These cards can no longer be sold legally in Japan (photo akibamap.com)
According to Nintendo (TYO:7974), Japanese authorities in Aichi prefecture have arrested a ‘majikon’ vendor for suspected video game piracy. Majikon are adaptors or cards that can be purchased so that users can play homebrew software or games on the Nintendo DS, or at least, that’s the defense of the sellers. The kits, such as Supercard or R4, are often used to download ROMs from the internet in order to play games for free.
IT Media reports that a 39-year-old Saitama man was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly selling the devices to three people for a total of 7,200 yen (or about $91) [1]. Nintendo also noted that a man was arrested in February for modifying Wii consoles so that they could play copies of Wii games backed up on hard drives.
There’s no denying that the Nintendo has been plagued by piracy in recent years, and that such cards have no doubt hurt its business. But Nintendo has also been hurt by the rise of competing mobile gaming companies (Apple, GREE, DeNA) who do digital distribution in a way that has certainly eaten perhaps an even bigger portion of Nintendo’s lunch. Nintendo might do well to distance themselves from this sort of mess considering what happened to Sony after it pursued a hacker that jailbroke the PS3.
But ultimately both these problems for Nintendo are evidence that consumers want games that they can download instantly, in ways that may (see afore mentioned mobile gaming companies) or may not be legal (see majikon vendors).
Nintendo is moving towards a dual-distribution model for 3DS and Wii U games. But as Joystiq points out, new downloadable 3DS games will not be tied to an account but rather to tied to the memory card and hardware that downloaded it.