Why does Nintedo make big deal on emulators?

[crushilista]

They even go to lengths as to put in new wii games that it's against the law, and they lie in certain parts of thir packet... why? I know that they think they will lose money, but people have already done this stuff illegal before. Don't they realise that in the end, the pirates will just end up winning? PS I don't support the pirating of it at all, what I WOULD want is to use my own Nintendo games legally....

[Hard core Rikki]

They want public perception on that to be shaped to their benefit. The easy audience is that of your customers.

Nintendo since ages went with proprietary cartridges, which means emulators generally cant be used with original discs, like how it can be done with ps1 emulators. Since emulators rarely can interface with catridges directly, it might be why its such a big deal to 'educate' the public.

Sales of cartridge copies directly affect their revenue streams, if nonpsysical copies get preferred over physical ones. Since a while, Nintendo tries to preserve these by making its consoles reject homebrew-enabling code, like on the Wii and the DSi recently (more so that copied games cant work, only original ones, but then all consoles feature similar restrictions, expect its taken a tad further than before, with upgradable firmwares).

__________________

deviantART | Blog | Webcomics | VBA-M | PCSX2 | @ES | Shendo | GeneralEmu | XTemu

Get the NGemu toolbar http://ngemu.ourtoolbar.com

[Paratech]

I find it humorous that Nintendo makes quite a bit on Wii downloadable games and wants to blame emulation for hurting them.

If not for emulators first being made and being available, would they know that there was a market for commercial emulation? Many people who have emulators on their PCs buy games off the Wii, I've repurchased Secret of Mana, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario 2 and 3, Excite Bike, Gaplus, Star Force, Ys Book I and II, and Mega Man 9. I'm going to buy more games from them as well down the line, and this is all thanks to emulators like MAME, Gens, Fusion, Nestopia, ZSNES, and other emulators...

__________________
-Dreams of getting a new 360 XBOX in 201x.
-Current consoles: Playstation 2 and Wii, also has DS/GBA and a PSP 3000
-PC: AMD 5000 2.6 Dual Core, 2GB Ram, 8600 GeForce GT video card, SB Live!, Win XP SP3

[taumpytears]

besides that... the only people out here messing with emulation are the ones who know about it and look for the stuff. We know it's illegal. when nintendo posts a warning on the game you just downloaded with your wii. they're really just reminding half the people that they could be playing this game for free. instead of a warning it could just say "hey you know you can play this for free on your computer right?"

[Dax]

Originally Posted by Paratech

I find it humorous that Nintendo makes quite a bit on Wii downloadable games and wants to blame emulation for hurting them.

They use ROMs from the Internet/their roms inside the VC games match the data found on ROMs from the Internet.

Originally Posted by taumpytears

besides that... the only people out here messing with emulation are the ones who know about it and look for the stuff. We know it's illegal. when nintendo posts a warning on the game you just downloaded with your wii. they're really just reminding half the people that they could be playing this game for free. instead of a warning it could just say "hey you know you can play this for free on your computer right?"

Emulation's not illegal.

__________________

My PC Specs|My Consoles|Emu SVNs|Project OSX|How to ask a Question

[taumpytears]

it is when you play games that you dont have copy of right?

at that point it becomes illegal does it not? downloading games and playing for free?

---

Last edited by taumpytears; May 31st, 2009 at 19:24.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

[BigIg]

Well technically you can dump your own games which would be perfectly legal. Most people don't do that though, but still the act of emulation itself is not illegal.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by Dax

They use ROMs from the Internet/their roms inside the VC games match the data found on ROMs from the Internet.

Quite a number of ROMs on the net were dumped from original carts... so even if you dump your own, you'll still end up with something identical in most cases. There's no surprise with Nintendo's VC contents matching up... It only means that the ROMs you can get on the net are likely to have come from an original source.

Emulation's not illegal.

Mmm... since you pretty much are doing reverse-engineering work, or at least you have to at some point, it's illegal. Depending on whether or not the license states that it's illegal to reverse-engineer the codes of something...

Anyway, that pretty much means you don't want to be too open about the fact that you reverse-engineered the codes of some game and ended up emulating the game perfectly because of that... unless the game is public domain. Reverse-engineering public domain games is fine... and if you "somehow" get commercial games to work because of that then it's fine, too... but see, that's also the reason why commercial games take so long to fix. Lest you, as an emu author risks it and reverse-engineer the piece yourself, your best bet is to rely on public domain works to figure out bugs. ;p

So... it's a gray area... and your practices as an emu author decide the legality of your emulator. In most cases, just stay silent and only document your find instead of how you found it. That's also why I haven't gotten into PSX or Gameboy or anything... yet... unless I find some homebrews that I'm interested in getting to work.

__________________
cChip interpreter WIP - current status: Release Candidate
LRx Filter RC - current performance rating: 9/10

[Dax]

That's true. Hold on though. I thought the DMCA said it was legal to reverse engineer for learning purposes..?

__________________

My PC Specs|My Consoles|Emu SVNs|Project OSX|How to ask a Question

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by Dax

That's true. Hold on though. I thought the DMCA said it was legal to reverse engineer for learning purposes..?

Innocent until proven guilty. That's pretty much how it is.

Truth is that they are still contesting it... and it's "legal" for now (note: for now). But you are still better off not saying what you did because chances are you're going to get an invitation to court and that's not a pretty thing.

__________________
cChip interpreter WIP - current status: Release Candidate
LRx Filter RC - current performance rating: 9/10

[Dax]

Lol, indeed. We all wrote our emus with PD roms.

__________________

My PC Specs|My Consoles|Emu SVNs|Project OSX|How to ask a Question