Modchip raids have gone too far - do something about it!

Not sure why you care about the mod chip installer so much. What would you like to see happen?

Imagine if the law were not here and mod chips were legal.

There would be mod shops in every city in the US. Mod ownership would be so high it could very well run the industry to the ground. I don't sell nearly as many cds (due to priacy) as we did 5 years ago and cds are cheap. Don't tell me music today sucks it sucked 5 year ago too. Games cost $60 these days not $10 like cd do. No one would buy games anymore.

I bet Blockbuster would love it. With every mod they did they could offer you a months worth of rentals. Legal mod chips in the US are not a good idea.

 

Its ironic you mention car mods, since you can get a "modchip" (they dont call it that way but thats what it basically is) for your car's ECU and modify a lot of aspects.

Most people will tell you that they do it to modifiy the fuel injection parameters so they can improve the fuel economy, but the fact is that they do this so they can remove the speed limit of 130mph and raise it to 150mph or even more, depending on the car.

Is far cheaper than adding things like a turbo or a supercharger.

I think car "modchips" should be prohibited since they DO pose a threat to public safety, but console modchips? most people havent even heard of those, and even if they did they dont have the skills to install one of those (fuck, most people dont know how to install a 1MB crack for a PC game).

About piracy, look, modchips have been widely available in the US for the past 10 years or more, yet 99% of the market didnt get one.

Instead of pissing on joe nobody for getting a crappy modchip, these companies should sue the governments of countries where piracy is higher than actual sales and where law enforcement does nothing to solve that.

They could get billions in reparations....

 

They do, in China and other parts of Asia recently there has been massive crackdowns and arrests of software piracy companies by their governments.

 

exactly! When the Goverment says NINTENDO HAS LOST 999999999999999$ dollars to piracy this year thats WORLDWIDE! 95%+ of that money is lost from Hong Kong and places like that. The US probably counts for what 3% of the worlds game losses due to chips? Why go after the little guys when the big ones are sitting right there. Use that money to improve relations with other countries that have REAL piracy problems.

 

Erm not the best analogy you could do as surely the car makers shouldn't make cars that go faster then the national speed limit then. Yes the ECU will make you break the law where as before you could still break the law.... :banghead:

Changing the ECU on a car won't make it any unsafer then say installed a turbo charger or putting on slicker tyres, nor will it break the law in any way. Plus fitting them again isn't something the average joe can do... Conversely the ECU could make the car safer by limiting the speed you could do, one ECU modifier did say a father brought in a new car to limit the car to 55MPH so his son couldn't speed.

However most of those countries don't have an official distributor of the products. If 50 pirate Wii games are sold in China then Nintendo have lost er nothing as the Wii isn't available officially in China (all of them are imports...).

China and Hong Kong have started to crack down a lot on this sort of thing and places that use to blantently sell pirate games now sell more commercial games (and grey imports). With Sony and Microsoft both having a much larger presence here, it is reflecting on games.

Anyway it would be very hard for the companies to prove that the governments are not doing enough to protect their copyrights.

Anyway that average joe is more likely to buy a modchip to play pirate games, chips that only played imports have been available but have sold very very poorly...:banghead:

Interesting to note that out of the three main machines the PS3 is the only one without a modchip and the only one not to sell. Conspiracy theorists stand up. :lol:

 

Oh dumb me! yeah everybody will love (and buy) the new toyota Slowshit that goes at a freaking 65mph!

Seriously, by your logic consoles (and any other electric appliances for that matter) should work on very low voltages since you could get an electric shock from them.

WTF? you think that the originals are made out of thin air? those come from legal distributors in the US or Japan! so if you use a pirate in a country without legal distribution you're still stealing from nintendo!.

You're joking me right? any detective, no matter how bad he is, could gather enough evidence of piracy in those countries in like a month or less.

I been there pal: when I was in Spain you could see guys in the street with a blanket full of PSX copies. A police man walked right infront of the guy, and did nothing...

