French judge: Nintendos DS must be open to all developers!

[Sebastian]

We have just heard that Nintendo has today lost a major court case against the Divineo group in the main court of Paris. Nintendo originally took the group to court over DS flash carts, however the judge today has ruled against Nintendo and suggested that they are purposely locking out developers from their consoles and things should be more like Windows where ANYONE can develop any application if they wish to.

The ramifications of this are huge, as it indicates that flash carts are actually legal. Moroever, it could have bigger implications for developers and the like because Nintendo is deemed to be 'illegally' protecting their system by locking users out. Therefore, developers should not actually require separate development kits and should just be able to develop applications as they wish on retail versions of Nintendo's consoles.

And on a final note, this truly was a HUGE court case, up in the main court of Paris France and seems likely to be relevant to the whole of Europe.

Essentially, if people have to 'hack' the system and use Flash Carts to do develop, then it's all fine because Nintendo has left them with little other choice and the system should not be protected in such a restrictive way.

Full court documents will be available soon.



Quelle: maxconsole.net

[MrTAToad]

Unfortunately, I don't think the ruling applies to any country outside France.

I've sent an email to Nintendo UK to see what their response will be.

[doimus]

This could mean two things:

a) the judge is misinformed (unlikely)

OR

b) Entertainment companies were lying and cheating on people with their license schemes, EULAs and all those crap. You make the product, you sell it. End of story. What I do later is none of your business.
If I use your device to commit acts of terrorism it's not your company business, it's government business. Ie, your product is irrelevant compared to my actions. If it was the reverse, arms manufacturing companies should have been banned ages ago. Look what THEIR products did to the world.
Big companies need to realize they can't prohibit anything from buyers. They are not the law (or at least they shouldn't be).

[Hemlos]

France is a socialist country and they arent as strict on copyright laws etc.
They make up thier own rules as they go along basically, like china.

[Hatonastick]

Wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo made the decision to stop selling their gear there.

Of course if the "whole of Europe" part is true, they'd really be shooting themselves in the foot.  The smart way to handle the situation would be to head in the direction of Apple and the iPod/iPhone route.  Nintendo though has always liked having control over its products.  Lets face it, your hardware gets a bad name if anyone can develop for it and all you get is garbage.  Oh hang on, wait a minute -- isn't that already happening?    The Wii already has been getting a bad name as a large percentage of the games released by mainstream developers are, quite frankly, crap.  I love my Wii and I'm aware of it's limitations, but I've also seen what it is capable of if software companies could be bothered -- unfortunately most of the mainstream ones don't seem to be bothered at all.  Its becoming the biggest shovel-ware console in history.  I'd like them to relax their restrictions on development kits a bit more (basically if you don't have a real physical office that isn't used as a dwelling, don't apply) and make the Wii-ware side of things a little more accessible to Indie developers.  Especially since if you do score a development kit you are on your own.  Nintendo is notorious for supplying little to no assistance if you run into trouble, and the Wii has a reputation for being difficult to develop for.

Anyway I'm way off topic now.  Sorry about that.  I have a real bee in my bonnet about the way Nintendo is running things with regards to the Wii.  I don't have a DS so that side of things hasn't impacted me.  They have a chance to make the Wii different to every other console in history and really impact the gaming world -- problem is like all large companies they don't want to relinquish even a little bit of control as they believe 'control = money' (or maybe in this case it's more about reputation as they are Japanese after all -- in which case they are already failing).  Now if only they'd open it up so Gernot could add the Wii to GLBasics list of end platforms. 

Oh well back to reality.

[doimus]

Wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo made the decision to stop selling their gear there.

That wouldn't hurt France a bit, yet big N. might feel a sting.

Regarding your comments about showelware on current-gen Nintendo consoles, you are so right.... I worked for the company which develops "casual" (read: crapware) games for Wii/DS among others. I left when I realized there is only crap, crap and then some more crap coming up on the horizon. And I don't like shoveling shit! (reference: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). When I begun working I believed in developing "original, innovative games" and all that crap Nintendo was stufing down our throats. The sad reality is: they've become stale. The whole gaming industry is rotten zombie feeding on Modern Warfare kids and dumb soccer moms.

There is SOOOOOO much better content among homebrew developers, it's unbelieavable!
The industry really needs to go back to its roots when anyone anywhere could develop for home computers (C64, Spectrum, Amiga). One INSPIRED individual is thousand times more worthy than all those licensed crapware companies (including the biggest of them).

And don't get me started on piracy. There was always one golden rule: make a good game and price it fairly, and you WILL sell. No matter how open or closed the platform is.

[erico]

I agree with Doimus,
but then again, the hardware is theirs, they should be able to do whatever they want with it, we buy if we agree with it. Think about if you were on their shoes, of course letting it open sounds great (I believe), but I can also think of a condition or two that would not.
Good thing we have a lot of alternatives on plataforms now a days.

...and yeah, that golden rule is golden!

[Hemlos]

France is a socialist country and they arent as strict on copyright laws etc.
They make up thier own rules as they go along basically, like china.

