NDS R4 flash carts officially banned in Japan

The efforts of Nintendo (and 54 other game developers) to stop piracy are finally getting some results. Japan has now officially – and legally! – banned the selling and importing of R4 flash carts for the DS.

Japan has now officially – and legally! – banned the selling and importing of R4 flash carts. Back in July of last year, Nintendo and 54 other software developers filed a lawsuit to the Japanese court against the popular R4 flash cart, on the grounds of the “Unfair Competition Prevention Law.”

Well, it took some time, but now Tokyo District Court has ruled a decision. Nintendo and the group of game developers win. Their claims of their sales being affected by the flashcart are found valid: findings have confirmed that “the game copying devices are a violation under Japan laws.” This via a press release from Capcom.

Now Nintendo and the entire group of 54 developer studios may have won this battle, but they haven’t won the war. They’re laying the smackdown on piracy and they won’t stop here either. From here on out, they’ll still continue “to pursue legal actions against game copying devices that allow the play of illegal copied software made available on the Internet.”

There’s no confirmation about it yet whether other regions will follow suit. With Japan already banning the flashcart, Europe, North America, the rest of Asia, and other countries may eventually have it banned as well.

It’s pretty cool that the efforts of Nintendo to stop piracy are finally getting some results. It’s just a shame that homebrew – legitimate homebrew – has to be affected by this as well.

• Nintendo, 54 companies slap lawsuit on Japanese R4 distributors
• Japan: R4 pricing and sales increase dramatically after legal threat