There, any VG store could install you a modchip for any console you had, and some even sold you the copies. Only franchise stores (like this on called centro Mail) didnt sold you modchips, but becos that would jeopardize any deals with the official distributors.

The Saturn had many modchips and didnt sell either, wheres the conspiracy on that?

 

in Aust at least xbox360 should technically be allowed to have the chip to bypass the DVD region coding stupidity... Same goes for PS3 and etc...

 

I do I only hear it about it once in a great while. I long for the day when I can log on to a P2P network type in webcam and not get 12000 results with the phrase 13yo gay

And I don't approve of what dateline is doing. For All we know innocent people are being sent to prison for the sake of raitings.

 

No not really. Im no economist but seeing as most hardware makers dont see any profit from the actual console sales untill pretty late in the consoles life i dont see how selling more consoles to people who wont give them any
further profit in the means of buying software will make them any money.

So say sony lose $100 on each console they sell. Mod chip comes out they sell 100,000 more consoles in a week. They lose out on $100 each expecting to make that money back on the sales of games. No one buys games because they are all stealing software so sony makes no more money goes bankrupt the pie gets smaller and less people make decent games?

So if china cracks down on pirates. People all go out and start to buy imports. Nintendo sees the potential of making money and create a presence in china. Market gets bigger, software companies make more money and hopefully software companies invest more on making better games. How does piracy in china not hurt the industry?

 

piracy is a market force to be reckoned. It actually promotes the user-base of consoles, allowing more publishers and developers to join the party, just like with the PS1. For the 5% of pirated material, the exposure it offers through word of mouth, makes a console strong, desirable and more acceptable.

And I repeat, piracy is a market force to be reckoned. Seeing the big picture, it might do more good than harm.

 

I would love to see the sales numbers for DS consoles and software in hong kong. While i was there almost every single other person had one. On the train in restaurants everyone everywhere had a DS! Now nintendo could be making money from the sales of the consoles. However everysingle DS and everysingle place selling a ds sold a bundle pack consisting of a DS, screen protector and a R4 card with a 1gb/2gb card!

I think the whole 3 weeks i spent there i saw maybe 1 single DS console with a real game instead of an R4 card in there. Now if nintendo dint make money on the DS how is that helping the market? How does that allow more publishers and developers to join the market when not a single one will make a profit from selling the games?

 

simply because of statistics.

see, when worldwide sales of DS units are high then publishers and developers get excited over that number.

Maybe a specific region in the world is higher in piracy levels for example, but overall the install-base is huge. This attracts publishers and devs to make games. Eventually, markets like Europe and the USA , that dont do piracy as much, will create good revenue, which in turn will further expand the install base thanks to the variety and the number of the games available.

 

Remember the Gamecube? Gamecube modchips didn't show up until very late in its life. It was easy to play copies on ps2 & dreamcast & xbox but u couldn't on gamecube. I think that's one of the reasons of the sluggish sales of the Gamecube.

 

Mod chips are illegal, there's no denying that. Whether or not I agree with that is another matter... the DMCA is a restrictive law that unconstitutionally removes the right of consumers to do what they like with their products.

I don't support piracy, but backups are (or should be) fair game. This is one reason I love handhelds -- all forms of the Game Boy and the DS have no form of copy protection or region protection, so I can legally make backups. Or I would if it were humanly possible to find a GB Xchanger... heh.

I totally agree. One great thing about the homeschooling movement is the fact that they are very politically active, and thus they've gained a huge number of rights during the past twenty years or so. If video gamers (who are a larger group than homeschoolers) get politically active, we would definitely succeed in freeing up consumer rights.

Can anybody show any form of statistics that shows this?

Anyone?

The figures for "money lost from piracy" are incorrect, because the game companies assume that everyone who downloads a game would have, if piracy didn't exist, bought a new copy of the game at full price. Many people who download games would not have paid for the original game had the opportunity presented itself. Whether or not that legitimizes piracy (it doesn't), the industry's numbers are inaccurate.

