by selling drastically below another's MSRP, and keeping region-specific royalties in line.

Basically, it has to do with making sure the "right" people get the "right" amount of money and absolutely nothing to do with illegal activity, as the out-of-region game still must be purchased. It's about as morally wrong as driving across state lines to shop in a state with a lower sales tax, or driving to another county to buy booze if you live in a dry county.

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While I *hate* piracy, I'm all for freeloaders to evade region locking. Thats just evil.

As for homebrew? I'm a coder, of course I'm up for it!

Pirates should drown. Except real pirates, like Jack Sparrow. He's cool.

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I keep reading these comments and thinking "Hmmmm, I wonder how many of these anti-piracy/copyright infringement advocates are enjoying their pirated music, pirated computer software, etc. right now?"

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Well as seen in the Phillipines article and all, piracy is extremely common there for a reason, and I shall tell you why, its the same reason as in my country.

I live in Argentina, third world country blabla, games here are really expensive (original games) they would be expensive if they were around 50u$s (which would be around 170$ in our monetary system) but because of custom rates and nintendo's none-existing distributor here, games are twice as expensive, that's almost 100u$s for a game.

Now count that a regular salary here is around 800$, if you were to buy an original game would be 300 pesos, so a person with a regular salary could buy less than 3 original games a month!
If games were 50 pesos things would be different. So modchips and copies allow most people to be able to play these games.

So my thoughts are as long as Nintendo doesnt have a local distributor that sells the games and systems at regular prices they cant complain about piracy in these countries.
Besides its the only company that is actually EARNING money from the sales of their console and not losing, here a Wii brought from abroad is around 600u$s do the maths thats like 2 regular salaries for a "cheap" gaming system.
PS2 for example, copies are all over the place, but sony distributes it here, games are expensive but the console is not so it earns a lot of money selling consoles (most places sell it with chip included) and they know that, here they must have sold around 5 million consoles or so.

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To 18:

Think of this... if an enterprising and fairly wealthy person in your area wanted to, they could buy a large number of games then resell them in America for a cut price taking the $70 of the $170 for themselves.

That is 1/3 the profit, which is a margin that anyone could get fat off of.

Generally, now I understand why Region Coding is so important. It keeps games profitable in their locales. It isn't just a method of restricting distribution.

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Region locking is the only reason I would ever even think about using a modchip.

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I use a modchip in my xbox for homebrew software such as Xbox Media Center, which is the best program/device that I have found that alows video streaming to a TV over the network. They also have a series of codecs that is unrivaled in the media player world, playing every possible video format that I have ever tried throwing at it. I might consider this wrong if I had any real sort of commercial application that would do this without having to circumvent the hardware, but even the AppleTV is $299 for the low end model and it only supports iTunes compatible videos!

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I am a PC gamer first and a Wii player second.

Coming from the PC world, there is so much done to pave the way for piracy. Cracks, CD/DVD drive emulators and key generators are incredibly common. All this considered, consoles have it easy. :)

The beauty of a console is the fact that there is no installation and the disc is self-contained. Registration codes are _only effective_ if you have an online checking system, which may not always work. And... you'd have to store the key on every machine you drop the disc into. What fun is that? Loaning or renting games would be nigh impossible if there were registration codes involved.

Mod chips may be circumvented with this latest patch, _but_ they will always find a way around it. I think the upgradable chips will likely get a new update soon.

The best that can be done is continual updates that "break" the mod chip capability. For PC, that stuff happens in the form of a patch for the game, for consoles, it happens in the form of a firmware update. And since the Wii can do those kinds of update Live, I think they've got a good chance for (partial) success against pirates.

Sadly, it's kind of incriminating to ask for an opinion on piracy in a public area. It's hard to get both sides of the story. Even if one side is just trying to rationalize their actions. :)

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@18: agree 100%

@19: no need for region locking. Import taxes take care of the situation you mention already.

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listen: piracy is wrong, and should rightfully stay illegal.

that said though... does piracy *really* hurt one system more than another?

i make the claim that piracy HELPED xbox get off to a strong start, and it's one of the reasons why the xbox 360 is doing so well right now! for the money lost on pirated games, there is the benefit of increased sales of hardware, along with pirates being "tastemakers" for their friends.

the best anti-piracy solution?

online multiplayer.

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@20: BULLPOOP.

I live in Brazil, we have a nintendo distributor here, and we still have the most expensive Wii in the World (1100 US dollars, check wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_launch#Release_dates_and_pricing ). And it's a CHEAP system. Are the games expensive? Shyeah they are! 250-300 reais (that's close to 125-150 USDollars) each! Do I pirate them? Heck no! There's this revolutionary technique called "saving up". I have a lame job paying less than minimum wage, but there is no way in hell a person can have a 1100 dollar videogame system and say they cant spend 100 dollars in a game, unless you stole the system from someone!
Yeah, I buy 1 game every 2-3 months, but frankly, it is more than enough to me! I spend 8 hours a day in my job, 6 hours in college, and I have to sleep and eat, and on weekends i have to do the chores (grocery shopping, cleaning the house, et al), there's no way in hell i can finish something like Twilight Princess in less then a month!