This is a gross simplification that merely demonstrates your lacking knowledge about the current political situation within that country and about how each of the EEC members individually are bound by European law.

Ocean

My familly tells me all about the corruption there, and how the near communistic socialism wracks thier lives on a daily basis.
I was there as well, the govt locks thier own people out of the capital when there isnt enough food for tourism.....not to mention simple police walk around with machine guns.
If thier govt think thier people will be happy with breaking intl copyright laws, they obviously will let them.

[Hatonastick]

Wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo made the decision to stop selling their gear there.

That wouldn't hurt France a bit, yet big N. might feel a sting.

Regarding your comments about showelware on current-gen Nintendo consoles, you are so right.... I worked for the company which develops "casual" (read: crapware) games for Wii/DS among others. I left when I realized there is only crap, crap and then some more crap coming up on the horizon. And I don't like shoveling shit! (reference: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). When I begun working I believed in developing "original, innovative games" and all that crap Nintendo was stufing down our throats. The sad reality is: they've become stale. The whole gaming industry is rotten zombie feeding on Modern Warfare kids and dumb soccer moms.

There is SOOOOOO much better content among homebrew developers, it's unbelieavable!
The industry really needs to go back to its roots when anyone anywhere could develop for home computers (C64, Spectrum, Amiga). One INSPIRED individual is thousand times more worthy than all those licensed crapware companies (including the biggest of them).

And don't get me started on piracy. There was always one golden rule: make a good game and price it fairly, and you WILL sell. No matter how open or closed the platform is.

I couldn't agree with you more mate.

I love my Wii.  I think that despite the hardware limitations compared to the bigger, more powerful consoles, it could truly shine if someone out there actually cared enough to make innovative games that use its controllers and graphics/hardware limitations as strengths.  Despite all the negative comments I've heard, I believe it is possible.  Occasionally some games shine enough to show that decent games could be done with this system, but instead they seem to either try to shoe-horn in games meant for more powerful hardware like the 360 or PS3 (ie. ports), or we get yet another freaking mini-game collection (disclaimer: I actually like most of Wii Sports Resort, but I think we only need one or two of these sorts of things, instead of 50).  To be honest I think some of the Wii-ware games (although too short in many cases) are much better than some of the store released games.  I own around 20 store-bought games, but the few Wii-ware games I've got (not counting emulated re-releases) have had more play -- especially well-done games like World of Goo (even if that sort of thing isn't your bag, it's still well done).  The one exception being Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort as my entire family got into those.

On a slightly humorous side-note, I've rarely beat my Dad at real-life table tennis and in Wii Sports Resort the life-long non-gamer (who loves the Wii despite telling me in the past that computer games are a total waste of time and money) beat me at virtual table tennis as well.  I was so embarrassed.  Just about killed myself with the amount of rematches we played.  Next time I'm going to take him on in the sword fighting I think. 

Anyway, Id like to see Nintendo open Wii-Ware up and make it more accessible to Indie/home developers.  I realise it would cause them inconvenience (but hey surely they can afford to hire people to watch over this) as they'd have to spend a lot of time making sure it didn't end up like the iTunes store, ie. drowning in rubbish, but in theory it could work.  One of the biggest issues with Wii-Ware (besides the low quality of some of the games) is the very low flow rate.  I think that (at least here in Oz as all the stores are different) we get more Virtual Console games released than Wii-Ware.  Not sure whether or not this is actually an issue related to the ratings/censorship board (if this is an issue in more than one country then Wii-Ware could never be thrown open I suspect) or whether it's a deliberate decision by Nintendo, but games seem to take a long time to come out here.  For example friends of mine in the UK were playing World of Goo for 6 months or more before it even came out here.

Actually theres a couple of disc based games that never made it here and from what I was told never will, both of which I was waiting for -- Dokapon Kingdom (which I really wanted to play with some friends of mine) and Excitebots Trick Racing.  I'd love to know why.  It may be related to the developers or publishers not wanting to pay for something to be gone over by the censorship mob (I've been told it costs about $10k here) due to a belief that the game wouldn't sell well enough, than having anything to do with Nintendo (maybe).  Very annoyed I was when I found out...

[Moru]

France is a socialist country and they arent as strict on copyright laws etc.
They make up thier own rules as they go along basically, like china.

Oh, this is so badly flamebait I can't totaly ignore it :-)

You compare Socialism with China? I read the comment for my wife and she asked if you were american :-)

Link to slashdot about the message.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/04/0251236/DS-Flash-Carts-Deemed-Legal-By-French-Court

[Hemlos]

France is a socialist country and they arent as strict on copyright laws etc.
They make up thier own rules as they go along basically, like china.

read the comment for my wife and she asked if you were american :-)

Link to slashdot about the message.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/04/0251236/DS-Flash-Carts-Deemed-Legal-By-French-Court

You both misread. Subject is France.

Personally, i think Nintendo can turn this around to thier advantage.
As was mentioned above, they could veer into the Apple style development.
It would give them more leverage against peon socialist countries.