Let's also not forget that game companies like to remove things that are legal. Sony shut down Lik-Sang, despite the fact that imports are perfectly legal. Nintendo insists that any game copying device (which is totally legal) or game modifying device (such as Gameshark or Game Genie) is illegal and will destroy your game. Nintendo actually sued the manufacturers of the Game Genie for copyright infringement, but lost the case.

Also none of the companies are friendly towards homebrewers. If it weren't for Sega v. Accolade, Nintendo would have made development for the Game Boy illegal because every program written for it has to contain the "Nintendo" logo.


By the way, check this out. I'm not sure I like the fact that unmodded consoles and legally bought games can be seized on suspicion of piracy.

 

Last time I checked Ninty made good profit from selling the Wii console hardware, not to mention accessories where they have huge profit margins. The PS3 and Xbox360 consoles was initially sold at loss but I doubt they still are.

For the console companies, having a console out there running copies using a modchip is still better than no sale at all market wise, it is a numbers game. Also, many of us with modded consoles actually buy originals but download/copy titles we would never even consider buying in the first place.

 

How can 5% be a "force to be reckoned with"? and what are you going to do, boycott a company when you aren't making them any money in the first place?

The whole "it's good for the market" argument is bollocks, the PS1 did well because it was cheap (compared to the Saturn), had lots of good games, and had very strong marketting. It wasn't because you could get it chipped so easily, otherwise there wouldn't be as strong software sales. Yes, piracy was rife on it, but that doesn't mean legitimate sales of software had no effect on console sales.

The GameCube wasn't popular because it didn't have a chip until late? what sort of world do you live in? the games didn't come out quick enough, 3rd parties had been burned by Nintendo and their fuckups with the N64, Sony and Microsoft filled the gap Nintendo never exploited (teens wanting gun games ergo Halo) and the marketplace exploded from there. The other companies treated their audiences like young adults, while Nintendo were still pumping out pastel coloured platformers.

 

well everyone I know asks if consoles x can be modded to play pirates , and i know quite a lot of people. These people are your casual gamer, and they do decide on which console to buy based on the mod-ability of a console

Also, 5% is a very large portion of the pie statistically. for example, 5% inflation in a country is considered high

 

Actually guys. The law and policies are changing to where when you buy hardware from a store, you are actually licensing it from the manufacturer.

There are lobbyists out there now working on bills to present to brown-nose senators/represantatives.

This has already been going on for development hardware. The game studio with the hardware does not really own the dev kit, they are simply licensing it for the game project they are currently working on.

That same concept is going to be pushed down to regular consumers. And it won't be with just videogame consoles, but with Blu-Ray players, HD-DVD, and other future media players. Cable companies are eventually going to do this thanks to TiVo. The broadcast you receive is under licensing that you signed up with the cable company. You do not own the signal you are watching, therefore you are limited to what you can do with it, you can record it with proper hardware, but not with hardware that is under the licensing agreement.

Simply put, you will not own anything when it comes to buying movies from the store, or buying a video game console plus it's video games. You are merely paying a service fee for your entertainment, not full fledged payment to own just that single copy. And by paying for such a thing you automatically agree to that contract. You will be tied down to that licensing agreement which all now have an arbitration clause in it that, in layman's terms, says you cannot sue them for any reason whatsoever.

 

Ninty already tried that in Europe back in the SNES days, but it backfired miserably there due to the laws protecting the consumer, this was regarded by the courts as a rental agreement which means free repair and support during the length of the agreement (lifetime in this case). Needless to say Ninty backed down immediately, think about it, every toddler playing mario and biting a cart to pieces would get a new one for free delivered at home.

EDIT:

Forgot to mention, the reason Ninty tried to make their own game cart agreement stick legally back then was that they wanted to stop second hand sales and swapping of SNES carts. Ninty want to profit from the kids, can't have them running around exchanging games with each other.

 

I think we teh people of Assembler should pool our moneyz and buy a small country that we can run ourselves. With mountains of games and candy land dreams it will be a haven to all of the hardcore. Assembler can be the king and I can the Admiral of the Assembler Navy!