February 1, 2008 -
ELSPA officials have completely disavowed a newspaper report in which the organization's head of IP security is quoted as saying that 90% of American DS owners use a particular copyright circumvention device. gi.biz has ELSPA's denial, quoting an unnamed spokesperson:
[IP security head John Hillier] didn't quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever. ELSPA (which represents U.K. game publishers) would certainly never presume to comment about America or anywhere else outside of the UK.
The quotes from The Sunday Post were ascribed to his name from another article which originates from a website in Singapore. This, it appears, is where The Sunday Post first found out about the supposed R4 situation and for some reason unknown to John have quoted him on what this article said.
As far as Nintendo are concerned, the facts are completely spurious.
Comments
According to my friend, the game market in Malta is very similar. The official reason for the high prices is to make up the money lost through imports and piracy (of course), but I believe the actual reason may be something closer to "monopoly, lols."
sheppy Said: "Nintendo once claimed over $500 million lost due to Gamecube piracy in a single year."
Yeah, I really don't trust those figures. I imagine they are obtained on the false idea that--if piracy wasn't available--everyone would just buy those games they pirated.
- Warren Lewis
I mean I couldn't understand why the ELSPA being Eourpe based was commenting on us here in the states.
That said, I agree with DeusPayne, I'd like to know more about this website. No reason for them not to reveal it.
IP security people never check facts sadly...
Dennis, any chance we could get a link? Maybe someone should find it for him.
Glad to see that they are retracting that figure. Makes you wonder if anything else in the original article was false as well.
Singapore's national language is English, so it'd likely be in English.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_193855.html
In this it quotes New Era Entertainment as stating the 90% rate for Singapore, not the US.
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
They refuted the claim and it's up to the newspaper to come up with their source for the quote. If it wasn't a direct quote then the source should have been mentioned in the article. "Blah blah was quoted in the Singapore Daily Sling as saying 'I saw monkeys fly right out of his ass! Right out!' Blah blah couldn't be reached for further comment." If they didn't do that then the fault is the newspaper's and the burden of proof is on them, not on the guy who was misquoted.
SHEESH! The editor should be fired for not checking the source of the "facts"
And that sounds pretty accurate, actually :)
Unfortunately, even amongst working adults with spare cash here in Singapore, the very idea of paying for original games is shocking.
With the exception of some of my friends, I get shocked silence all round whenever I mention buying some game or other.. =(
@JBourrie
Heh, its not THAT high... Though I guess its not exactly a low figure either... =/
There are good reasons to use an R4 even if you're perfectly happy to buy your games. Most of them come back to convenience. They're typically used with a 2 gigabyte microSD card, so you can store everything you need to play all your games, listen to mp3s, browse the net*, or even make VOIP calls (with a homebrew application) on a single "cartridge". You don't have to carry a bunch of extra stuff or swap cartridges every time you want to do something different.
Granted, a lot of people just want to play pirated games with them, but not everyone.
*The Opera browser requires the GBA-type memory expansion cartridge that comes with the official product.
The games in Singapore are really, REALLY expensive. Last time I was there it cost $80 for a GBA game. GBA! Tales of Eternia cost $120! Imagine game prices that are half the cost of the system or more, and you'll see why. But it's been five years so I don't know about the game prices there but I imagine it can't be that good anyway.
Huh, learn something new every day.
Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about Malaysia's lack of original games anymore, because even the originals in Malaysia are cheaper than Singapore's.
Although, I'd guess it is. The Tabloids all seem to have something against the Industry, and to a lesser extent the US Population. Right-Wing bastards..
If they said they didn't do it, they didn't do it. The evidence that they did is very dodgy.
Yeah, most piracy figures are worked on the assumption that company X would be amount Y better off for every pirated game downloaded, which is, of course, complete poppycock.