Monday, October 6, 2008

DSi to invite further piracy?

Developers are certainly getting very excited by the promise of media storage on the new DS system that was unveiled yesterday, but could that be offset by fears of piracy? That's certainly something that has some developers worried.

The new DSi handheld system was unveiled yesterday and houses two cameras, improved online functionality, larger screens and a new SD card slot that replaces the GBA cartridge slot. It's that last bit which will be a problem apparently.

"Adding an SD slot makes a bunch of sense for downloadable content given the way things are going," said Team17 chief Martyn Brown in a discussion with Eurogamer. Brown did mention however that in order for the system to work at all then it would have to be better designed than the SD storage system on the Wii, which is Nintendo is yet to fix.

Brown also voiced concerns about piracy on the DSi too, something which has proved a thorn in Nintendo's side lately thanks to the massively available R4 card which lets players easily load ROMs and unofficial software on the DS. The R4 is essentially a Micro-SD card adapter which plugs into the DS, so adding a standard SD card slot on the new version could be a bad move for Nintendo.

"I just hope they've done something to counter the mass piracy that exists via the R4 on the Lite. It scares me that with an SD card input, that might leave it even wider open that it was on the original device."

Brown also raised the issue that the DSi might suffer from trying to do to many things, pointing out that many users have phones which already have online and photo abilities.

The DSi will be available in Europe next, but you can fill the time until then by letting us know your thoughts in the forums.

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