Rampant piracy has slowed DS software sales in Europe by nearly 50 percent, says Nintendo.
Software sales for the Nintendo DS have recently plummeted by nearly 50 percent in Europe. The reason for such a massive decline? According to Nintendo, the blame falls squarely on piracy.
Gamasutra reports on Nintendo's claim that rampant piracy is responsible for the dropping sales in Europe. Nintendo monitored just 10 overseas websites for illegal software downloads, and, according to their findings, these sites racked up over 238 million counts of piracy during the month of June 2009 alone. The company says that if you factor in the average cost of DS games, that's nearly 11 billion in lost sales.
The falling sales in Europe look especially grim when compared to the software numbers from the same period in the U.S. and Japanese markets, which have seen sales drop 11 and 7 percent, respectively (via Asahi Shimbun).
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata hopes to combat piracy by releasing new hardware, like the upcoming 3DS, designed to make running illicit software more difficult for pirates.
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