Rumor: Nintendo 3DS pirate tracking and protection

Rumors are surfacing on the techniques Nintendo plans to use against pirates on the 3DS.

The rumor goes that the various flash carts working on the 3DS is a planned feature. As once the cart has been played on the 3DS, the console remembers what it has had inside it. Adding it to an activity log which will log if the cart has been used or not.

To further the rumor its believed that retailers have access to this activity log and will be able to check if the console has been used for piracy. Effectively blocking the transaction in trade-ins if the console has been used for piracy.

That isn't the worse part of this rumor. You see retailers are not the least of your worries once Nintendo finds out. The rumor states that if you use a flash cart, the updates which the system sees become different with a new goal. The goal to stop your system booting up. Essentially Nintendo is bricking pirates systems.

We here at DS-X2 believe this rumor to be false, or someone just filled in the gaps. You will be aware the Wii can do a similar thing- if you have been using unauthorised stuff, it still shows up in your activity log. Nintendo also does similar measures to block the content, rather then the console. Which we believe they will continue to do on the 3DS. But this rumor in general is quite interesting to see what could happen within the pipeline.

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Comments

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  I sincerely doubt they'd ever brick a console on purpose, as that might trigger quite some legal actions. Flashcards can be used for legal things (homebrew and such). Whether it's possible to tell whether an illegal copy of a game is ran from such a card, I don't know.

  Dennis, 30-11--0001 at 00:00