Nintendo on the hunt for pirates

Nintendo has three sheets to the wind as it sets its cannon sights on DS and Wii pirates once again, and this time it’s laying much of the blame on certain countries it says aren’t doing enough to combat the availability of mod chips and flash carts.

Among those countries listed in Nintendo’s appeal to the US Trade Representative are China, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, Spain and Paraguay, according to C&VG.

"It is important for parents to note that if users of circumvention devices are children, they may be exposed to unsuitable content downloaded from the internet and played on their Nintendo systems," says, Nintendo’s of America's senior director of anti-piracy Jodi Daugherty (the Commodore Warrington of the games world).

Once again the game companies feel the need to latch onto a nebulous argument to try and intensify the problem of piracy.

Really it’s enough that players are ripping off games, as most people are willing to acknowledge this is neither a minor nor victimless crime - particularly considering the number of redundancies and closures within the industry lately.

But R4 carts aren’t the villains they’re made out to be. Admittedly they’re put to nefarious use, but there are a lot of people out there using a DS who’d have little interest in the console if it weren’t accessible from the open source world.

With the iPhone charging around a quarter of the price Nintendo and Sony ask for their games, another reason for an increase in piracy comes into focus. But combating piracy by making games more affordable - games aimed at these same kids who might be downloading inappropriate content using a flash cart - seems to be the last thing the gaming corporations want to do, or even acknowledge.

Better to blame Paraguay, it seems.