It was inevitable. All these kids setting their R4’s afire with all the latest games and figuratively flipping off the economy could only run wild and free for so long. Nintendo’s more than aware of what’s going on, and it’s been rumored for a while that they were considering some way to offer a service that could draw the attention away from piracy and towards legality. As of today, the rumor has become a reality with the announcement of DSvision.
AM3 and Dai Nippon have joined forces and signed an agreement with Nintendo to produce the product, which will launch in Japan in January. It comes with a 512 MB microSD card and a high-speed USB adaptor to connect to your PC for file transfer. All this will retail for the rough equivalent of $36 US dollars. DSvision, the download service, will launch shortly after in March.
Now, this all sounds fine and dandy, but the question is whether or not this will slow piracy on the DS. It’s currently one of the easiest systems to pirate and R4 users are abundant. While it sounds as if the DSvision service may offer a really cool range of downloadable content (books, comics, movies and music will all be available,) it’s hard to talk people out of getting games for free, illegal or not.
[Via C3 news — thanks Jonathan!]
