3DS to Feature Unexplainable New Anti-Piracy Features

According to THQ’s executive VP of global publishing Ian Curran, the Nintendo 3DS will have better technology to prevent piracy.

Curran said “What excites me even more [than 3DS games] is that there’s technology built in that device to really combat piracy.”

“The problem with the DS market in the last few years, particularly with the DS Lite, is that it’s just been attacked by piracy. It’s made it almost impossible to shift any significant volume. The DSi combated it a little bit, but the 3DS has taken that a step further.”

“I actually asked Nintendo to explain the technology and they said it’s very difficult to do so because it’s so sophisticated,” he continued. “They combated the piracy on Dsi, which they don’t believe is cracked yet – but they know they’ve been hurt across the world and they believe the 3DS has got technology that can stop that.

“Therefore the opportunity for people to invest more in product development [on the system] and bring more 3DS products to market comes out of that. It’s going to probably cost us more to do it all in 3D – so we want to make sure we get a return on our investment when we do it.”

I find several things in this statement very wrong. First off lets talk about blaming poor game sales on piracy. Have you looked at the number of DS game that are released each week? 90% of them are complete shovelware. Here’s a couple of games released last week: Nursery Mania, QuickPick Farmer, 101 Shark Pets, Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. Have you ever heard of these games? I think that is the reason for not being able to “shift any significant volume”. Stop releasing “shift”.

Second, when you ask someone to explain something and they say “oh we can’t because its so sophisticated” you can stop them right there and call BS. They just don’t want to tell you. This would be giving the hackers an early start, why would Nintendo want to do that

Third, he said that it will cost more for them to create games in 3D. Oh really? When you are working with computer graphics, it seriously does not take hardly anything to add 3D. That’s why every CGI movie comes out in 3D, they basically just add a second virtual camera for the perspective. Even Nintendo said that it wouldn’t cost developers more to develop games on the 3DS.

“From a development perspective, it actually does not make much of a difference in terms of development costs to create the 3D visual effect,” Iwata said.

So are developers just trying to set the stage for higher game pricing? Because I’m not paying more for games in 3D. I use to love my DS and it had some really great games, but recently there have not been any really great games. Will 3D make me want to buy shovelware? No. Will 3D make me re-buy old games I’ve already played? No. 3D will simply be a novelty, cool to look at, but I can’t think of any gameplay mechanics that develops can exploit. Maybe I’ll be wrong.

via CVG