THQ: 3DS Includes Technology 'To Really Combat Piracy'

The Nintendo DS software market is often reported as being more heavily affected by piracy than its home console cousins, so third-party software publishers welcome Nintendo's claims that its upcoming 3DS handheld would be a tougher nut to crack -- and THQ executive Ian Curran corroborates those statements, saying "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," Curran said to Computer And Video Games. The DSi combated it a little bit, but the 3DS has taken that a step further." Portable game piracy has been a hot-button issue among publishers and analysts. "We fear a kind of thinking is become widespread that paying for software is meaningless," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said earlier this year. And Japan's CESA trade organization claimed last month that portable console game piracy has cost the worldwide game industry $41.5 billion over five years. Despite his confidence, Curran was not able to describe the mechanism by which the 3DS is expected to thwart pirates. "I actually asked Nintendo to explain the technology and they said it's very difficult to do so because it's so sophisticated," he said. "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."