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Friday, February 27, 2009

Nintendo stop sales on R4 cartridges in Japan

R4 cartridge banLast year more 50 different games companies in Japan had teamed up with Nintendo to take the makers of the popular R4 Revolution cartridge for the DS to court. 

Today those companies made their first major blow, making it illegal to sell the R4 in Japan.

The R4 Revolution cartridge is by no means unique, but is one of the most popular homebrew devices available for the Nintendo DS. It's a Slot-1 MicroSD card adaptor which allows DS gamers to boot their own software on the DS. It can also be used to play downloaded 'copied' games, with Nintendo claiming it loses more than $975 million USD to piracy every year.

The mass lawsuit includes a total of 54 companies who claim they've been affected by the sale of the R4, including the likes of Capcom.

Today the Tokyo District Court found enough cause to block all legal sales of the the R4 across Japan, with further punishments still possible as the court case continues.

The block imposed by the court probably won't have all that much impact however, as Nintendo has already pressured the majority of game retailers into taking the R4 off their shelves according to Kotaku.

Source: Bit-Tech