Nintendo Blames Piracy For Huge European Sales Drop

[Andy Chalk]

Nintendo Blames Piracy For Huge European Sales Drop

Nintendo's [http://www.nintendo.com] sales in Europe are down by nearly half in recent months and the company is pointing the finger squarely at piracy as the cause.

Nintendo has been an active opponent of piracy over the years. The company has convinced eBay and Amazon to Asahi Shimbun [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91907-Amazon-eBay-Now-Prohibiting-R4-Sales] report, it claimed that "magic computer" devices like the R4 are responsible for a slide of nearly 50 percent in Nintendo's sales in Europe.

Europe appears to be Nintendo's biggest piracy problem, as over the same period, sales dipped by 11 percent in the U.S. and only seven percent in Japan. In January, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said the company would attempt to "enhance the ability to combat piracy in Europe through both legal and technological means," with a focus on making consoles that will not play pirated software.

But technology can only go so far and as one Japanese student living in the U.S. made clear, Nintendo is also fighting a widespread indifference toward piracy. "If I were to buy the software through the regular channels, it would cost so much," she said. "Everybody is using [circumvention devices], and I don't feel like I am doing something particularly wrong."

In June 2009, Nintendo monitored ten websites offering illegal game downloads and determined that its software had been pirated 238 million times, which it claimed translated into roughly $10.7 billion in lost sales.


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[Daystar Clarion]

Bloody pirates!

Seriously, they ruin things for everybody.

 

[JaredXE]

Potential lost sales Nintendo. You can count it all you want, but potential does not mean the pirates came into your money vault and stole 10.7 billion.

 

[Antari]

Potential lost sales Nintendo. You can count it all you want, but potential does not mean the pirates came into your money vault and stole 10.7 billion.

Have to agree with you there. The game industry, or atleast most of the news reports here are throwing around some pretty fantastical numbers. If these numbers were actually applied to the businesses in question, they'd be out of business. Not sitting here complaining about it.

Poor game development, rushed production schedules, and patronizing your customers is what has caused all this piracy. Reversing those exact points is the ONLY way you can even HOPE to eliminate it. Not some fancy computer chip, or wishful thinking.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Bullshit, now when there's going to be sales drop, instead of thinking their products are worthless, they'll start blaming pirates... typical...

 

[Cherry Cola]

And they don't even make games for the PC. Yeah, that's right, they're starting to blame console piracy for the shitty sales of their shitty games... I wonder what's next.

Probably that they will blame their developers when they play pirates with their children.

Or when they dress up as pirates during Halloween.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

I'm inclined to think that the people who've been pirating these games have been pirating for a long time. I don't imagine that more and more old 'honest' customers have become pirates, I think it more likely that perhaps people are becoming tired of Nintendo essentially releasing the same games.
I can't remember more than 3 Nintendo games released in the last year that I seriously considered buying. Maybe that's the problem.

 

[armaina]

Yes piracy, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that lots of those in Europe and especially Australia really get the short end of the stick with the prices. Importing from the states is often cheaper for most of them. Maybe if they did something about the huge markup in prices, sales wouldn't be so bad.

 

[TheDuckbunny]

As much as I hate people pirating games, this seems like a rather silly accusation. Why would people have waited for this moment to start pirating games? I think more games were actually being pirated at times of big releases.

 

[Sebenko]

And they don't even make games for the PC. Yeah, that's right, they're starting to blame console piracy for the shitty sales of their shitty games... I wonder what's next.

Well, who didn't see that coming? Watch us carefully, console gamers. You get a sneak peek of the shit you're in for later.

 

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Wait, what? Did the R4 suddenly just become available in Europe? I don't think so. Maybe the European game releases over the past year sucked?

 

[leonhart126]

This is why what they did with Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver was pure genius. By packaging it with the pokewalker they provided something trivial to the game that whilst not a necessity to the game is something pirates feel like they're missing out on. One of my friends who in fact had pirated the game on his R4 was so jealous of my pokewalker he went out and bought a legitimate copy of the game.

 

[Baby Tea]

Who called this?
I did. I totally called this.
As long as piracy is around, it's a great excuse for companies and developers if sales go south.
Piracy, not even mentioning that its a dick thing to do, only creates more problems, it doesn't solve any.
It opens the doors to Ubisoft-style DRM, and it gives developers and publishers BS excuses! On top of hurting an industry that over the last few years has seen the doors of many great developers close.

Bad pirates. Very bad pirates.

 

[gort]

just o put that numbers into context, that 10 billion in sales they claim to have "lost" would be 50% of the total revenue Nintendo has made in 2009.
or to put it another way, that is as much as the GDP of a smaller 3. world country (Congo).

even if "piracy" would magically stop i seriously doubt that Nintendo would increase their sales by more then a few percent.

 

[Irridium]

Potential lost sales Nintendo. You can count it all you want, but potential does not mean the pirates came into your money vault and stole 10.7 billion.

Have to agree with you there. The game industry, or atleast most of the news reports here are throwing around some pretty fantastical numbers. If these numbers were actually applied to the businesses in question, they'd be out of business. Not sitting here complaining about it.

Poor game development, rushed production schedules, and patronizing your customers is what has caused all this piracy. Reversing those exact points is the ONLY way you can even HOPE to eliminate it. Not some fancy computer chip, or wishful thinking.

Nah, no one will be able to eliminate piracy. But we can reduce it. And doing what you said is one way. Another is for Publishers to take a backseat to the Developers. All we seem to hear about is EA, Activision, Ubisoft, ect. And thats who most people think they're pirating from. But put the developers upfront, let them interact with their communities, actually respond to their criticisms and help with their problems instead of some person from EA pointing us to PR person #49.

Do that, and gamers will start to see the people behind the games. The people who rely on it to feed their families, to be able to live well. No it won't stop piracy, but it will help curb it. All anyone says is that they pirate from the big corporations. But how many people say that they pirate from Tim Schafer, John Carmack, Warren Spector, Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, or any other developer?

 

[Vaccine]

Yes piracy, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that lots of those in Europe and especially Australia really get the short end of the stick with the prices. Importing from the states is often cheaper for most of them. Maybe if they did something about the huge markup in prices, sales wouldn't be so bad.

$120 for a new release PS3/Xbox360 game, just sayin'.
It's pretty absurd pricing we get, now with gaming going more and more mainstream it's impossible for some people to buy multiple games. I've skipped out on God of War 3, Assassin's Creed 2 and a lot of other games in the past year simply because of money.

 

[GiantRedButton]

A ds game costs 40 euro, thats 53.73 Dollars.
They might as well charge a little more, its close to double the price anyway.
Then losing half of your sales means that you till get the same amount of money as you would in america, and japan....
The iphone is really big in Europe too, so people already get their shuffle ware for a euro instead of the price of a full and new pc game. (yeah most of them are as expensive as a ds game)

 

[The Lost Big Boss]

How do they come up with these numbers? Do they have secret ninjas disguised as pirates (Note: This would be the coolest thing ever and I hope it is true) that send how many pirates there are? Do they role the dice and see what the number is and add a million (or billion) to the end of it? Instead of blaming pirates they need to look in a mirror and see that people are no longer interested in the same games from twenty-five years ago.