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I don't see what everyone's deal is about piracy. Why not cheat Nintendo? They've been doing the same to us all this time; It's only proper that the corporation gets paid back in full.

For example, the virtual console games are horribly overpriced. Those roms cost absolutely nothing to reproduce, yet they somehow feel justified in charging five whole dollars for Balloon Fight, of all things. Eight dollars for Super Mario World? No thanks, I'll take ZSNES and NEStopia for free.

For being the 'cheapest' of the next generation consoles, they charge one hell of a lot for their controllers. We have to pay $40 for a remote pointer, with an additional $20 for that cheap plastic nun-chuck. Approximately $60 for a full controller, you say? Forget it.

How much money does an average person make in this world? I don't think our paychecks can cover the PR bullshit that Nintendo spews without our wallets looking like swiss cheese.

On top of that, they've worked with the U.S. government to infringe upon our right to use their products the way we want, i.e. raiding modchips. I don't even know why they're even trying; they won't succeed in the long run.

As a corporation, Nintendo uses some of the worst marketing tactics available. They are inherently anti-democratic and will stop at nothing to get at our finances in the worst way. Please, by all means, pirate away. In the end, do they really deserve your money?

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bleh, there's no excuse to pirate. I can say, why are you living in comfort when there are people living in poverty working in sweatshops you indirectly support? Should they be allowed to steal from you? I have to agree with you on the VC though. The VC games are over priced. I already own most of the games I want to play, why can't I play them on the wii for free if I payed retail way back when they came out?

And region locking is a painful thing to deal with. I want to play Japanese games, why punish me!

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Here's my reason for "pirating" (not only for the Wii, but all consoles); lack of demo software. How can I justify paying $40-$60 a game and have it be a major disappointment later?(case in point for my brother-in-law...NFL Head Coach)...and as you know, once you open it, you can't return it.

Some game companies hype up a game so much and at the end, it's just a major disappointment. I know several friends that has had that happen to them. I admit to getting some games from some sites, but if the game is worth getting, I buy it. I have a bunch of games that I pirated and didn't even bother playing past 30 minutes. I just destroy the disc if the game sucks. I'm sure not all pirates are like that.

Now that the Xbox 360 and PS3 have downloadable demos available, I don't have to mod the console...unless there's an import game I want...anyway.

Nintendo should come up with some way with their newer firmwares to have an external HD and allow demos to be downloaded from the Shop Channel. I'd like that a lot.

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Why do people say that they are ripped off by company x because their products are too expensive? You've obviously never tried to run a company. 90% of products are sold for the amount of money people are willing to pay, not how much it costs to produce them. For the most part this IS fair. If you can create something (not copy) that does as good or better job and you are happy to sell it for a cheaper price, then do so.

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I strongly disagree with the argument that piracy is not stealing because the owner is not without the product after the action. We are talking intellectual property here. If you created an application that would make you more money than Microsoft, and then somehow that application was given to everyone on the planet for free, would you be pissed? What if you had given 10 years of your life and morgaged your house to build that application?

Maybe an easier one - if all of the details of your personal life were published online and a webcam installed in your house by someone else, would you feel like you had been 'robbed' of your privacy?

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My chip still works with 3.0E. Just to stop the FUD.

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Well Jona, one day an application was created by Linus Torvalds, and it can blow Microsoft's Windows out of the water. Yet, it was created as free software and has gained the respect of mostly an entire programming community. Ring a bell yet? It's called 'Linux.'

And your point is ridiculous--that piracy causes the poverty of the individual, or the masses. It is the corporations like Nintendo and Microsoft that bear responsibility for this. They are part of the oligarchy of businesses that uses their insane wealth to market overpriced goods down our throats and in turn limit the quality of life for the masses. They created the sweatshops, after all. Please don't try and exonerate multi-national corporations.

And for goodness sake, the Wii itself turns a profit from every console sold--approximately $50, give or take; it's horribly overpriced, even now. Do you really think that their VC games and controllers aren't similarly treated? We are their consumers, and they are exploiting and swindling us. For all of the part it is UNFAIR.

P.S.- The details of our lives and our privacy have been 'robbed' for a while. Illegal U.S. government wiretapping program, anybody?

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I'm currently living in China, where I purchased my Wii. It came modded out of the box and I can only buy burnt games. Not a single walk in store sells legit games for Wii, PS2, PS3 or 360.

If I want to keep my gamer side intact I need to get my 360 and PS2 chipped as well.

But this is their own fault. None of these companies sell their consoles in China and no one makes or translates games into Chinese.

Piracy isn't an option for me. It's a necessity.

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"Like most gamers, we're pretty firmly against pirated games" BULLSHIT! Most gamers don't mind piracy, almost everyone does it.

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