Nintedo's Next Big Thing

When I saw this article in the Japan Times, I knew I wanted to share it with my vast legions of readers.

I've previously written about my views on piracy, as well as a treatise on Nintendo being the only true innovator in the gaming console industry, so I'm aware that I'm in danger of repeating myself.

I merely offer this under-development hand-held featuring 3D capabilities (which do not require special eye-wear) as further proof that Nintendo is the only company that's doing any real innovation. The others merely continue to make consoles more graphically powerful, but for reasons unknown do not seem to possess the creative spark necessary to do something meaningfully different with subsequent generations of their products.

As far as the undisclosed anti-piracy measures they mention, I'd say that makes a good deal of sense. Outside of the States, there's an incredibly popular underground product called the R4. It is a small DS-game-sized cartridge with a slot for a micro SD memory card, and includes a USB port for the memory card. You download pirated DS game roms, transfer them onto the memory card (which also contains the R4 firmware), thus enabling you to play whatever games you want without having to go through the trouble of actually paying for said intellectual property.

It is big business in Asia; I recall street vendors in Osaka selling them every few blocks in the electronics district. They used to be widely available in actual stores, but they've been driven underground due to a crackdown by Nintendo. Supposedly they're a big ticket item in Europe as well. I'm not surprised that Nintendo views this as a major threat to their revenue, and it does seem rather unfair that the developers of the R4 are making a tidy profit by selling a means to easily steal the hard labor of game developers.

I vaguely wonder if human morality will catch up to the concept of intellectual property at some point during my lifetime?